Glimpses of his profile, the features turning with the waves of the melody. His face intent and fixed, the eye of the profile burning and the lips now and then moving. Anger in the face, and desperation. Only once had such a face been before her, not pure, not handsome like this one, but in a lighted room at two in the morning: a maddened face blind to everything, every plea or threat, until it had been pointless to do anything but lie still and think of when it would be over. Tom and bruised beneath the ugly forcing of that face. And this face so unlike and yet reminding her, the face of a rider in the night.

She stood up in sudden terror.

‘Stop!’

He lifted his hands instantly from the keyboard. He did not look about. The air thrummed.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You know,’ he said. With his back to her and face half averted, he said, ‘Tell me.’

‘It—frightens me,’ she said, before she could prevent herself.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘The music leads to a brink,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go over.’

‘It’s the only choice we have, To fall.’

She clenched her hands, and he got up from the piano. He came towards her. He seemed to blot out all the light from the window. She was in a lake of gold and honey and brown and this blackness swinging down on her. She could not see his face, only the two eyes, both burning now, black fire.

‘No,’ she said. And stepped backward.

The hearth was behind her, raw heat. Between the Devil and the deep red flame.

He reached forward and the blackness swept in on her. His hands were two blazing circlets on her arms as he held her back from the flame.

You’ll fall.’

‘You said it was the only chance,’ she said.

‘Rachaela, stop struggling. You’ll hurt yourself.’

‘You’ll hurt me,’ she said. ‘You will.’

‘Probably.’

‘Let me go.’

He drew her forward. Her breasts came into contact with him, the hard flat masculine front of him like a plate of fleshly armour. Where their bodies met the flame was, now. The room spun slowly. She drowned in the lake and only he could save her, only he could hold her up—

She struck at him with her fist.

They had separated.

There were six feet between them.

‘And what now?’ he said.

‘Nothing now,’ she said, ‘what did you expect, Daddy?’

‘But you don’t believe that.’

‘I don’t know what I believe. Anything may be likely, here.’

‘That’s true,’ he said.

His face was blank. As in all the dreams, he was nearly faceless. The eyes dull pools of paint. The lips compressed and puritanical.