During the daytime when she sat for him as he stood behind his easel and worked on the portrait; when they met, as they did at meals; or even when they strolled the grounds together in brief recess from the work of the portrait—their attitudes and behavior were as unremarkable as if the roles they played were true. Their discretion was not deceptive so much as considerate. Privately, they gloried in their love, but they had none of that youthful temptation to show it off to others. Their days were public and proper. But at night, when Sarah judged the house to be sleeping, with all its members safe in their rooms, she would leave hers and go to Casey’s.

She did it without sneaking and with no feeling of guilt. She carried no lighted candle because she needed none. Her eyes were keen even in the dark, but she could have found her way had she been totally blind, so well did her other senses know every bit of the house.

Sarah was happy in her love, although she knew it would end when Casey left Beulah Land. All that she had speculated upon and anticipated as a girl, all that she had missed as a woman, was revealed to her during the nights with Casey. There was little need of talk for either of them. The intensity of their encounter was such as required no wording, and certainly not the reassurance of words. No one seeing a hungry man devour a full banquet has to ask if he is satisfied or hungry still.

During the nights Sarah did not think, but during the days when she was occupied in various ways, she marveled that the love of Casey, the love for Casey, could be—was, without her ever willing it to be—so separate and private a part of her experience. It had no precedent; it would have no future. It was to be lived fully now, and that is what she did and how she did it.

It was Casey who voiced regret when it had to end. The night of the day he finished the portrait was the last they spent together; and if it seemed their best night, that was doubtless because they both knew it to be their last.

His flesh to hers and hers to him had never been as familiar and dear and responsive; their pauses to rest, or merely to catch breath, never more mutual, their completion never more tremblingly balanced between birth and death. When toward morning they were finally, finally done with each other, he lighted a candle, and they lay side by side in his bed like friends and talked.

“Will you stay in Savannah all the winter?”

“I expect to. I have some tentative commissions.”

“Which will surely secure you more.” She smiled. “You’ll do it all over again, won’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And this will happen again,” she said without coquetry.