Marya flinched at the woman’s imagined presence. Yes, that steely-gray stare was unyielding and resolutely unfriendly; perhaps it was even a warning of sorts. Marya wanted to protest that she had not wronged her—how had she wronged her?

Marya rinsed her cup at the sink and was careful to replace it exactly where she had found it. With a stiffened old sponge she even made a few spirited swipes at the rust stains in the drain, as if she were back on the Canal Road with Wilma hovering over her. Leave things neat as you found them was one of Wilma’s pet admonitions. Then again: Clean hands, clean heart. (Both remarks were meant to be funny, even witty. Wilma always joked about matters she took perfectly seriously.)

Since she had fed the cats and checked the downstairs windows and doors, Marya supposed she should leave; there really wasn’t any purpose in staying longer. Suppose a neighbor noticed her bicycle outside. . . . Or one of Fein’s circle, nosing about on Azazel Drive. . . . She had work to do waiting for her in her room at the graduate college; this little excursion had been an interlude, a reward of sorts, since she’d been reading and transcribing notes all morning.

But she knew she wasn’t ready yet to leave.

When she returned to the living room one or two of the cats scurried before her. She paced about, her hands on her hips, still excited, apprehensive, on the verge of a mysterious euphoria. Usually, by this time of day, she felt fairly exhausted; today she was suffused with a childlike sort of energy. If only he were present! . . . surprising her with his brusque greeting . . . striding forward to shake her hand, and to inquire how she was. He was wonderfully lean, lithe, sharp-featured, striking rather than handsome: with a somewhat pocked skin, and thin lips, and a long angular nose. Or was he in fact ugly, Marya wondered, as if it mattered in the slightest. (To dispel Fein’s immediate influence upon her, Marya had tried to speak casually of him, months ago. She told Ernest Slater that their professor was certainly articulate, perhaps a little glib at times, didn’t he think? and Ernest responded quite coldly. Fein was incapable of glibness, he said. Marya saw then that she must say nothing about Maximilian Fein to his other students unless she was prepared to love him as much as they did.)