But why, then, had I returned Bart’s kisses? I glanced at him sideways, made shy by how closely he had touched me—and what I saw reassured. He looked no different to me. He remained Bart Hunnowell, the walking stick resting casually on his shoulder now, his hand easy upon it, his gait unchecked by thought. We came in sight of the House. “I have been asked to finish a story,” I said suddenly, stopping.

“Of what?” He threw a stone against a tree trunk and stood beside me.

“Of a lost child.” I turned thoughtful eyes upon him. “And of the dead.”

He turned to me, leaning his head to listen, and I saw there was only a breath between us—a fine gossamer of restraint. I did not push it aside, and neither, I sensed from him, would he, until I had done so. I fairly held my breath.

“The dead who walk in circles,” I continued.

“Beside us, the same as us,” he agreed seriously.

I looked down, startled.

“Can’t you feel them?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” The breath eased out between us now.

“I do.” His fine face was cast into dappled shadow as the sun shifted in the sky. “I was a child when my sister died. Yet all through my life, she has remained, her feet running below mine; and when I feel that great upsurge in my heart at the sight of something glorious, I know she yearns through me, sees through me toward a glad and earthly beauty.”

Beneath the low mantle of the trees, his words recalled Miss Grange’s, and nudged me gently toward him.

“Then is this longing in my heart nothing but the echo of another’s?”

“Nothing so gray as that, I think.” He smiled. “I think your longing is your own, made sweeter by the echo of all those who have longed like you.”

“Like me?” I turned to him now and stared into his eyes across the tiny inch between us. “For what? What do I long for?”

He studied me for the space of several heartbeats. “How can I answer that?” His hand found mine between the folds of my dress and pressed gently. “Perhaps it is the whisper of your life, Maisie, your own history, speaking through you.”

“There is such thing as one’s own history?” I asked a trifle bitterly.

“Just as there is such thing as one’s own heart.”

I was silent. The words tapped. The words broke open the seam around my heart, and all began to scatter and break loose. “To have?” I asked.

“To keep and give as—”

“Bart,” I broke in.

He stopped. “Yes, Maisie?”

“What do you mean to do?”

“Do?”

“Yes, Bart, what is it you mean to do? About what has happened?”

He stepped closer to me, stopped a minute, then shrugged and touched a finger to my heart.

“I mean to love you.”