She thanked him again. She looked so pleased, as though the gift were much greater than it was. He wanted to ask her if she had been looking at him in the night, if she had seen him look at her, but he had no idea of the tone or phrasing of such a question. He walked to the stove, lifted the pan and began to fill the coffee pot. By the time the pot was full he knew he was not going anywhere. Not today.

They carried the bedding inside. The morning was already warm and promising to be much warmer. The big hats were out again. Ranald came up. He had put on his old regimental kilt, the first kilt Lacroix had seen since crossing into Scotland. Had he gone ashore at Aboukir in it? Had he been wearing it when he saw the Sphinx? He told them that the mainland boat would be in tomorrow. Emily sat with him at the table in the big room to write out a list of provisions. Coffee, wine, rice, sugar. Six yards of undyed linen for sewing sheets. Wheat flour, oats, salt. Turpentine, candles. A box of assorted buttons. Writing paper. Newspapers, any. The list was long. She wrote with a slate pencil, her nose three inches above the paper.

The money to pay for it all—the community’s economic basis, certainly the economic basis of the Frends—came from a man with half a dozen copperworks near Swansea, a man who, as a child, had enjoyed visions of Christ and Socrates, had larked with them on the banks of the Tawe, but now had eight hundred souls labouring under him and needed others to do the dream work. The money was routed through Thorpe, though it seemed the benefactor might be having doubts, had perhaps found dreamers more convenient to Swansea. There wasn’t much money in the house. There had not—according to Cornelius, who had complained of it to Lacroix more than once—been any fresh funds since Thorpe’s last visit in the winter, and little enough then. Lacroix watched Emily pick the necessary out of a purse of crumpled blue satin then went to his coat, teased a water-stained—a sea-stained—pound note from the slit pocket (there was one more inside, perhaps two) and tried to make her take it. She wouldn’t. She was polite but firm. “You are our guest,” she said. “We invited you here.”