She let the curtains go, and when they dropped back into place she sighed with satisfaction, as though they had passed a test and carried the whole house to victory with them, and now she knew that the curtains and the walls and the long stairs up would stand fast and keep their appointed positions, all true weights to anchor her so that she would never get lost, because she was held safe where she belonged. She turned to Hubert and smiled at him. Then she remembered her hat and she put up her hands and began searching for the pins again.

“I’ll do that curtain tomorrow,” she said.

“Green curtains for your green eyes,” Hubert said, but he knew there was no comparison, because the curtains were a garish green and Rose’s eyes were the color of the sea.

When Rose was asleep her face looked solitary, and when she was awake she looked lonely. There was implacability and pride in her solitude, but her loneliness was helpless. Hubert could not reach her solitude, and he could not destroy her loneliness. He thought of the sea and did not know why. When she woke up suddenly, turning over in bed, that implacable solitude shone triumphantly in her eyes for an instant before loneliness shadowed them. Hubert marveled at her. He couldn’t understand why she had married him, and at the same time he couldn’t understand how she had lived until she married him.

“How did you ever get along before you met me?” he asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t remember.”

She was always smiling at him. She only stopped smiling in order to smile again.

One evening after tea he asked her if she had mended his socks. They were still sitting at the table — the shaky round table in the room with the green net curtains. They were two months married to the day, and Rose had bought a slice of dark fruit cake to celebrate the anniversary. She had cut the cake into fingers, and they had eaten it all except for one small piece, which lay on the plate between them. Hubert knew she wanted the cake but that she also wanted him to have it. He intended to give it to her, but he wanted to tease her. When he asked about the socks he was grinning. He still thought it absurd that Rose should do his mending. Rose had her elbows on the table and she was looking at her hands and admiring the one that wore the wedding ring. When she heard his question she looked at him in astonishment, as though he had deliberately said something he knew would hurt her.

“I forgot them,” she said. “I forgot to do your socks. Isn’t that just like me, to forget the one thing you asked me to do.”

“It’s not all that important,” Hubert said.