Even when he had had no friends, music had been his faithful companion. Christine left, but she was not far away. she was in the light melody riffling through his mind and out, down his arm and onto the page. This was no lament for strings. Oboe rose up over a symphonic base—a difficult instrument, but, in the hands of a master, of great beauty. No hack musician could play this, anyway, a melody line of light trills, of notes held long enough to amaze. He brought the oboe down, just a touch, and added flute, twining the two together in an intimate harmony, with no embellishment save the two instruments moving together. It was a music of interlaced fingers, of comfort.

His only frustration lay in not having a keyboard. An organ he could manipulate to sound at least somewhat like various instruments—a pianoforte would even have been acceptable. Violin sounded simply like itself. But to expand, he would have to live somewhere else, and the papers had been too full of descriptions for him to move upward into nicer neighborhoods and less lenient society. Best of all would be the country, but then what would the Girys do? They were both urban women to the core, not to mention that ballet was not exactly a bustling business out in the middle of nowhere. He would have to think on it.

This tangent had thrown him off course with his piece. He did not realize that he was humming until Giry commented.

"That's lovely."

As so often happened when he was working, he had quite forgotten that anything else existed.

"Thank you. I am not sure where to take it."

"But you're not going to walk?"

He thought briefly.

"No. It will sort itself out."

Despite what he would have thought, the room seemed smaller without Christine, as if she broadened the world. So he wandered lost for the next few days, seeing a dark-haired ghost in the corners or catching the scent of jasmine in the hall. He wrote, he started making vocabulary lists, and he tried not to think too much. He waited, not very patiently, for an address and a letter.

A week later, Meg came home trembling with excitement—the Comédie Française was holding auditions in three days' time, and the master of her school, who had connections there, had recommended her. The sitting room was immediately dismantled into a practice studio, from which Erik was banished. He found it most irritating to try to work in his room, with the noise of Giry's cane and the scrape of Meg's shoes coming from down the hall. He took these days to walk and to sit at his favorite little coffee shop and work on his Swedish.

Meg got the position—chorus in the second company—and Giry had a strange smile on her face as well when the returned. Meg stopped pirouetting just long enough to make her tell him. Giry ducked her head and looked away like a shy girl.

"What is it?"

Meg could not contain herself.

"They hired Maman too! The minute my name was called, M. Beauchamp asked for her! She's to teach the little ones for now, but he said that they absolutely mean to keep her!"

Erik could describe his response in no way other than fraternal pride.

"Antoinette. Is this true?"

She nodded, blushing like a schoolgirl—it took a dozen years from her face.

"Apparently my reputation is better than I knew. He said they had been hoping I would come to them ever since the fire."

He took her hands and squeezed them.

"You deserve it. You are a fine ballet mistress and an excellent instructor. They'll be lucky to have you." He looked at Meg. "Both of you."

Meg pirouetted again.

"The Comédie Française! Who would have thought it?"

There was nothing to be done but to send Aimée out to buy the makings of an excellent supper, and Erik toasted the Girys so often that they all got a little drunk.

"Oh, but Erik!" Meg cried at one point. "What about you? Maman and I both get lodgings with our contracts. Will you stay here?"

God in Heaven, who was he? He was unable to resist.

"Hm," he said. "Perhaps it is time for the Comédie to acquire a ghost."

Meg dropped her fork onto her plate, and they both gaped at him while he looked at them with a carefully mild expression. Giry was the first to laugh, but Meg quickly joined in, and they shouted with laughter until tears ran down their cheeks.