“There are two things I would like to know now,” he said. “If you don’t object to telling me, I’d like to hear about your dating with your husband. I want to know what MacIver knew. The second thing is the context in which MacIver said what he did about what you were going to do.”

“That’s more than two things,” she said. “In the first case, what Colin knew and what happened weren’t precisely the same. I didn’t lie to him, but what I wrote was distorted, badly. Murray and I didn’t get married for several months after that, so there were more checks, but never a note, as I said. For a time I imagined that I hurt him very deeply, but I was only trying to serve myself—my own vanity.

“I don’t know if you can imagine the contents of the earlier letters. I can’t remember the words myself, but I won’t forget the substance. I wanted to try again, I was in love with him, too much had passed between us—the years we had been married—for it to be thrown away. The last letter stays very clear to me, too. I told him that he had been right in what he had said I would do, but very, very wrong in the way I would feel about it. Those are the approximate words, so you can imagine the rest. I was trying to save something of myself. I said that even if he did want to see me again, the circumstances would be very different. And so on. The whole letter was cheap and cruel. Since then one of Murray’s friends has been through an episode with his own ex-wife. He was upset not by what she did, but by the fact that he had been married to her, that he had been in love with her.”

Leland said, “My own impression is that what you did may have been able to hurt a college boy, but not a man in his—twenties? Sure, MacIver was twenty-seven at the time. He would have reacted in the same way as your husband’s friend.”

“Then that’s how cheap it was.” She smiled; he guessed that she was going to try to shake it off. “Do you tell your wife when her cooking is bad?”

He had to laugh. “Sometimes.” He cleared his throat. “You said that the letter was a distortion.”

She sat back. “I volunteered. Is that your reason for pumping me so hard? While I can’t know anything for myself?”

“Betty, look at me. You’ve been a great help. You aren’t the person MacIver tried to say—”

“You’re pushing me to keep on being a good girl.”

“And you’re fighting. You’ve gone all this way, for no reason but the desire to help. There’s nothing I can offer you but that satisfaction. You keep talking; it’s the only way I can have the truth.”