Kay was a young woman, barely more than a girl, standing in a public washroom applying lipstick, the ruby red putty people wore in those days.

“Slightly,” she answered carefully.

“I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him,” the woman said.

Kay slipped quickly past a row of women who were saying things women had always said. The same things their mothers and grandmothers have said, shaking the same powder across their broad or narrow noses and peering at their dabbed, genetically condemned faces or at a broken nail, probably bitten, held up and examined in the weak light. No, she did not trust Philip Halliwell. But she had fallen under his spell. That’s what it felt like, being under a spell. She had, in fact, after a two-week courtship, married him. It was a secret marriage because she was still a student, working in the field of early English manuscripts. She lived in a women’s residence and held a prestigious scholarship which would have been jeopardized, or so they reasoned. All this was years and years ago.

Recently she was in the hospital for a week (tests, bone scans, which turned out negative, thank God) and Philip sent a basket of hydrangea. She hadn’t seen him for six months, and so the gift surprised her. But she didn’t know how to look after these particular flowers, and the nurses were too rushed off their feet to lend a hand. She took the nearly dead plant home, and on the way through the hospital corridor two people stopped her and instructed her in the care of hydrangeas. “Never let the roots go dry,” one said. The other said, “Water daily, but don’t allow the roots to actually stand in water.”

Many people resent advice, and Kay has never been able to understand this. A man she knows, Nils Almquist, a cataloger in the museum where she works, tells her that this resistance to advice is a Teutonic failing, that people from Mediterranean countries-Greece, Italy, Spain-routinely ask the advice of their friends and relatives before making a major decision. It is a sign of courtesy to seek counsel. People whose opinion is sought are flattered, and at the same time no one is strictly bound to accept what is offered. This arrangement strikes Kay as having a good deal of human flexibility to it, and a crafty balance of consolation and hoarded-up responsibility.