On the bed across the room, Maria stirred. She sat up, pushed back her hair, and regarded him calmly.

“Jean,” she said, “where is my paper? Where are my pencils? My special pens?”

“They’re over there, darling,” he replied wearily. “On the table, where they always are.”

To his astonishment, she said nothing further, but crossed to the table, drew the paper toward her, and began sketching. She was still half naked. He rose, fetched a robe, and draped it around her. She shrugged him aside irritably.

“Don’t fuss over me, Jean. Turn the light on. Go away.”

He switched on the lamp beside her and moved a few paces away, watching her with painful concern. It was the first time she had attempted to draw in more than a year. How long would it be before she tore up the papers, tossed them aside—an hour? Half an hour?

For the moment she seemed completely absorbed. He moved to the far side of the room, where she need not be aware of his presence, and sat down. There were books on a table next to him. He picked up one of them and began to turn its pages quietly, though the content did not register with him at all. In this way, her pencil strokes and the ticking of a small elaborate gilded clock the only sounds, one hour passed, and then two.

Late in the afternoon he rose and moved to the windows. He looked out at the dark. Behind him he heard a sudden movement; the scattering of papers; one long, high, thin cry of utter despair.

He crossed to her quickly and crouched down, encircling her with his arms. Her drawings were tossed down on the floor all around him. At first, trying to soothe her with his embrace, he scarcely noticed them. Gradually first one, then another, swam into his vision. He tensed, then bent down to pick them up. He looked carefully at the washes of color, the quickly sketched lines. To an outsider they would have been almost meaningless, and perhaps unimpressive, but these sketches were a private language he and Maria shared. He could read assurance in a stroke of the pen, and it was assurance he read now.

He looked up at her, his face blank with astonishment and with the effort of suppressing hope. He thought: they work, those White Doves do work, after all.

Maria’s head was buried in her arms. She was weeping bitterly, her body racked with sobs.

“Darling, don’t cry,” he said in a low voice. “These are beautiful—the most beautiful drawings you’ve done for years. You see? I always told you, darling…”

She was not listening. She lifted her face; tears spilled from her eyes.

“I want my baby back,” she said. “Jean—please. I want my son. I have to see him. I need him. Jean, it’s breaking my heart.”

He felt the pain knife through him, as he always did when she began on this plea. Putting his arms around her again, he explained quietly and gently, as he always did, that this was the one thing he could not give her.