One afternoon in the middle of practice Joey bolted from the room down the hall to the bathroom with her hand over her mouth to stop the uprush of soured chamomile tea and stood leaning over the basin with the water running, feeling her stomach clench as gorge rose again, thinking, It’s supposed to be in the morning, and then washed her face with warm water and stood looking at herself, at the hollowed and bruised and bulging face, unknowable, gazing back at her from the glass and was at sudden peace. Went on steady feet back the long hall into the music room and announced to the woman still seated on the piano bench what the woman already knew but had been clearly and patiently waiting for Joey to reveal. And Virginia Reeves spoke briefly of an acquaintance, a doctor who quietly tended to the actress demimonde of Providence and when Joey refused to even allow discussion of this the Reeves woman rose from the piano bench and stood a long moment, regarding her with eyes of ferocious sorrow and then wordless left the room, her back erect as always. Leaving Joey to consider the not-very-broad array of cause for that sorrow. Even while hearing the low tones of the woman down the hall at the telephone table.

She sat alone in the music room for an hour and a half until Edgar Sloane arrived. Although it was still late afternoon he took her out to a restaurant that was dim and cool with ceiling fans and dark polished wood. It was the first time since New Hampshire they had been alone together. Sloane was poised and calm and gentle and she sensed a tremendous tension within him and guessed he felt himself in some danger to be seen with her and his taking that danger unto himself touched her and she was very formal with him. They sat over food neither wanted and he asked her what she intended to do and she told him she did not know. And he asked what she thought her options were and she told him, having spent the time alone in the music room with those same options revealed to her as simply as a tight fist opening to reveal a spare handful of pennies. She knew what she would not do. And she knew that continuing with Virginia Reeves was not a possibility. And she would not ask and did not expect anything from Sloane either. She outlined to him what she saw her choices to be, the words not as brave or clear as the thought behind them but she did not apologize for the paucity of her opportunities. And again, he asked which of them she felt most likely. And again she told him she did not know. He then lifted his napkin and pressed it to his lips and folded it and laid it aside on the table and told her what he could do.