“They’re worth more than I can pay—three hundred dollars probably.”

Annie gasped. Greenhouse must have been crazy. Theda observed, “People like that, it excites them to pay a good deal of money for things. It reminds them of how much they have. I’ll give you two hundred. What do you need it for?”

She looked out to Theda’s lawn where a small white goat was tethered.

“Does the goat know you?”

“I should hope to Jesus it does!”

“I mean—does it recognize you, like a dog?”

“Not so I’m oppressed by it, just enough. Enough for me.”

“Theda, I’m going away. I’m going to Europe.”

Theda disappeared into the kitchen and returned with sandwiches and coffee.

“Graveyard,” she said. “Why do you want to go to a graveyard?” She looked despondent; her shoulders drooped forward. “Didn’t you try once before? Didn’t they turn you down?” And then, as though the words were flying through her mind and she must snatch at them, “How can you think of it! The air is still full of the smoke of the crematoriums! I can hear the cries—I can hear the crying of children—I can hear the last breath of the children. Have you seen the pictures? Have you seen them stacked up in layers, and the villagers, have you seen the faces of the villagers who knew nothing! Don’t you know the moral back of the world is broken forever! How can you step on ground where these things have happened! For your own entertainment? Because you’re bored? Because your mind is empty—” She sat down and rubbed her face with violent hands, then sprang up and went to a table and opened a drawer and took out a checkbook. She wrote a check and came back to Annie, who had pushed herself back against the wing chair. She thought Theda was going to strike her, but Theda merely handed her a check for two hundred dollars and said, “Come and eat your sandwiches.”

They ate in silence, Annie thinking how often Theda had fed her, had sheltered her, had listened so intently to her. The amber beads swung forward as she ate; her expression was abstracted. How deep the lines had become around her mouth! Annie put her hand on Theda’s arm. Farewells hung in the air; partings, changes. Theda put down her cup of coffee and enclosed Annie’s hand in her own.

“I’ll be sorry,” she said.

When Annie got up to leave, Theda said with a certain ferocity, “I want my old table back.” “I’ll get it back to you,” Annie promised. “Will you keep my books for me?” “As if I didn’t have enough goddamned books,” Theda grumbled.