Collis was white. He could feel the blood shrinking away from his face and his hands, and he could hardly find the co-ordination to speak.

‘I did?’ he grated. ‘What do you mean? I didn’t even know. My God, Delphine, she didn’t even tell me.’

Delphine slowly moved around the drawing-room. ‘She didn’t tell you because she was afraid for any baby of yours — afraid that it might be rated second-best to your precious railroad.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do I, quite. But that’s what Mrs Pangborn told me. Your wife didn’t want to have any children until the railroad was completed. Mrs Pangborn said she’d promised you that on your wedding day.’

Collis suddenly sat down. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘My God, I can’t believe it. Hannah, and two unborn babies, just for the sake of forty miles of railroad track. Oh, my God.’

Delphine watched him for a while. He was plainly too stunned even to cry. ‘I had to tell you, Collis. It wasn’t the kind of intelligence I could have kept to myself, even if I hadn’t wanted to hurt you.’

‘Well, you’ve hurt me,’ he said, in a choked voice.

She came across and stood beside him for a moment. Then she kissed him, very lightly, on the forehead.

He looked up at her, his eyes unfocused. ‘Are you going now?’ he asked her.

‘Do you want me to?’

‘I’d prefer it if you stayed.’

‘What for? So that I can hurt you some more? Haven’t you had enough, thinking of your baby floating its way down to San Francisco, and your wife bleeding to death in her carriage — all because of you and your obsession?’

Collis was silent for a long time, but eventually he whispered, ‘Stay.’

Delphine shook her head. ‘I’d have to charge you, and you wouldn’t like that. You’re costing me money as it is.’

‘Stay,’ he repeated.

‘No,’ she told him. ‘You deserve to be on your own. You deserve to realise just for one evening where your grand scheme has finally got you. No place at all, but alone.’

‘You whore,’ he said, with pain and disgust.

‘Yes,’ she said, with dignified pleasure.

For more than a year after Easter Monday, 1865, Collis worked on the railroad with an intensity that frightened even Leland. Although Charles was officially in charge of construction, Collis would visit the railhead two or three times a week, pale-faced, dark-eyed, in his tall black silk hat and his black tailcoat. He was so sharp and emaciated these days that the Irish labourers called him the Raven, and the Chinese called him Yama, after the thin and elegant oriental demon who presided over Pitris, or hell.