She watched his back down below with the sheen of the late afternoon water behind him and felt something fan through her like a warm wind. He pulled in his line and examined some kelp or seaweed around the hook. He crouched down to study it. His focus gave a sort of honor to the hook, to the whole activity of fishing! To think this was the same man who probably had stood near the plate of molasses cookies at the Morses’ on any number of Tuesday evenings, the same fellow she’d probably skated by a hundred times on winter afternoons at the pond — and she’d not even noticed him!

It seemed impossible. He looked to her now the most remarkable person she’d ever seen.

Her attention, tight and elastic, stretched down to where the men were fishing. She looked at his rumpled figure in a white shirt — he wore a hat with a collapsed brim — and saw an aura around him of — what was it? — goodness. Now that she thought about it, she realized there had always been something about him before, she’d just not thought of it in the right way. He was not a frivolous man. There was no self-importance in those arms, no inflated pride in that posture. He stood up and cast again, she could hear the faint whirring of the line. She glanced down at the little sweater and realized she’d gone too far with a row. Lilian had known the attentions of a frivolous man, and here in the shade with the smell of the sea wafting up to her, she could hardly remember what in it had appealed to her. The needles clicked listlessly as she knitted. She’d certainly paid a price for it. The effect of this was decidedly different. While she was reminded of the old feeling, the wonderful blurring at the edges, she found that in contem-plating Gilbert Finch she was in a calm, familiar place. She was not changed into something other, like the impersonation she’d done with Walter Vail. She felt returned to herself.

Shall I have the cocktails brought out on the veranda? Marian called from an upper window, pausing in her bustle about the house. I think, why not? she answered herself, and her head popped back inside.