A writer’s authentic self, she thought, lay in his writing and not in his life; it was the landscape of the imagination that endured, that was really real. Mere life was the husk, the actor’s performance, negligible in the long run. . . . How could it be anything more than the vehicle by which certain works of art were transcribed . . . ? The thought frightened her, exhilarated her. She climbed out of her bed and leaned out her window as far as she could, her hair whipping in the wind. For long vacant minutes she stared at the sky; her vision absorbed without recording the illuminated water tower two miles north of the campus, the flickering red lights of a radio station, the passage of clouds blown livid across the moon. Standing in her bare feet, shivering, her head fairly ringing with fatigue and her eyes filling with tears, she thought her happiness almost too exquisite to be borne.

THE FIRST TIME Imogene Skillman climbed, uninvited, to Marya’s room at the top of the old mansion, she stood in the doorway and exclaimed in her low throaty amused voice, “So this is where you hide out . . . this depressing little hole!”

Imogene was standing with her hands on her hips, her cheeks flushed, her eyes moving restlessly about. Why, Marya’s room was a former maid’s room, wasn’t it, partitioned off from the others on the floor; and it had only that one window—no wonder the air was stale and close; and that insufferable Chagall print!—wasn’t Marya aware that everyone on campus had one? And it was a poor reproduction at that. Then Imogene noticed the charcoal sketches; she came closer to investigate; she said, after a long moment, “At least these are interesting, I wouldn’t mind owning one or two of them myself.”

Marya had been taken by surprise, sitting at her desk, a book opened before her; she hadn’t the presence of mind to invite Imogene in, or to tell her to go away.

“So this is where Marya Knauer lives,” Imogene said slowly. Her eyes were a pellucid blue, blank and innocent as china. “All alone, of course. Who would you have roomed with?”

THE LOST OF the money and the Parker fountain pen was so upsetting to Marya, and so bitterly ironic, partly because Marya herself had become a casual thief.

She thought, I deserve this.

She thought, I will never steal anything again.