He gave me the cake. While I ate, he cut his own cake, poured himself a glass of iced tea from the pitcher, and settled himself heavily in the armchair. I had forgotten about his leg. I stared at it now. He stretched the bones out before him, stiff as a pole and just as wasted. He had struck me as pleasingly lean in December, sturdy but not especially muscular. Now he was downright gaunt. His cheekbones sprang from his face. On his jaw, there was a long scar, still red.

I nodded at his knee. “Speaking of injuries.”

“It’s much better, thank you. All things considered.”

“All things?”

“Look here, there’s nothing on earth so tedious as listening to somebody explain the various points of his general health in full detail. I’m alive and whole. All’s well that ends well.”

“Did they ever catch the fellow who did it?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t believe they did.”

“It’s disgraceful.”

“What, the fact that I was attacked? Or that they haven’t caught the scoundrel?”

“Well, both.”

“I must admit, it was rather a shock. But then I wasn’t paying attention, as I should have been. My mind was elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere, was it? I can’t imagine where.”

He shrugged his shoulders and opened his mouth to admit more cake.

“You know,” I said, “I can’t help thinking I’m to blame.”

“You? How so?”

“Because there was another ending to that evening, don’t you remember? It might have ended much more pleasantly for both of us.”

He set down the plate and rested his forearms on his knees, which brought his head closer to mine. Between us, the crumbs of cake, the glasses of tea.

“Fault requires intent, Mrs. Randolph,” he said. “And you surely had no inkling that a man lay in wait for me at the docks with a billy club in his hand.”

“A billy club!”

“Yes.”

“It’s too terrible. You can’t imagine how awful I feel about it. Thank God you’re alive.”

“Life is made up of these little crossroads, after all,” he said. “A million daily forks in the road.”

I studied his eyes behind the sheen of his spectacles. I thought there was something different about him—well, of course there was—some shedding of the boyish radiance that had surrounded him last December. That half-bashful exuberance. As I watched, he put his hands on the arms of the chair to lever himself upward. A wedge of sunshine passed across his face. Instead of reaching for his cane, he limped his way to the window on his own. He shoved one hand into his trouser pocket and braced the other one on the top of the window frame, while he squinted through the glass at the street outside.

“Keeping an eye on the riot?” I said.

“The riot is largely over, it seems. Good old Sir Leslie spoke to the ringleaders over at Government House and promised to look into things. Then the police sent everybody back over the hill.”