chapter 4

"Love—" She spoke the word as though it were an indefinite, elusive thing that you could not offer as reason for doing anything.

Gistla was very wise, George realized, but this was a time for enthusiasm, a time to strengthen their own relationship in this world.

"Say you will!" George said.

"Do you want me to?"

"Well, sure I do. What did you think?"

She held her hands in her lap quietly. They were not unlike his own, George observed, except for the extreme smallness and the color.

"I do not think it will be nice for you or them," she said.

"Ah, listen, Gistla. Don't talk that way. It'll be fine!" But he knew that he was not deceiving her with the lightness he tried to put into his voice.

Then, although she had never done it before, she reached out and touched his cheek. George had grown used to the emotions that reflected on her face, and he knew she was suddenly very sad. "Yes, George," she said. "I will go with you to meet your family." And she said it as though she were telling him good-by.

IT WAS no better than he had expected. It was worse. Much worse. And he was growing angrier by the moment. They were all seated in the rock-walled patio behind the large white house. Gistla sat beside him, looking very small and frightened and very different. And it was that obvious difference that George had hoped everyone might ignore. But instead, each of them, his father, his mother, his sister, appeared to be trying to make it even more obvious.

The first strain, when everyone had sat there staring at Gistla as though she were something behind a cage, had passed. But now his parents and sister were moving in a new direction. They had relaxed, having found control of the situation, and they were cutting her to pieces.

"Tell me," his sister was saying, her eyes dancing slyly, "don't you people have some very strange tricks you can do?"

George tightened his fingers against his palms. He heard Gistla answer, "Tricks?"

"Yes." His sister's white smile shined. "You know, like making things disappear, things like that."

"My father," Gistla said seriously, "can do very wonderful things. He is a musician."

George's father leaned forward, blinking amusedly. "Really? What does he play?"

"Play?" asked Gistla.

"Yes. He's a musician. He must play something, some kind of instrument."

Gistla looked at George, but George did not know what to say. He wished he had never tried to do this. He wished he had just ignored his family and gone on loving Gistla in the privacy of his own emotions.

"Well, now," Mr. Kenington was saying rather impatiently. "Does he play something like our violin or clarinet or oboe, or what?" His father, George had noticed, was becoming impatient more frequently since he had become Secretary. The Secretarial post was very important.

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