Monica blushed with irritation. But she didn’t inquire what sort of fantasies Sheila meant.

The subject might have been dropped, but Sheila said, after a moment: “Though perhaps you don’t mind. It’s a species of romance, after all.”

From acquaintances in Glenkill Monica learned that the Flaxmans, as they were locally known, were an “unusual” couple; had had a “somewhat experimental” marriage. They traveled a good deal, not only to Europe but to distant, exotic parts of the world—Afghanistan, New Guinea, Patagonia. Sometimes they disappeared for months and no one knew where they had gone. Sometimes one of them would disappear and the other—why, the other would behave as if nothing at all were wrong. Or be consoled—openly and unashamedly—by an alliance of his or her own. There were houseguests of an “eccentric” sort who stayed for months, there were reports of wild parties, drinking, drug taking, fights, very bizarre behavior—hadn’t a cast-off mistress of Morton Flaxman’s once showed up at Edgemont with a gun?—hadn’t a Jamaican lover of Sheila Trask’s once gone berserk with a poker? (“Of course,” Monica was cautioned, “this is all second- or thirdhand gossip and can’t be entirely credited.”)

Morton Flaxman had been twenty-three years older than Sheila Trask at the time of their wedding: forty-two to her nineteen, and already a sculptor of national prominence. He had stood six feet four inches tall and had weighed perhaps two hundred forty pounds. The words invariably applied to him in print—“Gargantuan,” “Rabelaisian,” “Falstaffian”—quite appealed to Monica, who was nevertheless grateful not to have to meet the man. (Flaxman was said to have been, like many male sculptors, an “avid connoisseur” of women; but he hadn’t been nearly so promiscuous as his legends would have it. In fact in some quarters he was considered a “remarkably loyal” husband . . . he had stayed married, after all, for seventeen years.)

Studying a photograph of Flaxman taken a year or two before his death, Monica was struck by his massive yet courtly—kindly—appearance. He was a visibly aging man, but not yet old, bearded, near-bald, contemplative, paternal. His shoulders were broad and muscular, his wrists thick, but the position of the part-clasped hands was graceful, with an Oriental delicacy and hesitation. Monica saw with a thrill of envy why a young woman like Sheila Trask might have fallen in love with him—at one time in her life, at least.