“Independence costs a lot, Christina—my kind, Rufus’s kind. I’ve never had a holiday in my life, and sometimes I wonder where it has all gone, and for what.”

“For wisdom, for one thing. You’re wise. Are they?”

“I guess wisdom is beaten into a person. Whatever I’ve learned, anyway, I’ve learned out of grief and pain.”

Christina looked across at her friend, so proud and grim, so sure she had been cheated in some deep way by life, yet no word like “failure” or “defeat” could ever be applied to Ellen.

“How are we to know what it’s all about? But you know very well, Ellen, that your wisdom has served—served Nick for one thing, and Nick is rather special.”

“Never amounted to anything,” Ellen said with her bleak mood unshaken.

“I came here to get cheered up—all elated by the snow—feeling that life was good, so good I’m just about to burst. When you said ‘grief and pain’ you left ‘love’ out.”

“No,”—Ellen lifted her chin—“can’t think of a true love that isn’t mostly pain.” She glanced across at the cat under the table and leaned down to rub his ears. “Even animals. Get to love one and it dies on you. Rufus wept when Dander, the old horse, had to be put to sleep. He wouldn’t have wept for me.”

“You don’t know,” Christina said.

“Well, I didn’t weep for him,” she said quietly. “We just about wore each other out.”

“But I love you,” Christina said earnestly. “And surely grief and pain don’t enter into what we are, and have been, to each other since I was eleven and you brought me your Swiss bear that first homesick night.” She felt that she must win through to some joy, something less harsh and bitter than all that had been said so far.

Ellen got up and took the cups and saucers to the sink.

“When you went away to college and never came back all those years, I thought I had lost you. I had to close my heart then.” It was said quietly, but the words hit Christina hard—so hard that tears started in her eyes. It was the truth. She had gone away, forgotten Ellen, caught up in the immense new world of college, in all she was learning; then in parties, weekends, trips to Europe, finally in Cornelius’s life. It was true.

“I’m here now, Ellen,” she said after the pause.

“Now we’re old.”

“Now we’re true friends.”

“Maybe,” Ellen granted. And suddenly she smiled one of her rare, mischievous smiles. “I’m ornery today—don’t know why. Winter on us so early … and … well, thinking about the poverty of the schools. I got a kind of ache about the life here—felt starved.”