That night she was pressed by Walter Vail to have dinner at the Amorys’ and did, sitting beside Hugh Poor and listening to stories of England where he’d gone to school. She was grateful the man named Gerald and the people from the boat were not in evidence. The last time she’d heard from Arthur was a raspy phone call at Christmas — he had asked for a loan — and the depiction of his life by Gerald had an eerie ring of truth to it. She was fearful of hearing more. She clung to the notion of his being unlike other people, of his special talent, and did not want to see him as someone not worthy of admiration.

Walter Vail spent most of the evening with his ear tilted toward old Mrs. Amory who knew much of society in New York as well as Boston. Elsie McDonnell sat on his other side, looking abandoned.

When it came time to go Lilian said goodnight to the general audience and Walter Vail leaped up from a wicker armchair as if he’d only just remembered to look after her. Lilian thought him an altogether curious fellow.

I’ll walk you home, he said.

Oh, it’s close.

I’d like the air, he said, and opened the door.

She had known him little enough and over a long enough period of time for her to recall their other encounters and compare them with this one. Now they were walking on a summer road shady with night leaves, not on tilted city streets lit up with snowfall. The stillness was different. The darkness of the Maine sky thickened over by clouds was different from the sky with the pink glow of the Common. They walked down the middle of the road, feeling the tar still warm through their shoes. Like his old self, Walter Vail asked questions of general interest — what had become of her Boston friends, what did they do here on the Island by way of entertainment, whom did she see. News of himself was treated as something completely uninteresting, so Lilian found out little of his circumstances. She said she’d heard of him over the years, of his wife’s death — at this he merely nodded, his dark profile tightening at the mouth — heard that he’d remarried. Well, that’s over now too, he said.