Harriet sat now on the lowest of the arc of steps, her back curved in the sun, her face pressed into her arms, which were folded on her drawn-up knees. The sleeves of her pink blouse had been rolled up, and her skin was moist with heat. Her cotton skirt was carelessly bunched under her. She was motionless, not even roused by the hens rustling near her feet.

Her attitude was so abject, so forlorn, that Francis, at the top of the steps, stood quite still before he called her name. “Harriet.”

The face she raised to him, however, was smooth and preoccupied, only creased above the eyes by the pressure of a bracelet. He came slowly down, dropping from step to step, and sat just above her, his knee touching her shoulder. She put no weight on him. After a moment, she resumed her former position without speaking.

He opened his book at the beginning and shaded the print with his hand. He had had a shock, coming upon her like that. And her calm uplifted face had not reassured him—because what was shocking, he thought as he turned the first page, was that it had seemed perfectly plausible that she, who had been chattering pleasantly enough at the lunch table a few minutes before, might have come out here and thrown herself down in this abandoned attitude in real anguish. It would have been terrible to find her so, but not surprising; people in general, and he and she in particular, were so separate that anything was possible. That knowledge moved him to press his knee once more against her bent shoulder. Feeling, perhaps, that some response was required of her, she turned her cheek toward him, her eyes closed.

“Hens are ghastly,” she observed. And then: “Read me something.”

He read aloud the lines he had just reached:

“… Ferme les portes

Il est plus facile de mourir que d’aimer.”

“Heavens,” she said, and turned her face back into her arms.

He closed the book and put it on the stone step beside him. He looked down at her huddled body and dark, shaggy head, her brown arms and exposed knees, the tail of her blouse, which had come out of her skirt. He parted the hair on her neck and laid his hand there. “Come inside,” he said. “We can’t stay out in this heat.”

She tilted her head once more. “In a moment,” she replied.

“No,” he insisted. “Really. It’s the worst part of the day.”