“I can’t tell you anything. Except that it’s a very good thing for me that you are Herman Melville.” She touched his arm and left her hand there, as though she intended to lean on him. “You’ve been scaring me since yesterday.” And, as he gave a questioning look, “I’ll explain,” she said. “Come on, let’s climb up now. Yes, I’m going to ride up top with you. The coupé is too crowded today.”

This whole exchange took place while heavyset farmers were getting into the carriage and the postilion and the coachman were loading parcels and baggage. She and Herman were sitting on the front bench, directly above the coachman’s seat. And so, barely covered by the big hood of the coach, they launched headfirst together, at once, into the vast, wooded countryside and into the sky. They were passing through the forests at a gallop, at the height of the heavy limbs of the trees. Two farm women were seated next to them, as well as a man, who must have been a shepherd, dressed in a sheepskin vest with the wool facing out.

They were squeezed up against each other. As they were settling in, she’d put her hand under her dress to gather up the hoops of her petticoat. When she’d seated herself beside him, he’d seen the outline of her knees appear under the loosened fabric. And now she was touching him; and he was touching her, with his hip and his leg.

Morning was brushing the land the way green willow boughs brush the water’s surface. Ripples of liquid light were spreading out across the meadows and the woods, and splashing back as gold dust against the grass stems and the branches. Because of the noise of the wheels, it wasn’t possible to talk. But from time to time, when a new range of sunlit hills emerged from the mist, the two of them looked at each other.

The country they’d entered into was mountainous and harsh. Several times already the horses had slowed to a walking pace. Finally, as they left the valley, the coach started up a longer slope. At this point, they had to give the horses a rest. They came to a stop, and everyone got down onto the road. He walked beside her; she’d gathered up her long, supple dress in her hand.

“Where are you headed?” she said.

“I don’t know. I’m going wherever my fancy takes me.”

“Knowing that would have made things a lot clearer to me. I would actually have been able to stop myself from being scared.”

“Did you think I was a highwayman?”

She smiled, and her face turned childlike and very pure, as if not of this world. “No, instead I took you for a constable.”

“I didn’t know they dressed like this.”

“They dress themselves in all sorts of ways, even in clouds. A poet ought to know. Remember Lady Macbeth? Why did you leave on a Tuesday?”

“Because it was on a Tuesday that I thought of leaving.”