“I spent a month in hospital, and then they sent me home. Everybody pretended nothing had happened, that I had caught a bad cold or something. Except they wouldn’t leave me alone with the baby. My milk had dried up. Everybody was so polite and cold.” She pauses, considers, forges on brazenly. “And my husband—Gerhard—I wouldn’t—I was afraid of having any more babies—”

“Dear me. Poor Gerhard. So they sent you here to recover your senses.”

“Yes.”

“When are you supposed to go back home?”

“When I’m cured,” she says. “When Herr Doktor Hermann decides I’m well enough.”

“Ah, this Hermann again. You know, I’m loath to point fingers at another man, but it seems to me that he’s had two years to cure you. Two years, and you’re clearly in your proper senses, no danger to anybody. Only a lingering sense of guilt, which a loving family ought to be able to conquer.”

“Maybe it’s better if I don’t go back. Maybe my son—my little Johann—I’m a stranger to him—”

“Is that what this Hermann chap’s been telling you?”

“No. He doesn’t tell me things. He only asks questions, for the most part.”

Mr. Thorpe makes a noise that Elfriede will one day recognize as coming from the Scotch side of him. She remains in his arms, laid comfortably against his chest, shielded from his sharp, skinny bones by the woolen jacket. She doesn’t want to move. Has no ability, even, to stir from this place of refuge. His jacket, her Cloth of Tears.

“Anyway, he doesn’t love me anymore,” she says.

“Who doesn’t? Your son?”

“My husband.”

“Did he say that? Did he say he doesn’t love you?”

“No, but I saw it in his face, after I came back from the hospital. I was alien to him. He thought he’d married an angel, and as it turned out . . .”

“Speaking from the male perspective,” Mr. Thorpe says slowly, “of which I naturally consider myself something of an expert. Perhaps it was something else?”

“No. No. A woman can tell. A woman can tell when a man doesn’t love her.”

“Well—and I’m only speculating, mind you—a man whose wife—how do I put this? A man whose beautiful wife no longer allows him the singular privilege for which he married her—”

Elfriede starts to draw away. But Mr. Thorpe makes a little squeeze of his arms, not to keep her there, not so firm as that, but to let her know she’s welcome to stay, if she likes. So she pauses, no longer pressed against his chest, but close.