“‘Daylight’ and not ‘nocturnal,’ you mean?” Monica asked. She tried to smile to disguise the queer hurt and annoyance she felt; the corners of her mouth ached. “But is it that easy to judge other people?—by appearances?”

Sheila’s lips stretched from her teeth in a semblance of a grin. “You forget who you’re speaking to,” she said.

“What?” Monica said, half-frightened. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re speaking to an artist—a painter,” Sheila said. She flexed her long supple fingers mockingly. “I put my faith only in appearances. In paint. On canvas. In two dimensions.”

As soon as the woman left Monica poured herself a glass of red wine, hurriedly, and carried it upstairs, to the room at the rear of the house she was using as a bedroom. Her footsteps echoed with a surprising urgency beneath the high ceilings; the floorboards creaked. Monica knew that Sheila Trask expected her to watch her ride away, trotting briskly along the edge of the neighboring cornfield, back to the lane by the woods. She knew, whether or not she did watch, Sheila would assume she had.

She was nearly faint with exhaustion. The visit had lasted less than half an hour—she herself had said very little—but she was as drained of energy as if she had been teaching all day. How odd, how alarming, was she actually going to faint . . . ? She leaned weakly against the windowsill and pressed her warm forehead against the pane, watching the horse and rider, noting with envy Sheila Trask’s posture, her absolute naturalness and grace, every motion of hers perfectly coordinated with her mount’s. Ease, confidence, bravado, a kind of self-mockery in the very effortlessness of her performance. . . . “She knows she is being watched,” Monica thought. “It has been her life.”

She watched the chestnut gelding trot out of sight. It was a remarkable thing, really, if you considered it—a human being, a woman, astride an animal of that size: the animal’s spirit brought under control, its powerful muscles subordinate to a human will. One must either master his horse or be mastered by him, Monica had once been told. Neither prospect greatly appealed to her.

She drained the glass of wine; her head was throbbing. Sheila Trask was gone and now the house seemed inordinately quiet. Monica felt so exhausted she had an impulse to lie down fully clothed on her bed and surrender to sleep, to a groggy afternoon nap. . . . Instead she went into her bathroom and turned on the cold water faucet and splashed cold water fiercely onto her face. She slapped her warm cheeks: she was angry with herself for being so fatigued.