His new home was a Spanish-style spread on the best block in Laughlin Park. It was touched with florid and playful details that turned it baroque: wrought-iron railings, Moorish arches between rooms, tremendous Barcelona sconces with bubbling glass blown in the Alhambra’s finest studios, high roof beams stenciled with gold-and-green leaf patterns, fireplaces that could host an auto-da-fé, other empty rooms with no known purpose. One, Mildred had turned into a nursery. There were touches of blue paint on one wall and pink on the other. Chaplin always closed the door if it was standing open.

The house was always dark. There were gargantuan chandeliers in the main hall that seemed to give no light, and great paned windows with grand arching peaks that faced the morning sun, and they gave no light, either. One evening, he brought Rollie over for dinner, in the small dining room, to ask him seriously if they could install white-flame carbon arc lights, Cooper-Hewitt mercury vapors, or if they might paint the floors white and hire Friulians to stand in his hallways; Rollie only said, “Your house is plenty light, Charlie.”

The staircase comforted him. He brought the piece of paper from the pocket of his bathrobe, and though the light was too faint for him actually to read it, he knew much of it by heart: Sid. Rob Wagner. Carlyle Robinson.

The war was ending. At three o’clock in the morning, with another day’s work about to come, and with no ideas on hand—why was a pastoral funny?—the war ending struck Chaplin as getting the girl had once struck him. They were both question marks masquerading as exclamation points.

He thought of showing Frances something new. This was not from a hostile place; he imagined showing her a movie that would make her cry. A Dog’s Life had a moment or two in it; Shoulder Arms was audacious, but he knew to his marrow that Frances Marion wouldn’t have been impressed by audacity. He imagined taking her hand. No seduction inherent in the gesture, just kindness between two friends who knew the same things. “I did it,” he was thinking. “I became better.” He was thinking about refugees returning home. He wanted to organize a benefit. He wanted to call Mary Pickford, just to tell her he liked her.

“Charlie?”

“What?”

“Are you coming to bed?” Mildred had her silk half-kimono on, and her long legs showed beneath it. She glanced away from her husband and toward the view he was taking in, the entryway, the beaded glass in the sconces, the trowel marks on the walls, the timber rooflines that belonged on an Andalusian castle. She was regarding the house as if she couldn’t quite believe she lived in it. She was standing on the balls of her feet because the tile was so cold.

“Hmm?” he said.