They slept that night in Stephen's house by the sea. The wind made a creaking music in every window and door, and for hours
Gabriella lay wide-eyed in a sleepless dream of happiness. The morning and afternoon had unpacked them into the house, and
in the putting out of each thing—the herbal remedies of Nelly Grant, the music books from Venice—was another of the infinitesimal
gestures of trust through which we make our covenant with the world. By six o'clock the rooms had begun to look like the rooms
in Kenmare, and Gabriella became aware of how simply rooms could resemble a relationship. It was only the first of many such
moments. She understood that in the afternoon's unpacking was a sense of more than mere geographical arrival. As each moment
passed and she moved from one room to the next, she felt the physical ease of the child inside her. Stephen had set up the
music player, and in the small island of the house his father's music sounded triumphant, heralding the heartsongs of ages
while he came and went with the boxes.
All of this flew back through Gabriella's mind as she lay sleepless in bed. She fingered the ring and held it out in the starlight
as if it belonged to another. Then suddenly she thought of Maria Feri, whose ringless hand in Venice she remembered when it
touched the bars of the cage where the bird sang. She saw her cousin sitting in the evening that had just passed, she saw
the stillness of the house and the courteous, diffident manner of the older woman who was more still than aged dust and more
sorrowful than failed summer, and in that moment, lying on the bed beside Stephen in that first evening in west Clare, Gabriella
saw the tragedy of wasted life and the uselessness of losing days in attending dreams. She heard the bird singing in the cage,
and in the wind-creaking bedroom heard the singing as it grew louder and louder, until its notes transformed into another
music and was the playing of violins, bowing a joy that made her smile in the darkness. It was imagined and not remembered
music. It was the music she had dreamt of playing by the sea in Venice when she was a child, before she had ever mastered
the violin. It was the perfect music that plays in visions and makes the world shake with possibilities when we are young
and feel our souls limitless. It was the music of inspiration, the kind that plays in the heart and makes a child want to
pick up an instrument for the first time. Gabriella heard it in the darkness and remembered. Then_ she turned and rocked Stephen's
shoulder, and when he raised his head swiftly to ask her what was wrong, she told him, “Nothing is wrong.”
Then she touched his face and said, “Stefano, I want to start a music school.”