Mary put her hand on his arm, concentrating all her energy on a smile. “We’re equals then, aren’t we? Just as we promised we’d be.”

“No, Mary.” He placed his hand on hers. “There does not exist your equal in the world.”

They sat like that, shoulder to shoulder, thinking their own thoughts. She rested her head against his, entwined their fingers.

Mr. Godwin sighed and turned his face to the ceiling. “If only I’d met you in Hoxton, and stolen you away somehow, we’d have twenty-two years together by now. I can hardly forgive myself for missing you.”

She put her chin lightly on his shoulder. “Oh, we wouldn’t have liked each other at all then,” she said playfully, but there was pain beneath it. “We have to believe that every step we’ve taken, even the ones when we were lost, led us to each other, right here, right now.”

Godwin traced the carnelian round of her ring. “And I guess you wouldn’t have met your Fanny Blood.”

Mary closed her eyes and nodded. “I could almost believe in Heaven if I thought Fanny’d be there to greet me.”

He squeezed her hand. “I know you loved her best.”

She looked into his eyes. “But love doesn’t always accord with happiness, much as we want it to,” she said, holding tightly to him. “I have both with you.”

Mrs. B had to look away. She left the door as it was, so as not to disturb them, but sat on the settee in stockinged feet, let her corset go.

“I know, with all my being,” she heard Godwin say, “that we were formed—whoever or whatever formed us—to make each other happy.”

“You are the kindest, best man in the world,” she said. “You’ll be happy again. You will.”

“I have not the least expectation I will ever know happiness again.”

“Please, for the girls. For our little bird. They must believe in it.”

“What would you have them believe?”

There was a long pause. She thought of the way Mary looked up and to the right when she was thinking, the line of her jaw, the fullness of her cheeks. Mrs. B saw her in her mind’s eye, restored.

“In love, that melts into friendship,” she said, “and friendship that melts into love.”

After that, there fell a quiet that only a kiss can bring. Mrs. B rested her elbows on her knees, hung her head, and wept.