He went on foot to Sutton Place; there was no percentage in risking a cab. When he turned onto the street there were shafts of sunlight between the buildings, well-dressed people hurrying to work, cars pulling up before elegant foyers, doormen whistling down cabs. The innocent brightness of this world assaulted his conscience, made him feel the blackest shame. Their own little house with its green shutters and marble sills, with its red-brick facade and window boxes full of petunias, contrived an atmosphere of warmth and joy. A repulsive falseness. It seemed to John like a newly cut tree, its leaves still robust, the message of death not yet risen up the trunk.

“Morning,” Bob Cavender said. He was a naturally ebullient man, the Blaylocks’ neighbor, Alice’s father.

“Morning,” John said, affecting a slight accent.

“New on the block?” Cavender did not recognize this suddenly aged version of his neighbor.

“Houseguest. Staying with the Blaylocks.”

“Oh, yes? Good people. Music lovers.”

John smiled. “I am a musician. With the Vienna Philharmonic.”

“My daughter’s going to love you. She spends half her life at the Blaylocks. She’s a musician too.”

John smiled again and delivered a courtly Viennese bow. “We will meet again, I presume,” he said.

Cavender passed on down the street, trailing a hearty goodbye. How normal men could maintain their confidence and good cheer amid the chaos of life was one of the most fascinating mysteries that John had encountered. The Cavenders of the world never realized the truth of generations, how short was their time and brief their ways.

There was a hush inside the house. Miriam had opened a pomander jar and the front hall was full of its rich scent. John went upstairs. He was eager to examine his face in a mirror. But when he got to the bedroom he hesitated. A deep, dead cold spread through him. He stood in the sunlight beside the pink-curtained window, terrified of the mirror on the back of the bathroom door, afraid to take another step.

For so long he had been balanced at the age of thirty-two. Along with the sudden aging of his body there had come a black flood of confusion as his brain atrophied. The assurance of youth was rapidly evaporating, and in its place was this preoccupied stranger, rapt only to the betrayal of the flesh. He found himself unable to remember dates, names, events. Things were colored by an unsettling newness, even things he must have seen many times before.

A tiny sound broke the stillness, the drip of a tear on the floor. “Coffin,” he said. His voice had changed so, deepening into age. All the years he had cheated were taking their revenge on him at once.