They did, he thought--he could not look at them. He knew he was muttering, too, between his noisy outbursts, as he snatched the cover off the Steinway and raised the lid, muttering bits and fragments from old times, and from the new times. "They went thataway. Oh, Mr. Van Anda, it just simply goes right through me; I can't express it. Madam, such was my intention--or, as Brahms is supposed to have said on a slightly different subject, any ass knows that. Brio, Rubato and Schmalz went to sea in a--Jonason, Paula, this is a piano. It will not hurt you. Sit there, be quiet, listen." He found calm. _Now if ever, now when I have living proof that human nature (some sort of human nature) is continuing--surely now, if ever, The Project--_ * * * * * With the sudden authority that was natural to him, Andrew Carr took over. In the stupendous opening chords of the introduction, Brian very nearly forgot his audience. Not quite, though. The youngsters had sat down out there in the dusty region where none but ghosts had lingered for twenty-five years or more. The piano's first sound brought them to their feet. Brian played through the first four bars, piling the chords like mountains, then held the last one with the pedal and waved his right hand at Jonason and Paula in a furious downward motion. He thought they understood. He thought he saw them sit down again, but he could pay them scant attention now, for the sonata was coming alive under his fingers, waking, growing, rejoicing. He did not forget the youngsters again. They were important, terrifying, too important, at the fringe of awareness. But he could not look at them any more. He shut his eyes. He had never played like this in the flood of his prime, in the old days, before great audiences that loved him. Never. His eyes were still closed, holding him secure in a secret world that was not all darkness, when he ended the first movement, paused very briefly, and moved on with complete assurance to explore the depth and height of the second. This was a true statement at last. This was Andrew Carr; he lived, even if, after this late morning, he might never live again. And now the third, the storm and the wrath, the interludes of calm, the anger, denials, affirmations. _Was there anything he didn't know, this heir of three centuries who died in jail?_ Without hesitation, without any awareness of self, of age or pain or danger or loss, Brian was entering on the broad reaches of the last movement when he opened his eyes. The youngsters were gone. Well, he thought, it's too big. It frightened them away. He could visualize them, stealing out with backward looks of panic. Incomprehensible thunder. But he could not think much about them now. Not while Andrew Carr was with him. He played on with the same assurance, the same joyful sense of victory. Savages--let them go, with leave and good will. * * * * *