But Monica was sure, Monica protested that she was sure, feeling ridiculous in her unbecoming old clothes, standing in a doorway waiting for a visitor: she hardly knew what she was saying or what she really felt. “I’ve been working since early this morning . . . I’d like to stop for a while . . . I mean I’d like very much to . . .”

“Well—I don’t want to intrude,” Sheila said slowly. She dismounted, fussed with the horse, wrapped the reins around a fence post, looping and knotting them swiftly as she spoke. “. . . I know what it’s like, people dropping by. You assume you’re safe in the country and then unexpected visitors turn up because they’re lonely and you’re put in an awkward position. . . . You do remember me, don’t you? We met at the Greenes’? Sheila—?”

Monica protested that she certainly knew who she was but hadn’t known how to address her.

“‘Sheila’ is fine,” she said, laughing.

She was perspiring freely and slightly breathless. Her brown jodhpurs were soiled, her cotton pullover shirt was stained at the armpits, her riding boots were well-seasoned with dirt and manure. Her hair was remarkably thick, yet lusterless, frizzy, exploding out about her head as if with an excess of nervous energy. In the brilliant October sunshine she looked both malnourished and oddly flushed, exuberant.

“And I remember your name—Monica? Yes? But your last name was muddled, I didn’t quite hear—”

Monica told her the name and they shook hands and at the strong dry touch of Sheila’s hand she felt an unaccountable sensation of panic, lasting hardly more than an instant, a fluttering in the chest, an unpleasant constriction of the throat. Afterward Monica was to conclude that she had felt vulnerable at this moment because she’d come close to telling Sheila her married name, which had been Bell. And that would have been a hateful blunder.