new pink and white braces. He sat under the gas-jet of the back
kitchen, looking through his music. Then he opened the bag, in which
were sections of a flute and a piccolo. He took out the flute, and
adjusted it. As he sat he was physically aware of the sounds of the
night: the bubbling of water in the boiler, the faint sound of the
gas, the sudden crying of the baby in the next room, then noises
outside, distant boys shouting, distant rags of carols, fragments
of voices of men. The whole country was roused and excited.

The little room was hot. Aaron rose and opened a square ventilator
over the copper, letting in a stream of cold air, which was grateful
to him. Then he cocked his eye over the sheet of music spread out on
the table before him. He tried his flute. And then at last, with the
odd gesture of a diver taking a plunge, he swung his head and began
to play. A stream of music, soft and rich and fluid, came out of the
flute. He played beautifully. He moved his head and his raised bare
arms with slight, intense movements, as the delicate music poured out.
It was sixteenth-century Christmas melody, very limpid and delicate.

The pure, mindless, exquisite motion and fluidity of the music
delighted him with a strange exasperation. There was something tense,
exasperated to the point of intolerable anger, in his good-humored
breast, as he played the finely-spun peace-music. The more exquisite
the music, the more perfectly he produced it, in sheer bliss; and at
the same time, the more intense was the maddened exasperation within
him.

Millicent appeared in the room. She fidgetted at the sink. The music
was a bugbear to her, because it prevented her from saying what was
on her own mind. At length it ended, her father was turning over the