There had been a time when he and Lucille could lose themselves in music, when they had played with the Youth Orchestra in the City Hall and the critics had predicted a great future for him as a concert pianist. He had not always been deaf. There had been a time when he and Lucille could lose themselves in music, when they had played with the Youth Orchestra in the City Hall and the critics had predicted a great future for him as a concert pianist. But that had been before he had fallen ill with rheumatic fever. When the sound of the piano had faded under his fingers, he had known that he was going deaf. He would discover, in his silent world, that for every loss there is some gain, for very failure some victory, and he would begin to hear music in movement, in the Dane of butterfly, in the play of light and shadow. And one day he would hear the rainbow sing. But on a day of blazing sunshine, on his way to Lucille in the kloof - the same kloof where the small pup had come to him in the rain to relieve his

- he would emerge from his capsule of silence, only to yearn for his deafness once more.