She opened her eyes, trying to see him in the darkness. He smelled of cologne, and bourbon, and tobacco; but of soap, too, a clean smell. She felt very warm and languid, and she stretched. ‘Perhaps it would be better to arrange for a divorce sooner, rather than later, after all,’ she said.

She felt him turn towards her, interrogatively.

‘Well,’ she said, as if to justify her change of heart, ‘you want to take me back to Sacramento with you, don’t you? And your Jane McCormick wouldn’t really approve if we were living in sin.’

‘That’s true,’ Collis said carefully.

There was another pause, and then she said, ‘You sound as if you’re not sure you want me to get divorced. Do you?’

‘Of course I do. As long as it’s something you’ve considered with care. I don’t want you to do anything you’re going to feel sorry about afterwards.’

She kissed him, so lightly that he scarcely felt it.

‘Do you feel sorry about what we did just now?’

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Well, then. That’s the way I feel about divorcing Walter.’

There was a rap at the door. A woman’s voice drawled, ‘Can I turn your sheets down, ma’am?’

Hannah kissed Collis again. Then she called back, ‘Later, please, if you don’t mind. I’m occupied at the moment.’

Collis gave an amused snort and sat up. ‘When will you talk to Walter?’ he asked her.

She reached out and touched his bare back, tracing invisible tattoos. ‘I was hoping that you would,’ she said.

‘Me?’

‘Well, man-to-man. You know the kind of thing.’

Collis peered at her through the gloom. ‘I’m not entirely sure that I do.’

He decided to stay in San Francisco until the weekend. The weather was clear, but bitingly cold. Hannah spent most of her time at the International, in her room, or taking tea in the lounge, but on those afternoons when Collis wasn’t organising shipments of guncotton and screws for Tucker, McCormick & Edmonds, he took her for walks along the grey Pacific shore, or into Chinatown, to look at the shops and the restaurants.

He found that, almost mysteriously, he was widely known along Sacramento Street, and Chinese silversmiths and shoe menders would nod to him as he went past. He was unsettled, in a way, by the strange trust which the Chinese people seemed to have invested in him, as if they saw his future far more clearly than he did.