Lindsay just caught a glimpse of her pale face; she saw Rowland give her a sharp and questioning glance, then he drew them both out into the lobby, into the courtyard, hastening them along and stopping only when they had rounded a corner. He came to a halt in a quiet, narrow side street with a row of apartment buildings opposite, and behind them a high wall.

“You heard?” Rowland said, and Lindsay realized that not only was the question addressed solely to Gini, but that as far as either of them was concerned, she herself was not there.

“Yes.” Gini was backing against the wall; she began speaking fast. “They let me in just as he was reaching the end of the French version. Such control—such extraordinary control. How could he do that? How could he speak in that way? So formally—and he wasn’t even using notes. I—” She broke off, and looked at Lindsay for the first time. “Rowland told me your New Orleans story. I was thinking about it all the way through. I could hear it, under his words, inside his words…”

Lindsay found she could say nothing. She was riveted by Gini’s face. She had recently been hit, and hit hard. Right down the left side of her face, and across the cheekbone, there was a darkening bruise.

She was trying to conceal this, Lindsay observed, by standing so that this side of her face was turned to the wall behind her. The tactic was not succeeding. Rowland was now also looking at the bruise. Lindsay watched his face change, watched him begin on some quick, involuntary movement. Gini, her eyes on his face, lifted her hand, then let it fall.

There was a silence, a silence that seemed to Lindsay to be filled with noise, with a tension that could not be dispersed. Gini began speaking again: she seemed to believe, Lindsay thought, pitying her, that if she just kept speaking, the nature of this moment could be concealed.

“The way he described her character,” she began. “Then. He said something about candor…”

“Candor, understanding, grace, courage, and generosity.” Rowland’s eyes never left Gini’s face. “Those were the words.”

“Yes. And religieuse. Something about insights that she gave him… It was right at the end. And he evaded the issue of time, of how long he’d known her.”

“Many, many years,” Rowland said. “Time was immaterial. He made that clear with his final words. Her dying made no difference. She remained the—”

“Are they issuing the text?” Gini interrupted him very fast. “I wasn’t taking notes. I meant to, but I wasn’t…”

“They’ll issue it. They’re probably issuing it now. We don’t need it. I can remember the salient parts.”

Gini gave a low sigh; her hands clenched and unclenched.

Lindsay looked from one to the other and stepped back quietly. She knew that she had no place here.

She began to detach herself as quietly, quickly, and plausibly as she could. She said that she had to meet Markov, which was true; she said she had to see him before that afternoon’s Chanel show. She could, she knew, have announced that she was to embark for Mars: neither Gini nor Rowland would have noticed. They were locked into a silent communication that was as voluble as a torrent of words.