He imagined a world—unlike the real one—where he wouldn’t lose her. The air would have to be a wall, he thought, invisible but solid, and I’d have to know about a door. He imagined he was opening this door, and on the other side, there was a different world. He would say, “Come, my lady.” She came. He closed the door behind them. And thus, the two of them were in a land, an unimaginable land, where he was the only one who knew her, and she knew no one but him. The two of them, inseparable.

Between Henley and Cricklade, the Mail stopped for the night. They weren’t going to press on past the Queen Elizabeth Inn. They got there at close to four o’clock in the afternoon. The road to Cricklade was too long and ran through uninhabited moors. On many occasions, there’d been problems with broken axles. Passengers had been obliged to warm themselves all night around brushwood fires, without a bite to eat. Oh my! The postilion and the coachman couldn’t stop talking in the most dismal terms about these makeshift encampments. They put a lot of stress on “without a bite to eat” and insisted that, toward four in the morning, “even the brushwood had started to run short.” What’s more, the distance was too great for the horses.

The truth was that Jeremiah—the owner of the Queen Elizabeth—gave, as they say, “a certain percentage” to the operator of the Mail. As for the postilions and the coachmen, they’d say that their “one for the road” in the morning wasn’t really that important; they were more partial to their nightcap. In other words, when their workday was done, they preferred to knock back a glass in peace and, whenever possible, for free. In this regard, Jeremiah was generous. And he was kind to everyone. It wasn’t unpleasant to halt during the daytime. There was still a good hour of sunlight. As a matter of fact, said Jeremiah, for the most part the gentlemen travelers thank me for giving them the chance, like this, to stretch their legs.

The area wasn’t particularly impressive. By dusk that evening, it looked to be an unbroken, naked moorland, hemmed in on every side by the encroaching mist. But the ground was meadow-like, thick as a wool carpet, reddish-brown, and strewn with autumn crocuses. Your footsteps sank into the springy softness.

“Look,” said Herman, “this is exactly the kind of meadow the English love to walk on. Come, let’s go for a stroll.”

“Wait a moment,” she said, “I’m not a member of the first night watch. I don’t climb up on deck as soon as the bell sounds. I have to get myself ready.” She pointed out the hoops of her petticoat. Her dress clung tightly around her childlike body. With her beautiful hair alone, you might have mistaken her for a young boy, but her very feminine bust, and this long dress, which tumbled to the ground and bunched back up in puffs, made her seem like a sort of a cherub, one you would set on a pedestal.