She rolled on her side, smoothing her negligee over her hip. "I'm not certain this is the best year for marriage, darling."

"Which means what? No?"

She reached across the bed, sliding her hand along the base of his spine. "Which means that there's a war."

"Oh to hell with the war."

"You may not feel that way in a week or two."

He turned to face her, tracing her jaw with his finger. "Listen to me, Margaretha. I think we should get married. Yes, married."

She rolled on her back, watching a circling moth. (It was said, she recalled, that Durga also sometimes appeared as a bug, but usually a beetle or a wasp.) "Why don't we sleep on it? Yes, sleep on it."

"I realize you probably don't love me—"

"I didn't say that."

"Is there someone else?"

She overlooked the banality, hesitated, then said, "I don't know."

"Who is he? De Massloff?"

"No."

"Then who?"

"Someone."

"What's his name?"

"Nicholas."

"Nicholas what?"

"Just Nicholas."

"And he's asked you to marry him?"

She hesitated again. "No, he hasn't asked me to marry him."

Merrick slid across the bed, his lips close to her ear. "Well, in that case I shouldn't imagine that he really will have much to say one way or another."

Later, Gray would say that we should view her at this point as a romantic, an absurdly hopeless romantic that almost any man who was reasonably attractive could take advantage of if he knew what buttons to push. And Merrick had been briefed on these.

After the seventh day he returned to a hospital in Vittel, for conventional treatment or an operation, to be determined by the doctors. Either way, Merrick's case officer, Dunbar, wanted Zelle in the area as well: she mustn't cool on Merrick, and Dunbar knew too well how she could cool. So after another evening in her room Merrick began insisting that she accompany him. She told him that Vittel was in the military zone and off limits to foreign residents. Oh, but obtaining a pass wasn't a problem, he countered. Indeed, thinking but not yet saying it, he even had an acquaintance within the French government who could arrange it—a certain Georges Ladoux.

It was a Thursday when she appeared at Ladoux's office at 283, boulevard Saint-Germain, to apply for a visitor's pass to Vittel. Earlier she had seen Merrick off at the station and then breakfasted with an old friend from the theater. A number of clerks would later recall her that morning: first rather breezy in a blue skirt and blouse, then rather irritated after being shuttled from room to room until she reached the heart of French Intelligence.