“Of course, you did, Samuel.” Waddell smiled, stepped closer, and patted him on the shoulder. “You still do.”

Sam staggered into the foyer, still dizzy from MacRae’s blow. Gabrielle appeared at his elbow. “So you’re going along with all this?” he said.

She looked him right in the eye. “A woman doesn’t have as many lucky choices as a man.”

Sam nodded. He almost understood. “Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head. “He’s my husband.”

“That’s it?”

“I have to live here.”

Sam turned and reached for the doorknob. “Gray will miss you.”

“Please tell her goodbye for me.”

“Tell her yourself.”

“No. Shell understand.”

Of course she would, Sam nodded and left.

From the window of the train, Sam and Gray Ellen watched the flickering lights of the city reel by. They sat side by side, not talking. Gray Ellen was nearer the window.

Crowded around them in the dimly lighted car were other silent passengers, all white—the Negro coaches were up ahead, just behind the engine, where the noise and soot were worst. Every seat was filled. People crouched in the aisle. The passengers rocked gently with the motion of the train, heads bobbing. Many of them had their eyes closed, though Sam was sure they were not sleeping.

Shame, he thought—that’s what they were all feeling. Humiliation. Anger. Disbelief. He was feeling it acutely. Next to him, Gray Ellen had her eyes glued to the passing lights, but he had no idea what she was feeling.

They were headed back to Philadelphia, but what they would do there, whether they would even remain there, was an open question.

Sam hadn’t told Harry Calabash that he was leaving, but somehow Harry had known. He’d been waiting back at the house when Sam returned home from Waddell’s. He shook Sam’s hand solemnly. “Good luck in Yankeeland,” he said.

“How can you stay?” Sam asked.

Harry looked old and used up. He was sober now, but Sam knew he’d be deep in the whiskey by train time. Harry shrugged, as if the answer were too obvious to bother saying out loud. “This is where I live.”

“After everything that’s happened?”

“You’ve got to forgive a city, same as a person.”

Sam thought, how can you forgive anybody who won’t admit they’ve done wrong? “It’s as simple as that?” he said.

“I didn’t say it was simple. It’s just the way it is.”

They were losing the city now. The lights were going out behind them. There were no stars to light the overcast sky. Somewhere off to the left, Sam knew, lay the river—brown, swollen with the rains, clogged with anchored ships waiting to be unloaded.