SHE CAME into the living room, her music satchel plopping against her wioged legs aher arm weighted down with school books, and stood for a moment listening to the sounds from the studio. A soft procession of piano chords and the tuning of a violin. Then Mister Bilderbach called out to her in his ky, guttural tones:
"That you, Bien?"
As she jerked off her mittens she saw that her fingers were twitg to the motions of the fugue she had practiced that m. "Yes," she answered. "Its me;"
"I," the voice corrected. "Just a moment."
She could hear Mister Lafkowitz talking -- his words spun out in a silky, unintelligible hum. A voice almost like a womans, she thought, pared to Mister Bilderbachs. Restlessness scattered her attention. She fumbled with her geometry book and Le Voyage de Monsieur Perri before putting them oable. She sat down on the sofa and began to take her musi the satchel. Again she saw her hands -- the quivering tendons that stretched down from her knuckles, the sore fiip capped with curled, dingy tape. The sight sharpehe fear that had begun to torment her for the past few months.
Noiselessly she mumbled a few phrases of encement to herself. A good lesson -- a good lesson -- like it used to be -- Her lips closed as she heard the stolid sound of Mister Bilderbachs footsteps across the floor of the studio and the creaking of the door as it slid open.
For a moment she had the peculiar feeling that during most of the fifteen years of her life she had been looking at the fad shoulders that jutted from behind the door, in a silence disturbed only by the muted, blank plug of a violin string. Mister Bilderbach. Her teacher, Mr. Bilderbach. The quick eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses; the light, thin hair and the narrow face beh; the lips full and loose shut and the lower one pink and shining from the bites of his teeth; the forked veins in his temples throbbing plainly enough to be observed across the room.
"Arent you a little early?" he asked, glang at the clo the mantelpiece that had poio five minutes of twelve for a month. "Josefs in here. Were running over a little sonatino by someone he knows."
"Good," she said, trying to smile. "Ill listen." She could see her fingers sinking powerless into a blur of piano keys. She felt tired -- felt that if he looked at her much longer her hands might tremble.
He stood uain, halfway in the room. Sharply his teeth pushed down on his bright, swollen lips. "Hungry, Bien?" he asked. "Theres some apple cake Anna made, and milk."
"Ill wait till afterward," she said. "Thanks."
"After you finish with a very fine lesson -- eh?" His smile seemed to crumble at the ers.
There was a sound from behind him iudio and Mister Lafkowitz pushed at the other panel of the door and stood beside him.
"Frances?" he said, smiling. "And how is the work ing now?"
Without meaning to, Mister Lafkowitz always made her feel clumsy and rown. He was such a small man himself, with a weary look when he was not holding his violin. His eyebrows curved high above his sallow, Jewish face as though asking a question, but the lids of his eyes drowsed languorous and indifferent. Today he seemed distracted. She watched him e into the room for no apparent purpose, holding his pearl-tipped bow in his still fingers, slowly gliding the white horsehair through a chalky piece of rosin. His eyes were sharp bright slits today and the linen handkerchief that f