She stopped. The expression on Pascal’s face had finally registered through her tears.

“You only just met him? When exactly did you meet him?”

“Pascal—does it matter? Please…”

“No. You answer me. When?”

“Last Friday.”

“Last Friday?” She saw his face blank with shock. “You mean you’ve known him less than three days?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” All the color ebbed from his face. “That’s how long it took him? Dear God. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe it of you.”

“Pascal—please…” He had begun to pace the room again. “I can’t let you think of it like that. It’s wrong. He didn’t maneuver me toward this—not once, not at all. We were simply working together. And then it happened…”

“No. You let it happen.” He swung back to her again, his face now tight with anger. “Let’s just be clear on that one point. You know as well as I do—in that situation, if it arises, there is always a moment when you choose, when you still have time to turn away. Before the kiss, before the certain sentence, before a certain glance is exchanged—you choose. So just spare me all the nice liberal lies, Gini, at least. Don’t tell me you can love one man and screw around at the same time with another. Spare me that. We both know it’s not true.”

“I don’t know that!” Her voice rose. “Pascal, it’s not always that simple. You can’t be so absolute.”

“Oh, but I can.” He met her eyes. “I am absolute. And so were you. Once.”

Gini believed what he said; this, too, had been her credo. She bent her head. She was terrified he would question her further so that she would have to admit the extent of her own disloyalty. She expected questions: how, when, where, why, how often: such crudities would, she knew, have leapt to her own lips had their situations been reversed. However much they intensified the pain, they were preferable to doubts.

So she waited for the questions, and when they did not come, began to understand that they had already been answered for Pascal by her gestures, expressions, and tone of voice. Or perhaps it was simply that Pascal was proud, refusing to ask questions that disgusted him.

To her surprise, he began trying to describe to her the circumstances of his journey here. At first she thought that this was because he could not bear to speak of anything more immediate. Then she realized: this description was a form of search—it was as if he were searching for her here, in the circumstances he described. That she understood: for it was against the yardstick of the events witnessed in Bosnia that they had both once measured love. He was asking her, obliquely, if she remembered that.

He had left Mostar in a U.N. convoy, he said, hitching a lift in the back of an army truck that was evacuating women and children and the seriously injured. The trip, over rough roads, had taken several hours. On those transports, generally, the children were beyond tears; sometimes their mothers, parted from husbands and families, not knowing if they would see them again, were similarly deadened; sometimes not. He had left Sarajevo, finally, at dawn the previous day, in the belly of a transport plane. That had taken him to a remote military air base in Germany. From there a series of connecting flights had been contrived; he had reached Amsterdam finally, a few hours after she left that city, around eleven the previous night.