When they became chilled they tried unsuccessfully to stamp the sand from their shoes and climbed straight up the cliff on the rickety wooden stairs and went back into the warm cabin. The sun streamed through the window bathing the lumpy sofa. While he started a fire she lay down and when the fireplace was roaring she made room for him and he lay next to her and they closed their eyes and allowed the sun god to turn their world into a large red pumpkin.

After a long time he opened his eyes and rolled over and kissed her very gently and, more gently still, touched her with his fingertips. Her lips were warm and dry and salty. There was quiet except for the outside sounds of the sea and the screams of a gull and the inside sounds of the fire and their breathing. He was touching her breast through the blue sweat shirt, aware that they were both remembering her father turning the same gesture into a contemptuous brand with which he had marked his wife.

This is different, he said to her silently. Understand that. Please understand that. He could feel within her a faint trembling like a suppressed shudder, more fear than desire, he knew, and somehow, despite all the girls and the women, the fear was transmitted to him so that he, too, trembled; yet he continued to allow his hand to bridge the space between them until he felt the trembling subside, his and hers. She kissed him this time, tentatively at first and then with a rush of feeling that made it seem as though she wanted to devour him, leaving him shaken; finally by unspoken agreement they drew apart and helped each other with things like buttons and zippers and snaps, hastily. It was as he had expected: there were no white patches, no strap marks, he saw in glimpses that turned his legs to water.

“You have a little pot belly,” she observed.

“I’ve been running,” he said defensively.

“You’re very firm,” he said.

“Not all the time.”

Then they were lying close and perfect together again. God, how sweet in the warm sun. She was kissing his defective ear and crying and he realized with a sudden new feeling that he wanted to take nothing, he yearned only to be giving, to give to her tenderly all that he owned in the world, everything that was Adam Silverstone.

Eventually they felt hunger.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “we’ll get up in time for the early tide at Head-of-the-Meadow. I’ll catch you some small but plump flounders and you can clean them for me like a good surgeon and I’ll broil them for you over charcoal, basted with fresh lime juice and lots of butter.”

“Mmmm . . .” Then: “What about today?”

“Today . . . we have some eggs left.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Portuguese soup?”

“What is it?”