‘I’m sure both of you have borne it with tremendous fortitude,’ Collis said.

‘Thank you, sir. I think we did our best. It’s been a trial right to the end, though. My wife got sick of the fever crossing the Panama isthmus, and she had to stay in the hospital for a couple of weeks. The captain of the California sent me a note yesterday afternoon that she was recovering, though, and I thank God for that.’

‘She’s lucky,’ whispered Collis.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said, she’s lucky.’

‘Yes, I guess she is. But I’m luckier still. I’ll have her here in a week, if all goes well, and then you can bet a gold mine to a hole in the ground that I’m going to be the happiest and the proudest man in the whole of this city.’

Walter West finished packing up the workbox and set it square on the top of the counter.

‘There,’ he said. ‘I guess that’ll make your young niece’s day for her.’

‘Yes,’ said Collis. He shook two silver dollars out of his purse and laid them on the counter next to the parcel. Two sharp clicks of metal on glass. ‘You won’t think I’m impertinent if I ask you a question?’ he said.

‘I guess not. I guess it depends what the question is.’

‘Well, it’s this. When you said about your wife … well, being away so long …’

‘Yes?’

Collis looked at him carefully. If there was any flinching, no matter how slight, he wanted to catch it. ‘Did you ever, during those two years that you were without her, did you ever feel that perhaps you didn’t love her any more?’

Walter West frowned. The sun was on his hand, and his wedding band, scored with thousands of scratches from hundreds of days of lonely work, gave off a dull, solid gleam.

‘I’m not sure I get your drift,’ he said, obviously a little upset. ‘I’ve loved my wife from the day I met her, and if anything at all, I’m fonder of her now than I was when I had to leave her behind.’

Collis listened to this without changing his expression. It was all exactly as he feared it would be. Hannah would arrive in San Francisco, and this bearded haberdasher’s dogged lonesomeness and patent need would make it impossible for her to break free from him. After all the strange conversations in Panama, after all the veiled promises and protestations of profane love, his affair with Hannah amounted to no more than this store, with its silks and its threads, and this dull man behind the glass counter. It all weighed too much, in the scales of Christianity and guilt, and all that Collis had to counterbalance it with was gossamer.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Collis said suddenly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Walter West asked him. ‘What about?’

‘About the workbox. I don’t think my niece will really like it after all.’

‘Well …’ said Walter West, hesitantly.