Monica began to acquire an appetite for her friend’s studio. That place of strain and tension and raw nerves. That place of sudden laughter, fresh-brewed coffee, Danish pastry devoured ravenously—Sheila’s hands trembling because she hadn’t eaten in a very long time: and Monica proved her “angel of mercy.” (“But how can you go without eating for so long?” Monica asked, mystified. “Do you simply forget?—does your body allow you to forget?”)

Sheila Trask’s studio, that place of exuberant high spirits, that place of secrecy and refuge . . . Sheila had a telephone but it was nearly always unplugged. (Sometimes, late at night, she plugged it in, she said, so that she could dial to learn what time it was! . . . she didn’t allow any clock or watch in the studio.) The main house was kept in a reasonable state of cleanliness by Sheila’s housekeeper and one or two cleaning women who came out once a week; there were a few groundsmen and handymen, irregularly employed; and a teenaged boy came over from a neighboring farm to help out with Sheila’s three horses. But none of these people ever approached the carriage house. And even when she knew she was expected, Monica often felt an unreasonable sense of trespass, almost of danger, as she ascended the stairs.

For what if the door were locked against her? And Sheila, though inside, refused to open it—?

Monica acquired an appetite for the harsh astringent odors of paint and turpentine, she imagined they cleared her head, made her eyes water so that her vision came more sharply into focus. She no longer minded the filthy rags underfoot, the torn newspapers, shards of broken crockery, an old sweater of Sheila’s stiff with dirt which had been lying beside a chair for weeks. And the constantly varying—the unpredictably varying—degrees of light from the skylight fascinated her. She theorized that all romance is light—light’s gentle diminution, light’s raw intensity. Sheila Trask standing exposed in the pitiless white light of a winter noontide was not a beautiful woman—age showed shockingly in her face, even in the lusterless frizzy aureole of her hair. But Sheila Trask standing in the slow-fading light of an overcast afternoon possessed (how suddenly!—how totally without her knowledge) a solemn ascetic beauty Monica found enthralling.

Ariadne’s thread held tightly, prayerfully, in the fingers. The labyrinth as a state of mind, a permanent state of mind. Monica wandered in it, utterly content.

But the secrets were all Sheila’s. Sheila held herself rigid and surrendered nothing. Smiles came unbidden, laughter was sudden and sometimes a little shrill, excluding Monica. Sheila boasted that her life—like her very body—existed at a distance from her. It was hers, but not her.