‘Of course not. And all those other things. You haven’t done anything like that. You’re just feeling depressed, that’s all. Wait until Theo comes back from Washington. Then you’ll feel better. God does understand, you know, and forgive us our trespasses.’

‘That’s just as well. I’d be burning in eternal hell fire by now if He didn’t.’

‘Collis,’ she said. ‘Don’t talk that way.’

He was tempted for one irrational moment to tell her about Walter, and the On Leong Tong. He even began to say, ‘You’re going to find this difficult to believe, Hannah …’ But somehow the words came out into the soft evening air like a profuse and empty apology, written in decorative scrollwork on shreds of finest silk, and the wind blew them away in front of his eyes.

She wouldn’t want to know. Even if she had already guessed at it, she would prefer the truth to remain as it was, unspoken.

‘Your God,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Your wonderfully convenient God.’

Hannah looked at him, tight-lipped. Then she turned and stalked back across the veranda to the screen door, her skirts lifted to keep them clear of splinters.

‘You try me sometimes, Collis,’ she said. ‘I pray to God that your railroad gets built, just to put an end to your irritability, and your moods, and your eternal dissatisfaction.’

The screen door banged shut behind her. Collis hesitated for a moment, then sprang after her. He caught up with her at the foot of the back staircase, in a dark corner of the downstairs passage. He seized her arm and turned her around. Her face was bright, and defiant, and she looked up at him challengingly.

‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘What are you going to do, strike me?’

‘What do you think I am?’ he snapped.

She hesitated. Her face was pale and beautiful in the shadows, as if she, too, were a dream. ‘You’re a man with a single idea,’ she said, in a gentle voice. ‘You’ve clung on to that idea because you believe you have nothing else. Now, because your credit’s spread so thin, and because Mr Lincoln still hasn’t made up his mind, you’re worried you’re going to lose your one idea for good. And then what will you do? Run a hardware business with Leland and Charles for the rest of your life? Sit in the parlour smoking your cheroots in the evening, watching me crochet? Swap tales with Theo of the days that might have been, like two old dotards, on the back porch?’

Collis gripped the lace collar of her pink dress, and the embroidered cotton of the bodice she wore beneath it, and tore them roughly sideways, baring Hannah’s right breast. She gasped, partly out of genuine surprise, and partly as a theatrical reaction to a theatrical gesture.