Marya forgot her strained back, her throbbing leg muscles, even her swollen ankle. She squeezed Gregory’s thigh beneath the table and congratulated him on leading them so unfalteringly to this inn, and for having had the brilliant idea of the bicycle ride itself. “It’s carried us a considerable distance from that other couple,” she said, lifting her glass of red wine, “cowering with worry, sick with apprehension, playing at being stoical and mature . . . or whatever it is we’ve been playing at. I feel so sorry for them, and so contemptuous. . . .”

“Yes,” said Gregory, reaching for another slice of bread, “they are contemptible. Let’s not allow them at the table. Let’s not even take the time to pity them. Please.”

“Do you think the committee is at lunch right now?” Marya said, looking at her watch. “Yes, probably, they’ve been meeting six, eight hours a day, trying to clear the books—”

“Stop,” Gregory said. “We promised to give each other a respite.”

“I couldn’t do the sort of things they’re doing,” Marya said with a thrill of self-righteousness. Her face was sunburnt from the morning’s ride; her cheeks blazed. “I really don’t think I could.”

“Marya. Please.”

Gregory laughed, and shuddered, and poured the last of the wine ceremoniously into their glasses. He said, after a thoughtful minute, “Yes—you probably could,” in a voice so subdued Marya almost didn’t hear.

LONG AGO GREGORY told Marya an anecdote about his father, who had died when Gregory was nineteen and a sophomore at Brown.

His father had been a highly successful insurance executive with Prudential; he loved to work and he was happy only when he was working. Life was that simple, that clear. One afternoon in his office he felt pains in his chest . . . a constriction, a sense of suffocation . . . but he ignored them for a while; then informed his secretary irritably that he wasn’t to be interrupted; and got down on the floor and began to do push-ups. . . . He was going to overcome the problem, whatever it was. He was going to triumph.

What happened, Marya asked, though she wasn’t certain she wanted to know.

He did thirty-seven push-ups before he fainted, Gregory said.

But he didn’t die, said Marya.

Not that time, said Gregory.

SEVERAL OF MARYA and Gregory’s colleagues had cultivated an air of cynicism, to deal with their anxiety; several were annoyingly and rather maniacally idealistic; a few had taken on a melancholy philosophical tone, as if the crisis were over and, yes, the worst had occurred. Yet even the doomed were frequently overtaken by cruel flashes of hope; and the optimistic, by bouts of despair. After all, there were virtually no jobs in their rarefied profession any longer. There were these jobs, which they now held, but which, despite their industry and good intentions, they were very likely going to lose.