“Goodness, are you all right?” He took my elbow. “You need to sit down before you faint.” He opened the nearest door and sat me on a chair just inside it. “I hope the noise doesn’t bother you, miss. Take a minute and I’ll be right back with a glass of water.”

It was the printing room, and it was, indeed, noisy. But there were rhythms on top of rhythms, and trying to separate them settled my panic. I checked the slips: one, two, three…I counted to thirty. None were missing. I secured their string and put them back in the satchel. When the man returned, I had my face in my hands, all the emotion of the past hour risen to the surface and hard to contain.

“Here, have this,” he said, crouching and offering the glass of water.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m not sure what came over me.”

He gave me his hand and helped me up from the chair. His gaze lingered on my funny fingers, and I withdrew them.

“Do you work in here?” I asked, looking beyond him into the printing room.

“Only if a machine needs some tinkering,” he said. “Mostly I set the type. I’m a compositor.”

“You make the words real,” I said, finally looking at him. His eyes were almost violet. It was the young compositor who’d been standing with Mr. Hart and Mr. Bradley on my first visit.

He tilted his head, and I thought he might not understand what I meant. But then he smiled. “I prefer to say that I give them substance—a real word is one that is said out loud and means something to someone. Not all of them will find their way to a page. There are words I’ve heard all my life that I’ve never set in type.”

What words? I wanted to ask. What do they mean? Who says them? But my tongue had become tied.

“I should go,” I finally managed. “I have to deliver these slips to Mr. Hart.”

“Well, it was nice to bump into you, Esme,” he said, smiling. “It is Esme, isn’t it? We were never actually introduced.”

I remembered his eyes but not his name. I stood stupid and mute.

“Gareth,” he said, holding out his hand, again. “Very pleased to meet you.”

I hesitated, then returned my hand to his. He had long tapered fingers and a strangely bulbous thumb. My gaze lingered.

“Pleased to meet you too,” I said.

He opened the door and saw me into the hallway.

“You know the way?”

“Yes.”

“Right then. Go carefully.”

I turned and headed to the Controller’s office. It was a relief to hand over the bundles of slips.