He had told Emily that he loved her and had meant it no less than he meant it now. But he had been immature then and too callow to grasp how the world would test his vows. He hadn’t understood that the ignorance and inexperience of youth provided fertile ground for self-delusion and vanity, which could lead him to betray his best intentions. These years later, he knew the heart was deceitful above all things and required constant self-judgment; all hope and happiness depended on never lying to himself and at all costs being faithful to the vows he made.

With “I love you,” he was pledged to this woman beyond reason, no longer primarily driven to find the truth of her, but to prove that the truth of her was benign. Intuition, that primary form of knowledge, coming before all learning and reasoning, told him she was fundamentally good, innocent, and a victim of someone, not a victimizer. His investigation of her would now be an investigation on her behalf, an unstinting effort to vindicate her, to free her from those to whom she might in some way be indentured.

He was no longer driven by reasoned suspicion, which had availed him little. He was motivated instead by pure and powerful emotion, which was a dangerous but exhilarating path to follow.

| 49 |

Afterward, Maddison switched off the lamp and pressed against him, her head on his chest.

Neither of them spoke for a while. Sometimes no words could translate and well express the language of the heart.

David listened to a night breeze winging down the roof and warbling like doves nesting in the pockets of the eaves.

In a voice hardly louder than a whisper, Maddison said, “I’m a needy creature, Davey.”

“We all are,” he said.

“Me more than most. I need affection. I need it like air. I need to be loved.”

“You are. I love you. I love you very much.”

“I need to be loved every day, every hour. I know so well the loneliness of being unloved. Until you, I’ve been starved for love all my life.”

“Surely not.”

“But I have. Starved. And now I can’t get my fill. Until you, life was . . . a horror.”

The word unsettled him because she spoke with such sincerity.

“Horror? For a girl with your mind, your heart, your charm? How could that ever be?”

For a while, she seemed to be listening to his heart. Then she said, “Loneliness, enduring fear, a sense that society has gone mad and I’m falling, falling through the madness of it. That’s horror enough for me.”