Tonight it would be Edward and not work, after all. Tonight it would be the troubled troubling Edward of recent times, and he found that he somewhat dreaded this interruption. Edward at his most intense made great demands. But this, after all, was what friendship implied. Americans did not on the whole, he considered, ask enough of personal relationships, or expect enough. Edward Cavan and he shared the conviction that a true friendship must dig down deep enough to be at times painful, or it had no truth. Over a period of twenty years the young man and the old man had shared a great deal, not everything, but a great deal. When Orlando Fosca’s wife died after a long illness, Edward had come regularly over a period of months, had shown a comprehensive tenderness which did not find its way out in words but in acts. For instance it was he who remembered that Sylvia had always kept fresh flowers on her husband’s desk, had seen to it that this small rite be continued when Fosca finally moved into this small apartment at the top of an old house on Lowell Street. So now there was a bunch of dark red Korean chrysanthemums in the Chinese jar on the desk. Edward had discreetly added to the record collection; he had come late in the afternoon, not once but twice or three times a week at a time when he knew Fosca was apt to take a short walk, to accompany him, padding along, Fosca thought like some soothing quiet animal at his side.