He would play it now--a little of it.
He would play it to her--to the girl who had set him free in the Sagalac
woods, to the ravishing deserter from her people, to the only woman who
had told him the truth in all his life, and who insulated his magnetism
as a ground-wire insulates lightning. He would summon her here by his
imagination, and tell her to note how his soul had caught the music of
the spheres. He would surround himself with an atmosphere of his own. His
rage, his love, and his malignant hate, his tenderness and his lust
should fill the barber's shop with a flood which would drown the Gorgio
raider. He laughed to himself, almost unconsciously. Then suddenly he
leaned his cheek to the instrument and drew the bow across the strings
with a savage softness. The old cottonfield fiddle cried out with a
thrilling, exquisite pain, but muffled, as a hand at the lips turns agony
into a tender moan. Some one--some spirit--in the fiddle was calling for
its own.
Five minutes later-a five minutes in which people gathered at the door of
the shop, and heads were thrust inside in ravished wonder--the
palpitating Romany lowered the fiddle from his chin, and stood for a
minute looking into space, as though he saw a vision.
He was roused by old Berry's voice.
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