They spoke like this for some time—she beckoning, he refusing—until he felt her tongue on his neck, and after glancing again at the house, and seeing nothing there, he closed his eyes. She kissed him, and he sank into it. He couldn’t resist her. They would have this moment, he thought, and then he would make her understand. He couldn’t bear to hurt her. He wanted to leave her warm and intact. He squeezed her and ran his hands over her, as if to memorize every curve. She reached her hand, warmed now by his skin, into his pajama bottoms, and stroked and kneaded him until he was stiff. She whispered, Come with me, come with me, and he whispered, I can’t, you know I can’t, and dug his fingers into her back.

“Alma—God. I wish I could. But I can’t. Can’t we just have this? Then you’ll be with me, always.”

To his relief, she gave in. He knew it by the way her muscles slackened in his arms, how she withdrew her hand and laid her head on his shoulder. They held each other a long time. He kissed her head, breathing her in. He felt expansive and generous. He asked what she was going to do. She didn’t know. She’d go back to New York. Maybe go to the station tonight, catch the first train up to Penn Station in the morning. He mentioned, by the way, that he and Effie were leaving in the morning too, on the ten o’clock to Philadelphia. She would hide, she said, if she wasn’t gone by then—he didn’t have to worry. He wasn’t worried, he said, and ran his fingers through her hair.

“I’ll never forget you,” he said.

“I know you won’t.”

Later he would try to imagine the scene as Effie saw it. He would never know for certain what she saw, or for how long. From the sliding-glass door they would have been barely discernible, their bodies blurred together but unmistakably there. The moon hadn’t risen yet, there were only the stars, which were out in the millions. The cold air swished through the trees. They never heard her—Henry didn’t hear her—step out onto the deck and come close enough to touch them. Until she cried, in a high, choked voice, “Oh my God.”

He tore away from Alma. “Effie,” he said. “You’re up.”

She covered her mouth, and through her fingers said again, “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

He held his palms up as if to ward off a blow. “Effie, this isn’t…” He changed tack. “It’s Alma,” he said. “She’s still here.”

Alma had backed away from them. “Hey, honey,” she said.