‘I don’t know what we have between us, Hannah,’ he said reflectively, ‘but whatever it is, I don’t want to lose it yet.’

‘I don’t, either,’ said Hannah. ‘But you will give me time, won’t you?’

He nodded. ‘Yes.’

Sister Rosa came limping into the ward then, with flowers she had picked from the hospital garden. ‘Mrs West,’ she ordered, ‘you must take a sleep now. You are still very ill.’

‘I must go,’ Collis told Hannah. ‘I’ve been overtaxing you.’

‘No, no,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve been marvellous. You couldn’t have been better. My mind will be at rest now.’

‘If you’re better tomorrow morning, we’ll talk some more,’ he said, and gently squeezed her hand. He turned to Sister Rosa and asked, ‘May I kiss her?’

Sister Rosa frowned. ‘That is up to you, Mr Edmonds. The doctors would not disapprove, but I am not so sure about the Almighty.’

Collis bent over Hannah’s bed and brushed his lips against hers. ‘As long as the doctors are happy, I’ll take my chances with the Almighty.’

Then he left the ward, and walked out into the garden, and stood with his hands on his hips, elated, and breathing as if he had run all the way up from the railroad depot.

He saw Hannah briefly at six on Monday morning, attended by Sister Rosa and Sister Hilda. The ward was still in the twilight of pre-dawn, and the nuns walked to and fro like ghosts. Hannah was weak and exhausted, but Sister Rosa told Collis grudgingly that she had eaten a bowl of gruel the night before, and that her condition was much improved.

‘I shall leave my address at the post office when I get settled in San Francisco,’ Collis said softly. ‘In any case, if I don’t hear from you in a month, I shall call around at the store.’

‘I won’t fail you,’ whispered Hannah. ‘I promise I won’t fail you.’

Collis kissed her on her forehead, and then he stood up. He looked down at her for a moment, at her well-boned, animal-attractive face, as if he were taking a mental photograph of her. Then he turned and left the ward, his shoes clicking on the polished floor, and went through to the hallway where his trunk and his bag were waiting for him.

There was no sign of Sister Agnes as he left the hospital in the donkey trap and was taken down the rutted streets in the first light of the day. He looked back once or twice, but he couldn’t even see her face at a window. It wasn’t long before they went around a steep corner, and the Hospital of the Sacred Heart disappeared from sight.

He was rowed out to the Pacific mail steamer California by a toothless ferryman in a wildly fraying straw hat. The ship lay at anchor in the dull morning mist, the flag of the Union hanging from her stern, her two masts empty of sails, and a stain of black smoke rising from her funnel. Collis’s skiff was brought under her lee, bobbing like a toy boat up against the side of a cast-iron bathtub, and a rope was thrown down, which the ferryman enthusiastically wound in.