“Listen, last winter my husband made me hold a reception. He has political ambitions. If the men who were there—and believe me, they were sitting up and panting like dogs around me—if they had known they were dealing with nothing but a common smuggler (even if the only thing they’d known was that I come here, to this isolated heath, to keep an ear out for the sound of the carts, and that afterward I get on the ferry with some sacks of wheat), I believe they’d all have been shocked and dismayed, as if they couldn’t imagine me capable of such vulgarity. They all have very well-defined ideas about how to govern. John Russell himself is like a babe in arms next to them. Even so, because I have a reputation for being a bit wild (and even more so, because they have to shine in front of us ladies in our bare-shouldered gowns), they got to talking about poetry, about . . . poems, about the poetry of life, just chitchat really! Oh, if only you’d seen their lips! And their monocles. How they let them drop off, how they put them back on with their chins held high, how they suddenly bent their heads toward me: ‘Is that not so, dear friend? . . .’ All of them a bit roguish. And, because of that, clever. And in the end, they were outdone by their subject, the poet, a little fellow convinced that his personal aims controlled human destiny, who said, ‘Woe be to him who stands in the way of destiny.’ ”

“He was right,” Herman replied, his voice animated. “And it amounts to a self-evident truth. To be opposed to destiny is a misfortune in itself. But I’d hardly give two pennies for my life if I didn’t suffer from that particular misfortune.”

“You have to understand,” she said, “what he meant was purely personal. What it meant—and believe me, nobody, myself included, misunderstood—was: ‘I’ll bring woe to the poet who won’t comply with the destiny I’m charting for humanity, who won’t share my view.’ You understand? On one who won’t serve me. And yes, there you have it. Oh my, don’t I entertain important people! And, to a certain extent, that little fellow was entitled to turn it into a personal affair.”

“No,” said Herman. “Woe to the poet, yes! (God forbid I should be one.) But your little fellow has nothing to do with it. Don’t you see, Adelina? To be a poet is to stay a step ahead of human destiny. The poet doesn’t follow; he isn’t against anything; he’s a step ahead. And he doesn’t serve. To be obliged to live this way is reason enough for unhappiness.”

Evening was coming on. They heard the sound of carts and a whip cracking.

“Another minute,” he said. “Look.” He nodded at the grass pressed flat behind them. “Isn’t that the imprint of someone huge who just came to land behind us?”

“Yes,” she said, “it certainly is. And you could say the imprint was made while you were talking.”