Wilfred turns back to the shadows. “Next month. Four and a half weeks, less ten days on the liner.” He opens the case and pulls out a cigarette. “I’m sorry about these. I was only an occasional smoker until I joined the army.”

She watches him light the cigarette. She loves the way he closes his eyes as he draws in a long draft, the way he savors it. “You don’t have to stay at the hotel, you know. We’ve got three spare bedrooms.”

“That would be decidedly improper, I imagine.”

“There’s nobody to care.”

For some time, he remains silent. Elfriede’s transfixed by the orange flare at the end of the cigarette, by the choreography of fingers and lips. “I’m afraid I’m not as strong as you are,” he says at last. “There have been other women since I saw you last.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the trouble with falling in love with a married woman.” He pauses. “Falling in love—my God, what a stupid phrase. When I think of what I felt upon learning that the good baron had recovered, against all probability, from an illness—I’m ashamed to admit—from an illness I expected and even hoped, yes, hoped would prove fatal. When I realized not only that I wasn’t going to have you after all but that I didn’t even deserve you to begin with. And then. Then. Then what I felt a year ago, when I first heard the shocking news, quite by chance, that Elfriede von Kleist was free at last.”

He falls silent, implying that Elfriede should make some response, but she can’t. Maybe she won’t. There’s just no reply possible, is there? Maybe an honest one, but not a decent one.

“Anyway,” he says at last, “since the time seems ripe to confess our sins, let’s return for a moment to that appalling moment in October of 1900, when Baron von Kleist vanquished the typhoid and a black future opened up before me. I began by drinking, but I couldn’t seem to kill myself with it, no matter how thoroughly I bent myself to the task. So I joined the army. I thought surely the Boers would kill me, which at least might serve some sort of purpose.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? We’ve all got to do our bit in life. One serves one’s country with a certain amount of distinction, if by distinction you mean murdering anything that dared to raise its head on that godforsaken plain, and managing to avoid getting killed oneself, despite carrying out one’s duties in a spirit of desperate recklessness. Or maybe there’s no contradiction. Maybe it was the recklessness that saved me. Only the careful ones get killed, after all. But I’m upsetting you.”