“Polly!” Binnie called from the top of the stairs. “Eileen says to hurry!”

“Coming!” she said. “Sir Godfrey, I—”

“Polly!” Binnie bellowed.

She darted forward, kissed Sir Godfrey on the cheek, and ran for the stairs, calling to Binnie, who was leaning over the railing, looking down at her, “Go tell Eileen I’m coming now!”

Binnie raced off, and Polly ran up the stairs. “Viola!” Sir Godfrey called to her as she reached the top. “Three questions more before we part.”

She turned to look back down over the railing at him. “ ‘What is your will, my lord?’ ”

“Did we win the war?”

She had thought she couldn’t be amazed by anything after Colin, but she had been wrong.

He knows, she thought wonderingly. He’s known since that first night in St. George’s. “Yes,” she said. “We won it.”

“And did I play a part?”

“Yes,” she said with absolute certainty.

“I didn’t have to do Barrie, did I? No, don’t tell me, or my courage will fail me altogether.”

Polly’s laugh caught. “Was that your third question?” she managed to ask.

“No, Polly,” he said. “Something of more import.” And she knew it must be. He had never, except for that one scene in The Admirable Crichton, called her by her real name.

“What is it?” she asked. Will I ever see you again?

No.

Do I love you?

Yes, for all time.

He stepped forward and grasped the staircase’s railing, looked up at her earnestly. “Is it a comedy or a tragedy?”

He doesn’t mean the war, she thought. He’s talking about all of it—our lives and history and Shakespeare. And the continuum.

She smiled down at him. “A comedy, my lord.”

There was an ungodly crash from the stage. “Alf! I told you not to touch nothin’!” Binnie shouted.

“I never! The scrim just fell down.”

“The scrim!” Sir Godfrey bellowed. “Alf Hodbin, I told you not to mess about with those ropes!”

“Don’t try to pick it up,” Binnie’s voice warned. “You’ll tear it!”

“Touch nothing!” Sir Godfrey roared, galloping up the stairs past Polly and out onto the stage, where she could hear Alf and Binnie both insisting, “I didn’t do nothin’! I swear!”

“ ‘They have all rushed down to the beach,’ ” Polly murmured, looking after him, and then turned and ran down into the theater and up the aisle to where Eileen and Mr. Dunworthy and Colin stood.

The three of them were standing very near one another, their heads bent, talking, and Polly thought of that first night when she and Mike and Eileen had sat in the emergency stairwell, catching one another up, making plans. “I’m going to get you both out of this, I promise,” Mike had said, and he had.

He’d died, and because he had, she’d wanted to do something, anything, to make her life matter and had gone to St. Paul’s to ask Mr. Humphreys to help her get a job as an ambulance driver. And because she’d done that, she’d found Mr. Dunworthy and despaired. And if she hadn’t despaired, she would never have been at the Alhambra when the Phoenix was hit, would never have rescued Sir Godfrey, and the drop would never have opened.