Rizzo took out his watch. “Visiting time,” he said, “has come to an end. You must forgive us but we were in our early days much used by those who had nowhere to go at night. Many times on my morning rounds I saw a man’s feet beneath a patient’s bed. Well, it is not a way to run a hospital. Not that I suspect you, Mr. Lovall, of having such . . . designs.”

Lacroix rose. There was a moment of awkwardness with Emily, a sudden lapse into strangerhood. He did not know where to put his hands. He undid then refastened the bottom button of his waistcoat. He wished her a peaceful night. Someone, not Rizzo, folded the screen and took it away.

He had his supper at a chop house. It was cheaper than eating at the inn—a shilling for a plate of brawn and cabbage, a glass of something called claret—his fellow diners mostly men alone, men without the convenience of wives or, like Lacroix, momentarily or chronically without funds. It was not brotherly but it was easy and the man who presided, who came and went from a back kitchen, empty plates one way, plates loaded the other, calmed them, their solitary condition, like a sergeant moving among recruits (the enemy not at hand but not distant either).

When he had eaten he climbed to the street again, saw the evening star in the gap between two tenements, greeted it, and walked back to the inn. There he made a point of showing himself to the landlord, of treating him to the kind of nod a gentleman whose pocket book is well stocked with large, painterly banknotes, bestows on an innkeeper. He took a small glass of brandy standing by the fire, then went up to his room hoping to find no one there but finding the club-footed maid who had seen him stumble on the stairs the night before. He did not think she was stealing anything. She had, perhaps, just made up the bed. The room was dim, and as she came towards him, her face shadowed but her eyes carrying points of light, he wondered if she would hold out an orange and ask if he wished to buy it. Instead she asked him if he wanted a candle brought up. He said he didn’t.