He leans forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He closes his eyes. He hears birds, the murmured stream of conversations, children laughing as they run. It’s a peaceful scene, offensively so. He rejects it, this thin skin of happiness over the dismal world. Say good-bye to it, Hattie, and go straight to God. I’m going to need you there, making me coffee and toast, when my turn comes.

When Edwin lifts the flask, his hands are shaking like leaves.

—

Loss follows loss. When he hears, through a rumor he thinks reliable, that Mary is to wed Spofford after all, the news destroys him. He’s performing Richelieu in New York, so drunk he falls onto the stage like his father before him. The problem, he decides, now that humiliation has been added to heartbreak, is that he’s not drunk enough. He goes to work on that in earnest. Eventually Uncle Ben has to roll him to his hotel and into bed, where he rouses himself sufficiently to have another couple of drinks.

The night passes, the sun is stretching its afternoon fingers into his room, and Mary Devlin is laying a cool cloth onto his forehead with a gentle pressure to the temples. He seizes her by the wrist. “If you marry anyone but me, Mollie, I’ll die,” he says. He might die anyway. He feels awful. His teeth ache.

He likes her less when she refuses to get him another drink. The horrible sobering begins.

Later, he remembers proposing, but dimly. He thinks she accepted. But maybe he was hasty, maybe she was. He takes a cold, deliberate look at his wishes. He finds them unchanged.

When he asks again—neither thinks the first time counted—his offer is conditional. He’s decided that her background on the stage is actually an advantage to him. She’ll understand his life as no other woman could. But he hasn’t changed his mind about marrying an actress. If she wants to be his wife, she must give up her career.

His second condition is that she go into nine months of seclusion, nine months in which she will better herself with lessons, reading; she will improve her musical talents; she will learn French. Under Badeau’s tutelage, Edwin is now an acceptable addition to the more elevated parlors. Mary must undergo this same polishing. It’s an insulting offer, should Mary take it that way.

She does not. She’s seventeen years old and desperately in love. She writes to Spofford.

She writes to Edwin.

Everything will I study, to charm and interest you, and although a brilliant education, has never fallen to my lot, I am sufficiently well-informed to appreciate the good, and beautiful—the rest will come, I doubt not. Forget if possible, as I shall, that the Stage, ever claimed me as its votary—and any love I may have had for the Art I transfer to you—