“Dance with me,” she said, and led him by the hand away from the water.

At some drink-sodden, danced-out stage of the night—maybe 2:00 a.m., maybe 3:00—the barge began to let in water. Its owner, the man in the artist’s smock who’d swung the cat, started panicking and shouting to everyone to go home, while his wife, a sloe-eyed woman with frizzy hair, bailed bucket after bucket of water out of the boat.

Up on the Quai de Conti, an inebriated Lulu was running around telling as many people as she could get hold of, including passersby who had nothing to do with the barge party, that they should come along to a place on the nearby Rue de Lille for a late-night “gathering.”

“I’d better get home,” said Genevieve. “Robert will have got back hours ago.”

“Oh, don’t be boring, chérie! Anyway, he’ll have gone to bed, won’t he? So what does it matter if you stay out another few hours?”

“I suppose you’re right.” She should go home all the same, she knew it. But she was giddy with drink. It was easier to let herself be swept along by Lulu than to make the decision to go home. She didn’t want to have to think about Robert.

“It’s a great place,” said Lulu excitedly. “Wild! You’ll see.”

“Whose house is it?” asked Genevieve. They were arriving, at the head of a motley and raucous procession, at a white-fronted mansion that was loud with jazz, the front door wide open.

“I don’t remember,” said Lulu.

“So how do you know it’s so great?”

“I don’t remember that either. Anyway, who cares, chérie? It’s party-time!” And in she ran.

“Genevieve.” A hand on her arm. Zachari. “I’ve wanted to speak to you for hours. But you were always with that man. The American in the cream suit. Who is he?”

“Jealous, are we?” She heard the petulance in her voice. She’d wanted him to be jealous, of course she had. But she hadn’t meant to say that.

He withdrew his hand. “Be careful, Genevieve. Of that man.”

Again the death-head sketch was behind her eyes. “Why? What do you know about him?”

A shrug. “Nothing. Call it instinct.”

Genevieve moved away from the doorway and the stream of partygoers, and leaned against the trunk of a plane tree. “I wish you’d just leave me alone.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I have to mean it.”

He took a step closer. “I know you’re frightened, Genevieve. Of me, and of yourself.”

“That’s rubbish.”

“You’re frightened of your passion. Of what it could do to you and your marriage. If you set it loose again.”

She let herself look at his neck. There was the freckle. If she kept her gaze on the freckle, it would be all right. She could stay in control.