He is glad of her laughter to break the tension and with the first brief lines he has started, he is in, and he relaxes into the curve and the sound of his own pencil strokes.

“You’ve broken your nose at some point.”

“Goodness. I’m not accustomed to such scrutiny.” Cassie puts her hands to her face as if newly aware of its shape.

Ralph laughs. “There, you see—revenge! A taste of your own medicine!”

“Yes.” She narrows her eyes at her husband. “I was a terrible tomboy. My mother despaired. I had three older brothers and was very keen on following them up trees.”

Cassie’s eyes are gray and heavily lidded, but with a lively sparkle. Her eyebrows have a high arch, so that she constantly looks either doubtful or amused.

“From Venice. A honeymoon present,” she says, pulling at the link of beads around her neck, turning them in her hand.

“Is she fidgeting?” Ralph asks from behind a newspaper.

“Terribly.”

“She always fidgets. Anyone would think that she had fleas.”

“Is there a Mrs. Blythe?” Cassie asks.

Harry’s pencil stops. For a second he falters, thinking that she means Edie. “No. I’m really not much of a prospect.”

“Cass, don’t pry,” says Ralph, emerging from behind a headline about ultimatums being issued to Germany. “Cassie always wants there to be a hidden-away romantic story line. She tries to rootle them out of people—and, if they’re not there to be rootled, she’ll impose one.”

“Not a prospect, indeed!” Cassie’s beads twirl around in a circle. “You’ve got a wonderfully old-fashioned face, like a shepherd boy who might point at a miracle in a painting, or an innocent in a William Blake watercolor. There’s something beautifully melancholy about you.”

“Steady on. She’ll be pairing you up next, have you quaking beside a woman in white before you know it. You will be beautifully melancholy then.”

Harry thinks of the white nightdress at Rachel’s feet, and then of Edie’s face as she described his mother’s black nightdress rising from the vat of dye. He’s not sure that he’s up for being paired off.

“Oh, shush,” says Cassie.

Ralph replenishes glasses and peers over Harry’s shoulder. “He’s being kind to you,” he says to his wife.

“And so he should.”

They sit quietly for a while. Cassie’s eyelids droop farther and Harry wonders if she is going to fall asleep. The only noise is the lazy clink of beads through her fingers, the occasional crack from the fire, and the scratch of his pencil on paper.