He shook my hand when he had stopped before my house and said, “Good luck. Perhaps we’ll meet again in Boston.” But I felt no promise in his words. I felt that he was already absorbed in the mainland while I was re-dedicated to my insularity and as, from the corner of my eye, I saw the lighted window at the Kadishes’ and the shadow of Nathan’s younger brother, I read the doctor’s optimistic sentence as the epilogue to my long, feverish dream. A few hours later, reasoning that actually I had never been closer, that he was a more persuasive advocate than I could ever have been myself, I realized that I had not felt my isolation from the house on Pinckney Street confirmed forever, but that I had known I should never navigate the space between his planet and mine. The acceptance, without the least titillation, of the window which had once enshrined my first lover’s birthmark, on reflection brought me, like a slow-working liquor, to a luxurious intoxication and I knew that for a second time I was in love.

My house was cool and it smelled of oranges that had faintly rotted in the window-sill. I wished that I had asked Philip McAllister to come in to drink some brandy so that in the course of an hour I might feed upon his mobile face and his rich voice. I went no further in my demands, but I knew that so long as I remembered him, the light from the window next door would have no power to make me regret or desire or stew in anger.

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