It had long ago ceased to seem strange to Jane that she should end her days with this jealous, difficult, devoted, and passionate creature at her side. But whenever Jane looked at the lined, haggard face and the worn, rough hands, she knew that this was an angel in disguise, and we must be sure to recognize and welcome the angels when they are sent, as Hannah had been, as a literal answer to prayer. It would be quite impossible to live here at all without this small, stout dragon to protect her. Jane sighed and folded her hands together as if she clasped her intimate self between them, and saw she had a half hour in which to gather the splintered pieces together and meet John with the balance and openness to his need which he had every right to expect from her, ninety or not. She sighed and rocked, and felt the tensions slowly flow out. After a while she picked a sweet geranium leaf off the pot on the window sill beside her and rubbed it before inhaling its pungence. How little people knew about very old age! It would be quite absurd to mention to anyone—least of all to Hannah—that this scent of rose geranium filled her with what might be called bliss. As far as the senses go, she was thinking, we still live in large part in and through them. Very small things—apparently small, such as a mushroom, or a cup of tea, or a half-remembered line of poetry that suddenly came into focus and brought back the whole poem, or the delicious luxury of clean sheets—these little things now made the difference between hell and heaven. Sometimes Hannah’s rough hand smoothing her pillow, or one of her awkward gestures of affection, became angelic. The hard thing was to be someone else’s possession, and not yield up that central small entity, the self, that must go on to the end, if possible, intact.

Of course she heard the car long before John himself came running in and gave her a prickly kiss, reeking of tobacco.

“John … darling boy … you’ve grown a beard!”

“Yes, doesn’t it suit me? I feel I have become an authority on almost any subject now that I have a beard.”

“Sit down, sit down. I have to get used to it.”

“Oh, how good it is to be here. You’re just the same—marvelous, beautiful as ever.” John sat on a low chair, pulling it close so he could hold both her hands in his.

At this moment Hannah came in with a tray holding a decanter with sherry, two glasses, and a plate of thin ginger cookies on it, saw the beard, and let out a cry, while John leapt up to relieve her of the tray.

“A holy terror,” she said, half laughing. “You nearly made me drop my tray!”