“ ‘Margaret at the spinning-wheel’?” Drake was much more comfortable with the English translation. He paused for a moment, then began to play a steady, pulsing figure.

“That’s it,” the girl said at once. “Did you know that Schubert wrote it when he was only seventeen?”

“I know.” It was a possible criticism, making the point that Drake was a lot older than seventeen and had done nothing. But before he could say more she went on: “It’s a little bit high for me. But I can handle it. Start over.”

After the four brief figures of the introduction she began to sing, “Mein Ruh ist hin, mein Herz ist schwer.” “My peace is gone, my heart is heavy.” Drake, understanding the German words only vaguely but feeling the strong musical rapport between them, put all his mind into his playing, sensing and adapting to her vocal line.

They performed the whole song. After the final slowing chords on the piano there was total silence. He turned and found a smile on her face that matched his own delight. Before they could speak, a sound came from the doorway: four steady hand claps.

“You know, don’t you, the penalty for playing my Steinway without my permission?” Bonvissuto walked toward them. “What are you doing in here, Merlin?”

Drake picked up his exam papers and held them out. “I finished.”

“Yeah?” Bonvissuto skimmed the sheets for a couple of seconds. He snorted. “I told Leila Nielsen, using ‘Erstarrung’ was one dumb idea, you were sure to know it. No matter. Plenty of stuff you don’t know for next time.” He smiled sadistically. “How’s your Webern?” And then, before Drake could reply, “Go on, go on. Out of here, both of you.” He waved his hands at them. “Merlin, we’ll discuss your test tomorrow morning. Werlich, I registered you. You’re legal. You come in at one tomorrow, we’ll work on your middle register. Now, go. What you waiting for?” And then, when they were almost out the door, “Since you two are going to be performing in public together, you’d better practice. You need polish.”

Drake knew her name, or at least part of it. Werlich. And she knew his. They stood in the corridor, staring at each other.

“Did you hear that?” she said at last. “Performing together. Do you think he meant it?”

“I don’t know.” Drake had played before small groups only. The idea of a public concert froze his blood. “But he usually means what he says when it’s about music.”

She held out her hand. “I’m Anastasia Werlich. Ana for short.”

“I’m Drake Merlin.” He took her hand and felt an odd compulsion to admit his secret “It’s actually Walter Drake Merlin, but I really hate Walter.”

“So don’t use it. You didn’t pick it. I’m not too fond of Werlich.” She frowned. “How much money do you have?”

The question threw him. Did she mean in the world, or in his pocket? Either way, it was an unsatisfactory answer.

“I have four dollars.”

She nodded. “All right. And I have nine. So I’m the rich one. I buy you a Coke.”

“I don’t drink Coke. Caffeine doesn’t agree with me. It gives me the jitters.” Drake wondered why he was saying something so terminally stupid. Here he was, keener to continue a conversation with Ana than he had ever been with anyone, and he sounded like he was freezing her off.

But all she said was, “Sprite, then, or 7UP,” and she steered them off toward the cafeteria at the end of the building.

They talked through the rest of the afternoon and all evening, so absorbed in each other that the presence of others in the cafeteria was totally irrelevant.

It had pleased Drake at first to learn that she was as badly off as he was. Her fluent German and knowledge of the world came not from an expensive private-school education in Europe, but because Ana was an army brat, whose tough childhood had dragged her from school to school all over Europe and most of the rest of the world. Like him, Ana was poor, too poor to attend a university without a scholarship.

And then, after just a few hours together, money or the lack of it didn’t matter.

What did matter was that they were so keen to talk and listen to each other that Ana came close to missing her last bus home. What mattered was that when they were at the bus stop she said, with the directness that she would never lose, “I’ve been waiting to meet you since I was five years old.”

What mattered was her face, gray eyes closed, upturned for a brief good-night kiss. When the bus drove away Drake felt the deepest loss of his eighteen years. He knew, even then, that he had found the girl he would love forever.

That first day set the pattern for all their time together. They were with each other every moment that they could manage. When Ana had an out-of-town performance she would return home on the earliest possible flight. When commissions or premiere performances took Drake away to New York or Miami or Los Angeles, he chafed at the obligatory dinners and cocktail parties that were part of the deal. He didn’t want free dinner and drinks or extravagant praise of his talents. He wanted to be with Ana. Even in the early days, when they were desperately poor, he would go without dinner so he could take a taxi rather than a bus, and be home an hour sooner.

Drake recalled one day when Ana was involved in a major traffic accident on the Beltway. He was in bed with a fever of 102 when a telephone call came in from a total stranger, telling him about the accident but assuring him that Ana was all right.

He did not remember getting out of bed or dressing or driving to the scene. He recalled only the terrible feeling of possible loss, of doom hanging over him until he had his arms around her. Her car was totaled, and he didn’t notice or care. He had been consumed with the fear of losing her.

And now…

Drake looked at the illuminated face of the bedside clock. It was past midnight, almost one o’clock. He rose, went through to the bathroom, and flushed the prescription for tranquilizers that Tom had given him down the drain.

There would be opportunity for sorrow later. Now he had work to do, and little time to do it. He needed all his faculties, unblurred by drugs. For twelve years he and Ana had done their thinking and planning together. It couldn’t be like that this time. She needed all her strength to fight her disease. It was up to him.

He didn’t know what he would do, or how he would do it. He only knew he would do something.

Ana was his life; without her there was nothing.

He could not bear to lose her.

He would not lose her.

Ever.

Three and a half weeks of his efforts proved futile. After the first half-dozen tries Drake learned how to dispose ruthlessly of false leads. Unfortunately, before each one could be rejected it had to be explored. And there were so many: homeopathy, acupuncture, bipolarized interferon, amygdalin, ion rebalance, meditation, chelation, Kirlian aura manipulation, biofeed-back, quantum energy…

The list seemed endless, and hopeless. Whatever else they might do, they would not cure Ana.

By the fourth week it was obvious that Drake had to do something. Ana, though she never complained, was failing fast. He was approaching the end of his endurance. He had been sleeping only a couple of hours a night, making his data-bank searches and long-distance telephone calls when Ana lay in drugged sleep. He had canceled or postponed all commitments, except for one short television piece that could not wait. He disposed of that in a desperate seventeen-hour session, hearing as he worked at his computer the far-off voice of Professor Bonvissuto: “You think you write fast and good, Merlin? Maybe. Mozart, he write the overture for Don Giovanni, full score, in one sitting.”

When Ana was awake they spent their time in an opiate dream world, touching, smiling, savoring each other, drifting. Except that Drake had taken no drugs and he could not afford to drift. Or wait.