The ordinariness and peacefulness of that child’s life lay, in memory, like a cooling shadow on the too-heightened moments of her present existence.

He made love to her and she to him, and she could feel her body drawing itself up from far off, coming closer and closer to that invisible point of her coming—like shock waves; she trembled all over. The little waves rippled over her and began to converge at her groin. She felt doors opening, whole abysses opening as her entire body flexed itself for ecstasy. And when it came over her it was an explosion of everything that had been held back, taut and trembling, to await that moment. She came strongly, spasms overcoming her and making her thrust him away in the excess of feeling. She pushed at him, clung to his hand in a fierce grip, heard him groan. To die like that—entwined, indissoluble, not alone.

From a distance came the screams of Principessa Spada; below them in the street, two loud jabbering women had passed by. Other voices came, filtered through the night from below, behind, around them. All those people walking, talking, discussing, raging, figuring, attacking, thinking, sublimating; and they, there, immobile now in each other’s arms.

“I love fires,” she said after a while. “I remember wondering why we never had them in our fireplaces at home. The fireplaces were all set up—logs on andirons and all the tools right there, but they were never lit.”

“You didn’t need them. Your house was heated by radiators, wasn’t it?”

“Massimo! I don’t mean for heat! I mean for love or friendship or just feeling good together. You know what I mean.”

Like this, she thought; when before had she ever had this same balm of serenity? This beautiful understanding?

“I feel at such peace here,” he said. “It’s as if I leave all my afflictions outside these walls. My work . . . the book that’s still to finish . . . all my problems . . . even my ulcer. Everything disappears. We go well together. If we had met sooner, we could have had our lives together.”

“We can still have it—forevermore.” But even as the syllables “forever” formed she knew the word shouldn’t have been pronounced. What made her say it? What made her bring into their little room the notion of time? Of all the words in the love lexicon “forever” is the worst, and once it’s said, it’s like a sinister, reverberating echo that never stops. What pushes it into utterance is the beginning of doubt, the premonitions that happiness must have an end. Marguerite would have taken it back, but there it was, out of reach, among the shadows flickering on the walls. She put her hand in his. The best, as Massimo always told her, was not to think.