It’s as if nothing has disturbed the peace of the cabin. The windows glow with warmth, the door stands open, inviting them to enter. She has the sensation of coming home. Demetrius closes the door, and the outside world fades away. By what clock they live concerns them not at all.

Edith knows she and Demetrius spend that winter in a clearing in the forest. They never leave and they travel far by staying. He teaches her to play the violin, they make love, dance and laugh.

When he tells her about his time as a shepherd she’s unsure if they aren’t both there on the mountain, for she feels the warmth of the sun and sees the meadow, the flight of the swallow, the rise of the lark.

She asks if he knows who his murderer was.

‘No,’ he says. ‘But I knew I would be killed.’

And the pang of guilt that she feels about his death rises, a serpent to bite her.

She says, quietly, ‘I was to blame. If I’d never promised to marry the butcher perhaps you’d still be alive.’

‘Nothing, my love, is that simple,’ he says. ‘I had a brother, younger than me, my parents’ favourite. He wanted to take over my father’s business. But in our family, the tradition is that the eldest son inherits it when his father retires.’

The light begins to fade, rooms fall and rise until all becomes still and Edith is with him in a house with a long, imposing passage. The walls are sliced in two; the lower part panelled, the upper part papered with a pattern of brooding lilies. The smell of dead flowers is noticeable. A thin young man with round glasses catches a maid and pushes her against the wall, bunching up her skirt with his other hand.

‘He always was subtle in his dealings with the ladies,’ says Demetrius.

‘Your brother?’

‘My brother.’

The light in the passage hisses and Edith doesn’t know if it all happens at the same time or if she is seeing an accumulation of isolated incidents. His mother, a large, matronly woman with a well-endowed bosom, is sitting in a blood-red drawing room, surrounded by a sea of pompous furniture, heavy with the weight of inheritance. She is talking to a stiff-backed lady whose low chair puts her at a disadvantage.

‘Mother is telling her friend that her daughter, Palonia, is lucky to be marrying an angel,’ says Demetrius.

‘Where is Palonia? And where is the angel?’

Demetrius laughs and only now does Edith notice the girl, crushed by her mother’s hopes for the impending marriage. Demetrius’ mother studies the girl as if to assure herself she’s worthy of being sacrificed on the altar of the family name.

‘The angel is my brother,’ says Demetrius, ‘and here’s my father.’