Her teacher rose abruptly. "Remember, for next time,
thirds. You ought to get up earlier."

That night the air was so warm that Fritz and Herr
Wunsch had their after-supper pipe in the grape arbor,
smoking in silence while the sound of fiddles and guitars
came across the ravine from Mexican Town. Long after

Fritz and his old Paulina had gone to bed, Wunsch sat
motionless in the arbor, looking up through the woolly
vine leaves at the glittering machinery of heaven.


"LENTE CURRITE, NOCTIS EQUI."

That line awoke many memories. He was thinking of
youth; of his own, so long gone by, and of his pupil's, just
beginning. He would even have cherished hopes for her,
except that he had become superstitious. He believed that
whatever he hoped for was destined not to be; that his
affection brought ill-fortune, especially to the young; that
if he held anything in his thoughts, he harmed it. He had
taught in music schools in St. Louis and Kansas City, where
the shallowness and complacency of the young misses had
maddened him. He had encountered bad manners and bad
faith, had been the victim of sharpers of all kinds, was
dogged by bad luck. He had played in orchestras that were
never paid and wandering opera troupes which disbanded