He nodded. “Many decades of marriage. Typhoid outbreak. Arrest and gaol. Battles with barristers and solicitors, inquest after inquest, deep poverty and scratching out a living with our bare hands. Arguments and loving. Birth and death.” His chin quivered, and he shrugged bony shoulders, and turned his face away. “The stuff of a long marriage.” His weathered countenance attested to everything he’d mentioned, and much more that he hadn’t.

“How many years?”

“It’ll be fifty soon. November the second, two years from now.”

He looked down at his hands, and I had the sense that he’d paused every year to remember the anniversary, even if he’d done it alone and in an asylum.

I turned to the doctor, chin low. “Do you think—”

“I’m already ahead of you. Wait here, and perhaps we’ll find out.” He leaned close. “You’ll have to work your magic.”

I raised my eyebrows, and he eyed the pianoforte without a word.

When Mitchell departed, I spoke to the old man of dance and music and everything that moved us, delighting in his keen mind and gentle spirit. He had a soulful face, and one could see he’d been handsome in his youth. Striking and memorable.

Then the panel opened and Mitchell returned, leading Anna by the hand. Her husband rose, holding himself up with the chair arms as his lady entered. The tremble began in his legs and reached his entire body.

Anna’s nervous look swept the room, brushing right over John, Mitchell, and me, pausing on the great pianoforte. Dr. Turner settled her into the chair beside my stool and John Michelson took another seat, well behind her but with his gaze never leaving her narrow back.

The doctor smiled down at Anna. “I thought perhaps you’d like to hear Miss Mourdant play again.”

The woman blinked, looking from Turner to the instrument without a word. Had he woken her? She seemed dazed. But then, she often did. Dazed, and slightly troubled by the invading world around her.

She had a wide nose and sunken cheeks, with white hair combed straight back, but her cheekbones were high and proud, her chin as poised as a pointed ballet toe. I played Rossini first, racking my brain for any pieces that had been used in a ballet. It wasn’t until I played a piece by a composer I couldn’t even remember that the woman began to stir. Something Russian.

Her stirring, however, was quite amazing. One foot slid along the floor under her wheeled chair, toes brushing the smooth wood as she lifted her leg with a deep arc to her foot. She held it inches from the ground, leg trembling, and the sight shook something in me.