The car was a BMW, the latest model, black, sleek, and glossy. I got in. John got in. Neither of us spoke while he drove, with painstaking attention to the laws of the road, along Gabesbergs-trasse, past Königsplatz, with its museums and its pretentious pseudo-Greek gateway, and finally onto a quiet side street where he pulled in to the curb and stopped. He sat watching the rearview mirror until a Fiat that had been behind us went on by. Then he turned to face me.

His eyes were still hazel, but the mustache was no longer in evidence. His eyebrows were darker and bushier; you would be surprised how drastically a small change like that can alter a person’s appearance. There was a new scar on his face, perceptible only at close range—a thin white line running from the corner of one eye across his temple and under his hair.

I had thought of a number of things I wanted to say in that first private confrontation—some cutting, some subtly sarcastic, and all, of course, cool, calm, and detached. Now that the moment had come, I couldn’t speak or move. All I could see was that small pale scar, surely the memento of his encounter with my would-be killer. It had barely missed his eye. I wondered how many other new scars marked his body. I wondered why he had taken such a terrible risk…and, most of all, I wondered why he just sat there, staring dumbly, as I sat staring back at him.

Finally his eyes shifted; they scanned my face, with painstaking slowness, feature by feature. Then he raised his hand. One fingertip touched my cheek and glided lightly from the cheekbone to the corner of my mouth, along the curve of my jaw up to my ear, where his other fingers joined it to twine through my hair, cupping the back of my head. I was not conscious of other movement, his or mine, until our lips met.

He withdrew as delicately as he had advanced, settling himself behind the wheel as behind a barricade and presenting another barricade in the form of a bland, impassive profile.

“Cigarette?” he inquired politely.

“I don’t smoke. How trite of you, John.”

“I have become trite—commonplace—conventional. High time, wouldn’t you say?”

He was not as cool as he pretended. There was the slightest possible tremor of his hand as he reached for the lighter. I thought I was doing better until I realized I was still leaning toward him, lips parted and expectant, hands reaching. I sat up, smoothed my skirt, and folded my hands primly in my lap.

“So you’ve become respectable. What have you been doing since I saw you last?”

“As you say, I’ve become respectable. Nice little cottage in the country, nice honest job….”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it, any more than I could help asking the next question.

“Nice little wife?”

That shocked John out of his calm. “Good God, no. What a horrible thought.”