—They were quarreling and he must have shoved her—half-sobbing himself, furious, exhausted—he shoved her and she stumbled and fell and struck her jaw on the sharp edge of a counter—no it hadn’t been deliberate—not entirely deliberate—the pain was remarkable—the pain was a stroke of lightning—and he was as appalled as she: blood streaming down her throat and chest, soaking into her clothes. They weren’t the sort of people who did such things.

She couldn’t stop crying. Sheila rose without a word and, stooping, cradled Monica’s head in her arms, rocked her slightly, comforted her. Monica was utterly helpless, she couldn’t have said where she was, weeping, clutching at someone, a presence, a strength, so much superior to her own. She smelled tobacco and wine and stale perspiration—a muscular warmth—merging with the old stench of panic and blood, the ache along her jaw, memory stitched in flesh.

Afterward she thought, not knowing whether to be ashamed: Of course Sheila knew about the scar all along.

II.

The Mirror-Ghoul

1

Who are her friends, Monica?—I mean besides you,” Jill Starkie asked one evening at dinner, at the Starkies’ house on the Academy campus. She was wearing a kind of Japanese kimono that opened slightly as she leaned forward, releasing a sweet earnest scent of lilies of the valley. As the evening’s hostess she had been smiling for some time and now her pink-glossed lips were bracketed by ghostly smiles. When Monica stared at the tablecloth before her—she’d been making faint indentations in the Irish linen with her fork—and could not seem to think of an adequate reply, Jill said, persisting, leaning farther forward: “But she has friends, hasn’t she? I mean—besides you.”

“Of course she has friends,” Monica said. But her mind had gone blank: she could think of a half-dozen persons whom she had met at Edgemont, casually and very informally; she recalled Sheila mentioning the names of friends in New York and Key West and Mexico and the Costa del Sol and Morocco—friends, fellow artists, companions of her late husband’s. But none of the names came to mind as Jill Starkie and the others at the table looked at her, waiting.

“There used to be odd stories about her, lovers of hers who turned up at the wrong time,” another guest at the table said, “if we’re talking about the same woman: Morton Flaxman’s widow?”

“Sheila Trask,” Jill said in a tone of light, animated reproach. “You must know her name, David, she’s nearly as accomplished as her husband, in fact I prefer her work—don’t make a face, Brian, I do—what I’ve seen of it, I mean—his is so overbearing and monolithic, if that’s the word—so aggressively monumental—and so overpriced—”