It is some time before Bram can reach Lilith. She stands, waiting calmly, watching him being congratulated and adored by the crowd who have decided, as if they were one, that he is to be admired. He is a true artist. He is a success. He is a man whom people will want to know, will claim to know, and whose art they will buy, and as such, anyone he considers a friend is deemed acceptable.

Bram’s heart is dancing by the time he is close enough to Lilith to breathe her in. For a moment he cannot speak, cannot find the words that he has formed in his mind so many times, in so many places, for so long. Now, in her presence once again, his yearning for her is too great. He cannot articulate it, but neither can he speak to her of anything else. Not now. Not this time. He starts to panic that she will think him displeased that she has come, will misinterpret his silence as hostility and slip away from him again.

“Don’t go,” he says at last.

She smiles at this. Just smiles.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I found I couldn’t not. In the end.” She glances at the nearest painting. It is of a campfire next the Rufiji at night, with faces aglow from the low flames. “They are wonderful. Quite wonderful,” she says.

“The faces or the paintings?”

“Both.”

They fall silent again, but she has turned her gaze back upon him and holds him in it. Lilith’s eyes are wet with tears she does her best to blink away. Bram becomes aware that people are moving toward them.

This moment will pass and I will lose her again!

Recklessly, he says, “I hear you are to be married.”

She shakes her head slowly, the tears now falling despite her efforts. “No, I am not,” she tells him. “Not anymore. Not now.”

He snatches her hand and presses it to his lips, tasting the saltiness of her dripped tears on the fine, white leather.

*   *   *

When Fordingbridge announces a caller, Stricklend reacts with mild irritation. He was about to leave his office, and was looking forward with some relish to an evening in his rooms at the top of Admiralty Arch, taking in the sunset over the palace while enjoying a well-earned glass of single malt whiskey. He has had a testing day, compelled to sit through dreary meetings concerning the reorganization of civil service departments, a business that has been grinding on ever since the end of the war well over a year ago now. If any real progress has been made it is hard to see where, and Stricklend feels as if the matter is simply an exercise in giving people who no longer have a purpose in Whitehall something to do.

“Who is it, Fordingbridge?” he asks, with little interest in the answer.