These things, she thought, I must remember. The silver-gold of his hair, as it springs back in just that little whorl from his forehead. The way his gray eyes soften when they look at me and yet arc cold as slate to others. The brown leanness of his hands with their strength to bruise and their gentleness to caress.

'Good-bye, my love,' she whispered. 'O Merne—I——' Her voice cracked and she ran from him, slipping through the door like a dark wraith. He heard the soft patter of her feet descending the stairs. From the window he saw her run to the waiting carriage. Its heavy door slammed.

As he came slowly back from the window, the candle guttered and died. A devastating sense of loss and loneliness seemed to fill the sour, darkened room. He flung himself out of it and from the house in headlong strides. It was a tavern he wanted, a tankard of cold, tingling ale, the companionship of males, forthright masculine talk. There, perhaps he would find surcease and forgetfulness.

He reached the Washington Tavern just as Aaron returned to his lodgings on Independence Street to find Theodosia wanfaced in her white dressing-gown and about to retire. The headache was still bad, she said, as she quickly kissed him good night. He sent her to bed without suspicion.

For the only time in her life Theo had successfully deceived her father. She felt neither triumph nor compunction nor shame any more: nothing except a physical weariness so overwhelming that her legs ached and her brain was stupefied.

Meriwether Lewis left Washington before the sun had risen on July the fifth. He left alone, and as quietly as though he were setting out on one of his early morning rides. He was to meet William Clark at Harper's Ferry, and for the two of them there were to be long months of preparation while they trained men, built boats, and waited for the winter to pass in St. Louis, before they could actually start up the Missouri.

Meme checked his horse as they came to the ford over Rock Creek. He turned in his saddle to look back at the sleeping town. The unpainted dome of the Capitol glimmered through the early morning mist, and behind it, invisible to him, was the house where Theodosia slept. He gazed long in that direction. Farewell, my dear, he thought, and sighed, yet his mood was a mingling of sadness and relief. For it was not only to her that he said good-bye, but to a whole way of living. Luxuries and refinements, subtleties and intrigue, he left them behind now.