He was reading Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, which his uncle Carswall had given him as a wedding present. Carswall had read it when he was a young man, and it had been a good guide to him, he said. “You’re always going to be at work on yourself, son, and it’s always going to be a struggle. But it’s the struggle that’ll make you a good man.” Henry liked the ideas; he had a vision of the kind of man he wanted to be—virtuous, humble, strong, and bold, full of good cheer but in healthy moderation—and he was eager to learn. But the book, so far, was a thumping bore, and he couldn’t read more than a few sentences before his mind began to wander.

Thursday morning they walked out to the marina to look at the boats. At the end of a pier stood an octagonal building with large windows on all sides. Effie thought she remembered going to parties there. The entrance was padlocked, but beside it a fresh-looking poster of a jack-o’-lantern in a sailor’s cap advertised a dance for Friday, October 11. “Is that tomorrow?” Henry asked, but Effie said no, that was next Friday.

“Hey,” he said, “that’s our last night here.” He took her hand. “Our last night, there’s going to be a dance here. How about that?”

She didn’t seem to share his excitement. She touched her fingertips to the poster. “My God,” she said. “I can’t believe we’re going to be here that long.”

They went down to the beach and walked along the edge of the surf with their shoes in their hands.

“You know,” she said after a long silence, “we don’t have to stay the whole two weeks. We could take the train out on Sunday and be home by Monday morning.”

“You want to leave?” he asked.

“Maybe?” she said.

From here Cape May really was beautiful. The edge of the ocean stretched off into the distance ahead of them, on one side the beach and the tall grasses and, farther off, the big Victorian hotels, the columns and striped awnings. Signal Creek seemed so dreary in comparison. Pine woods, fields of cotton and peanuts, the Courthouse Square, the toffee-colored creek itself. Carswall and Henry’s mother were having an annex of the house—what they grandly called “the Old Wing”—remodeled for them. A living room with a potbelly stove, a bedroom, a lavatory, a tiny hopeful room for the future baby. The thought of settling into their lives there—so soon, anyway—depressed him. “I don’t want to leave,” he said. “I could stay here forever.”