A girl describes the captivating listening sessions in her 7th grade music class with Miss Hughes, who plays classics from virtuosos like Bach on her record. One day, Miss Hughes singles out a boy in the class, Norman de Carteret, for listening to the music "as if for his life." The girl realizes she's heard of the boy before. His father lives in the same boarding house as her aunt, and the landlady recounted how Norman would knock on his father's door every week, but his father would never came out. Meanwhile, the girl is engrossed in a novel about piano player named Lucy, who, like Miss Hughes, dreamt of becoming a piano virtuoso, only to have fate move her in a different direction. For Miss Hughes, it was a skiing trip that broke her fingers. For Lucy, it was skating on cracked ice that led to her premature death. One day, it is announced that Norman's father killed himself. During her class, Miss Hughes tells the students to respect people's grief. She plays a mournful composition that entrances Norman.