So it was Sister Cecilia, or Agnes Dewitt of rural Wisconsin, who appeared before Berndt vogel in the cavern of the barn and said in her mother's dialect, for she knew a German when she met one, that she was hungry. She wanted to ask Whether he had a piano, but it was clear to her he wouldn't and a any rate she was exhausted v "Jetzt muss ich schlafen," she said after eating half a plate of scalded oatmeal with new milk. So he took her to his bed, the only bed there was, in the corner of the otherwise empty room. He went out to the barn he loved, covered himself with hay, and lay awake all night listening to the rustling of mice and sensing the soundless predatory glide of the barn owls and the stiff erratic flutter of bats. By morning, he had determined to marry her if she would have him, just so he could unpin and then from her breasts unwind the long strip of cloth that bound her torso. She refused his offer, but she did speak to him of who she was and where from. In that first summary she gave of her life she concluded that she must never marry again, for not only had she wed herself soul to soul to Christ, but she had already been unfaithful-her phan- tom lover the Polish composer thus already living out too grievous a destiny to become a bride. In explaining this to Berndt, she merely moved her first pawn in a long game of words and gestures that the two would play over the course of many months. She didn't know, either, that she had opened to an opponent dogged and ruthless.