By the side of the grave she had asked me to write it. But here were the pages she had already written in my hand. What more was there for me to do? I could not think. In truth, I wished to do nothing then but read again. And oh, how Maine was come down unto Brooklyn now, the attic story loosed and roaming free. From start to finish I reread the whole wide arc of the tale. I saw clearly the true matching of the lovers upon the page, their characters giving me then the closest lesson I had yet had in the wild strangeness of the human heart.

That evening when I heard Jonathan’s voice in the hall, I rushed downstairs to greet him, overwhelmed by a great desire to bring my life into line with the pages I had read, and make real what I had learned somehow.

“I am glad you are here, Jonathan,” said I softly, my hand outstretched.

He put down his hat, seeming a little taken aback, and took my hand. “And I, too,” he replied, softer still. Then, more loudly, “Your Mama proclaims that she is ready for gaming. Are you also?” I shook my head no, suggesting instead that we stroll out the windows to the edge of the garden. Mama looked up at us as we passed through the sitting room; her face turned from the lamp and smiled.

The twilight air promised rain, and the night shadows had begun to gather deep among the leaves. The evening birds were grown silent in advance of the damp. We walked companionably to the end of the lawn until we reached the end of the garden, and then, when he would turn round to return, I drew us instead to sit upon one of the stone benches within sight of the house. Still we had not spoken.

“Jonathan,” I began.

“This time is only a half-life,” he broke in, and turning to him, I saw he must have been preparing this speech the whole way down the garden. “Incomplete. I imagine a new canvas—one in which the hues will deepen and the pattern of our life will become manifest—directed. Certain.”

I watched his toe trace a pattern in the damp grass, my mind in a jumble.

“I hope, Maisie, this little story of ours will soon have an ending.”

“But Jonathan”—I turned my face to his in the twilight shadows—“I do not like endings.”

He laughed at my serious face. “Maisie,” he whispered, “in our end is our beginning.”

I sprang up, longing now for a place to go. “Let us walk a bit,” I said.

“Ah, what a restless angel,” he said, standing as well. “All the future,” he spoke behind me, “stretches away from this garden where we stand. Your life has not yet begun, Maisie. I know it. I know it with such certainty, I can make you a promise.”