“Hallo! Where are you off to?” he asked. “Look who has returned to cheer us.” I raised my eyes and looked directly, Reader, into his.

But he was formal. “Miss Grange,” he said, but did not step toward me.

I pulled back my own hand held forth in greeting and nodded at him, waiting. George coughed.

“Leave us, George. Please,” I asked. And so we were alone. I crossed in front of him and pulled my skirts round me to sit. The clock ticked.

“I am sorry about your mother.”

“Yes.” I was shaking.

“Are you well?”

“Yes,” I said, then corrected myself. “Nay. I have been sickly.” I could not keep from shivering, such a cold breeze blew from where he sat. “Tell me, Ludlow”—his jaw tightened as I said his name—“what you have come to tell me.”

“After I received your letter in January, I saw my dream had been prescient after all. I knew—” He broke off. I watched him, drawing my shawl tighter around my shoulders.

“I knew you had departed somehow from the ordinary verge of the world.”

“And?”

“I married.”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“I beg your pardon?”

He did not look at me, nor speak. I was chill, stone. Tock. Tock.

“Tell it me, again,” I whispered.

“You wished me to be—”

I stopped him. “Yes, I did.” My two hands spread protectively across my lap.

“Elsewhere, I thought,” he burst forward. “You did not wish for one such as me, one so ordinary.”

“What! Again ordinary?” I could not hide the small tremor of voice. “This is a precious place, this ordinary, where you and the world reside.”

There were tears in his eyes. Again I looked down. Our feet pointed directly across the carpet at each other, one to one. I heard Susannah’s brisk footfall crossing down the hall. I looked up, aware he watched me carefully.

“You are magnificent.”

“Magnificent!” I sprang up. “Magnificent. Poor split companion of ordinary—the two could never share a coach now who once were trot horse, bridle and spur.”

“Listen to me, Nell.” In one step he was before me, his hand upon my wrist. “In these months—”

“Three months.”

“In these three months since we parted, I walked round my ordinary world”—he almost spat the word—“ordinary, yes, for it is so—with your lips pressed to my ear, your voice murmuring in my chest. And I saw my world cast back through your brave eyes, you who see so clearly.”

He had turned my hand over and with his two fingers stroked the soft part. I did not speak, could not, listening to this anatomy of departure, for he had one foot already in the leaving boat; though he still rested his hand on mine, his fingers still remained ashore.

“At first, I was jubilant, remarking on how small my world had grown, and making plans for all the vast future—myself become so large, so reaching.”