“I’ll win out,” I said with a little uneasy laugh, a tiny giddy happiness at seeing him. Then a shrug. “Don’t you know that by now? I always do.”

But I was amazed that he’d found me here, that he had come so close to dawn. And I was trembling still from all my mad imaginings, that she had come, come as she had in my dreams, and I had wanted to know why.

I was worried for him suddenly; he seemed so fragile with his pallid skin and long delicate hands. And yet I could feel the cool strength emanating from him as I always had, the strength of the thoughtful one who does nothing on impulse, the one who sees from all angles, who chooses his words with care. The one who never plays with the coming sun.

He drifted back away from me, abruptly, and he slipped silently out the door. I went after him, failing to lock the door behind me, which was unforgivable, I suppose, for the peace of churches should never be disturbed, and I watched him walk through the cold black morning, along the sidewalk near the Pontalba Apartments, across from the square.

He was hurrying in his subtle graceful way, with long easy strides. The light was coming, gray and lethal, giving a dull gleam to the shopwindows beneath the overhanging roof. I could stand it for another half hour, perhaps. He could not.

I realized I didn’t know where his coffin was hidden, and how far he had to go to reach it. I had not the slightest idea.

Before he reached the corner nearest the river, he turned around. He gave a little wave to me, and in that gesture there was more affection than in anything he had said.

I went back to close up the church.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE next night, I went at once to Jackson Square.

The terrible norther had finally come down into New Orleans, bringing with it a freezing wind. This sort of thing can happen at any time during the winter months, though some years it happens not at all. I’d stopped at my rooftop flat to put on a heavy wool overcoat, delighted as before that I had such feeling now in my newly bronzed skin.

A few tourists braved the weather to visit the cafés and bakeries still open near the cathedral; and the evening traffic was noisy and hurried. The greasy old Café du Monde was crowded behind its closed doors.

I saw him immediately. What luck.

They had chained the gates of the square, as they always did now at sunset, a dreadful annoyance, and he was outside, facing the cathedral, looking anxiously about.

I had a moment to study him before he realized I was there. He was a little taller than I am, six feet two, I figured, and he was extremely well built, as I’d seen before. I’d been right about the age. The body couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. He was clad in very expensive clothes—a fur-lined raincoat, very well tailored, and a thick scarlet cashmere scarf.