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About two hours before dawn, we had broken up, with Sybelle sitting by herself deep in the garden, looking at one flower after another with great care. Benji had discovered that he could read at preternatural speed and was tearing through the library, which was very impressive indeed.

David, seated at Marius's desk, corrected his misspellings and abbreviations in the typescript, painstakingly correcting the copy he had made for me in haste.

Marius and I sat very close together against the same oak tree, my shoulder against his. We didn't talk. We were watching things, and listening perhaps to the same songs of the night.

I wanted Sybelle to play again. I had never known her to go so long without playing, and I wanted badly to hear her play the Sonata again.

It was Marius who first heard an unusual sound, and stiffened with alarm, only to give it up and rest back beside me again.

"What was it?" I asked.

"Only a little noise. I couldn't . . . I couldn't read it," he said. He rested his shoulder against me as he had before.

Almost immediately I saw David look up from his work. And then Pandora appeared, walking slowly but warily towards one of the lighted doors.

Now I heard the sound. And so did Sybelle, for she too looked in the direction of the garden gate. Even Benji had finally deigned to notice it, and he dropped his book in mid-sentence and came marching with a very stern little scowl to the door to take stock of this new situation and get it firmly under control.

At first I thought my eyes had deceived me, but very quickly I realized the identity of the figure who appeared as the gate opened and closed quietly behind his stiff and ungainly

arm.

He limped as he approached, or seemed rather the victim of a weariness and a loss of practice at the simple act of walking as he came into the light that fell on the grass before our feet.

I was astonished. No one knew his intentions. No one moved.

It was Lestat, and he was tattered and dusty as he had been on the chapel floor. No thoughts emanated from his mind as far as I could figure, and his eyes looked vague and full of exhausting wonder. He stood before us, merely staring, and then as I rose to my feet, scrambled in fact, to embrace him; he came near to me, and whispered in my ear.

His voice was faltering and weak from lack of use, and he spoke very softly, his breath just touching my flesh.

"Sybelle," he said.

"Yes, Lestat, what is it, what about her, tell me," I said. I held his hands as firmly and lovingly as I could.

"Sybelle," he said again. "Do you think she would play the Sonata for me if you asked her? The Appassionato?"

I drew back and looked into his vague drifting blue eyes.

"Oh, yes," I said, near breathless with excitement, with overflowing feeling. "Lestat, I'm sure she would. Sybelle!"

She had already turned. She watched him in amazement as he made his way slowly across the lawn and into the house. Pandora stepped back for him, and we all watched in respectful silence as he sat down near the piano, his back to the front right leg of it, and his knees brought up and his head resting wearily on his folded arms. He closed his eyes.

"Sybelle," I asked, "would you play it for him? The Appassionata, again, if you would. "

And of course, she did.

THE END