On some amorphous level, she had noted what had been wrong in her parting from Chloe and Clare and Colin. The thing she should have done. The thing she could do.

That she had not thereafter found Emma did not count. She could go on looking for her. And she could look anywhere, anywhere at all.

At the tramps' fire, Sedge stirred as Ruth walked past above him. The other two slept.

Sedge got up and stumbled after Ruth.

When she turned, he plucked out the silver cross he still contrived to wear, unknown, about his neck, and jiggled it at her.

Ruth showed her teeth like a cat, and ran away into the darkness.

CHAPTER 12

DURING THE LONG SUMMER EVENINGS, the Scarabae still dined after sunset. They would gather beforehand in the white drawing room, in front of the white television, to watch the late news.

Eric came in first; sometimes he had been there most of the afternoon. Then Sasha and Miranda. Now and then Rachaela would join them. Why? The terrible events of the world did not truly penetrate her mind. Powerless, she was uninterested. To be with the Scarabae then, maybe only a courtesy, before dining.

Camillo was absent, with his handmaidens. They had gone on the trike to the Round House.

And the Scarabae women had come out of mourning. Tonight Sasha wore lavender and Miranda indigo. They were new gowns, styled after the 1940s and '50s. Eric wore a correct evening jacket, perhaps from the 1930s.

Rachaela had put on the gray silk dress she had selected from a catalogue, and on her hand the ruby ring they had given her.

An hour before she had been naked in her bathroom, having slept all afternoon.

She had tried not to look at her body, but there was a long mirror opposite the bath, its glass clear with only a little flotation of enamel water lilies. This might be a concession to her fleshly youth, as the windows which opened were the consolation of her waywardness.

The mirror had made her look, and see.

Black fleece of slightly curling hair, from the head and from the groin. Creamy skin without a touch of her proper age. The slim firm body and immaculate breasts of a woman of twenty-five or -six. Beautiful. Yes, she was beautiful. And once, she had felt so—one night. By the sea. With him.

But he was gone, and she was here.

She had dressed quickly and come down, down to the Scarabae and their television, to elude the dark ghost of Adamus in her bedroom, who sometimes, even now, would approach her in dreams. The wound of pleasure, which surely his death should have cauterized, even if the birth of Ruth had not.

Something political was on the TV screen.

"The Prime Minister said today that she…"