“But will you be all right, Esther?” He stood up, a deep frown on his face, and looked down at her. “It’s such a horrible story – the worst I ever heard. Will you be all right, here alone?”

She nodded again. “For tonight, yes. Nothing can happen. I’ll say nothing to her.”

“And tomorrow?”

Esther smiled enchantingly. “Tomorrow will all be different. Tomorrow is our day, Harry. I’ll talk to her, and then we can be together.”

“I’ll come and fetch you,” he said. “What time?”

“I’ll call you. I’ve been longing to use the telephone.”

“Where will you be?”

Harry Grant hesitated. “At the paper, I guess. There’s this story … What shall I do about it, Esther? It will all have to come out.”

“You write it,” she said. “Write everything.”

“There’s no way round it.”

“I know,” she said. “Write it – write it for me. And then we can be happy.”

“I love you, Esther.”

“Always do that.” She held out her arms, and he bent and kissed her gently. “And always do that.”

“Go to bed now,” he said. “And take care of yourself. If you like, I’ll talk to her in the morning.”

“No,” said Esther. “I want to do it. There are some things I have to say, good things as well as hard things. There was a time when she was everything to me … You begin writing the story, and suddenly you’ll hear my voice on the telephone.”

He smiled. “There’s a thing to look forward to.” Then he kissed her again, repeating: “Take care of yourself, Esther,” and made towards the door and the fire ladder. He turned for a last look at her: she was still sitting on the bed, smiling at him, but drooping now on the very edge of exhaustion. It came to him then that there would be other times when he would love her, when she would be strong or drowsy in his naked arms; but at that moment he loved her very much, without further need for either of them.

Harry Grant was never wholly clear how he spent the rest of that night. It was past one o’clock when he got back to his car, but he was as far from sleep as he had ever been: the turmoil of his thoughts, the mingled love and pity, the enormous challenge of the story he must write, all burned inside his brain unceasingly.

By now, it was too late for him to return to the paper; his story would have to keep until morning. But there was no danger of its disappearing … He went downtown first, for a drink at an all-night bar off Boylston Street; then he started driving, far along the coast road towards Scituate Beach, then inland in a great circle through wooded country and lonely moors, then back to Boston with the dawn coming up on his right hand, and a wild thirst nagging him again.

It was not a night for drunkenness, and he did not get drunk. But the thoughts within his skull were heady and chaotic enough; and as the hours of that night went by, he might well have been drunk, so wayward, downcast, and exalted did he become by turns.