He began to explain about the broadsheet in the mail, but when she put on a puzzled look, he left off.

“Never mind!” she exclaimed. “Come and talk to me while I clean my face—” She pulled him after her by the hand, and they entered a small room at stage level with no furnishings other than a couple of chairs, a table with a mirror stand that served as her dressing table, and a smoky oil lamp.

Lauretta sat him down in one of the chairs and herself down in another and began to smear a light, clear oil into her face skin. He watched her in smiling fascination, the smell of the oil she applied so quickly and with such careless skill mingling with the fumes of the smoking lamp.

“And where is Sarah?”

“Beulah Land, of course!”

“Of course! How is she?”

“Well. I left her well. Very well, in fact.”

“Why do you have no children?” When he flushed, she laughed and said, “Please believe that was more unthinking than naughty and more naughty than cruel.” She turned from the mirror briefly. “I have written, you know.”

“Sarah shows me your letters.”

“Of course.” She had not yet made the transition from thinking of them as flirting young people to the adults they were with different lives and responsibilities. Or perhaps she was punishing him, not for anything he had done, but for what he had, or she thought he had, that she had not. “I so seldom have a dependable address I can ask that letters be sent to. It is—oh—two years—nearer three since I have had a letter from Sarah.”

“Then how did you know we still have no child?”

“It is true then?”

He nodded.

“Perhaps I find it difficult to think of Sarah as a mother. My fault. I think of her as a child still, though I know I am not, and of course I know she cannot be either.” She took a towel and began scrubbing her face free of oil and powder and rouge. “I do love her so. And how is Aunt Pea?”

He told her that she too was well, and that it was her anxiety and curiosity after receiving the broadsheet in her mail that had led her to ask Leon to come to Charleston to see if he might find her.

“Who could have sent it?” she asked herself, but aloud, then shook her head, dismissing the question. “I’m sure I’ve heard Aunt Pea mention acquaintances who live here, but I forget who they may be. They, however, would have heard gossip about my elopement at the time it occurred and would have remembered the name. Some people have nothing better to do than to store up information for future tattle.”

“Is your husband one of the company also?” Leon asked.