Some external sound was faintly troubling him, something that must have begun under cover of these rising, pealing octave passages--storm waves, each higher than the last, until it seemed that even a superhuman swimmer must be exhausted. An undefinable alien noise, a kind of humming. Brian shook his head peevishly, shutting it away. It couldn't matter, at least not now. Everything was here, in the beautiful labors his hands still had to do. The waves were growing more quiet, settling, subsiding, and now he must play those curious arpeggios which he had never quite understood--but, of course, he understood them at last. Rip them out of the piano like showers of sparks, like distant lightnings moving farther off across a world that could never be at rest. The final theme. Why, it was a variation--and how was it that he had never realized it?--a variation on a theme of Brahms, from the German Requiem. Quite plain, quite simple, and Brahms would have approved. Still it was rather strange, Brian thought, that he had never made the identification before in spite of all his study. Well, he knew it now. _Blessed are the dead...._ Yes, Brian thought, but something more remained, and he searched for it, proudly certain of discovering it, through the mighty unfolding of the finale. No hurrying, no crashing impatience any more, but a moving through time with no fear of time, through radiance and darkness with no fear of either. Andrew Carr was happy, the light of the Sun on his shoulders. _That they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow after them._ Brian stood up, swaying and out of breath. So the music was over, and the young savages were gone, and somewhere a jangling, humming confusion was filling the Hall of Music, distant, but entering with violence even here, now that the piano was silent. Brian moved stiffly out of the auditorium, more or less knowing what he would find. The noise was immense, the unchecked overtones of the marimba fuming and quivering as the high ceiling of the Hall of Music caught and twisted them, flung them back against the answering strings of harps and pianos and violins, the sulky membranes of drums, the nervous brass of cymbals. The girl was playing it. Really playing it. * * * * * Brian laughed once, softly, in the shadows, and was not heard. She had hit on a most primeval rhythm natural for children or savages and needed nothing else, hammering it out swiftly on one stone and then the next, wanting no rest or variation. The boy was dancing, slapping his feet, pounding his chest, thrusting out his javelin in perfect time to the clamor, edging up to his companion, grimacing, drawing back to return. Neither was laughing or close to laughter. Their faces were savage-solemn, downright grim with the excitement, the innocent lust, as spontaneous as the drumming of partridges. It was a while before they saw Brian in the shadows.