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tell myself that I was only buying flowers to make the studio look nice, but they were for you.”
    â€œI wanted to bring you things,” Polly said. “On the days we had lunch I used to take a bath in the morning, when I always take a bath at night. I used to think for days ahead what I was going to wear. I wanted to bring you flowers and I wanted to bake you some madeleines but I was afraid to. Oh, Lincoln! Is this what lovers do? Do they lie in bed talking about how they came to feel what they feel?”
    â€œIt’s one of the best parts,” Lincoln said.
    â€œI wish my life were simpler,” said Polly. “If only I could say to myself: It’s heavenly to lie around like this, and it’s perfectly fine, too. But it isn’t, for me. I can’t help thinking what my family would say if they knew.”
    By this time Lincoln knew whether “family” meant Henry or Polly’s parents and brothers.
    â€œYou always hate it when I say this,” Polly said, “but I feel unworthy. Don’t be cross. My family puts a lot of stock by the straight and narrow. They believe in what’s upright and true.”
    â€œIf you don’t mind my saying,” Lincoln said, “they believe in it; you are it. It makes me mad that they don’t know a thing about you. You let them crowd you.”
    â€œThey don’t crowd me so much that I don’t get to you,” Polly said. “Here I am in your bed, right up next to you. I’m a fallen woman in your behalf.”
    Lincoln sat up and pulled Polly up with him. He put his arms around her and held her very tight.
    â€œI want to go away with you,” he said. “There’s a chance that a gallery in Paris may give me a one-man show. I’d have to be there. It would be this spring. Would you come with me?”
    Polly wriggled from his embrace. The idea of going off to Paris with Lincoln had the effect on her that a roller coaster has on a stomach. Wanting rushed from her head to her toes in a gush, making her dizzy. Instantly she realized that she had never wanted anything so much in her life. Instantly she realized how impossible it was. She burst into tears. Her big, creamy shoulders heaved. All the Solo-Millers, even the lean Henry, Jr., were broad in the shoulders and long in the flanks. Polly had the body of a swimmer, but more lush. Her flesh was peachy and smooth. She had fine, strong hands. When she was upset her eyes darkened. Her thick hair was mussed and she looked wild with emotion.
    â€œCome with me,” said Lincoln.
    â€œI can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” she wept. Then she collected herself a little. “I’m sorry, Lincoln. This really rips me up. I can’t leave the country—it’s too drastic.”
    â€œYou didn’t go to Vermont either,” Lincoln said.
    A month after their love affair had begun, Lincoln had asked Polly to go to Vermont with him, just overnight, to an inn. Henry was away, and it would have been easy enough for Polly to invent a reading conference, Lincoln said. Polly had balked. Her parents could have taken the children for the weekend, but what would she have told them? Suppose something had happened to Henry or the children and they had called the inn to find her? It had been too guilt-inducing, too complicated, and too overt for Polly to bear. And by not doing it she had condemned herself constantly to thinking about it: of herself and Lincoln walking through a stand of birches, of waking up together in the same bed, of going to sleep together.
    â€œHow wonderful it would be,” said Polly, wiping her tears away with her arm. “I would love to go to Paris more than I can say, but when I got there it would be awful.”
    â€œAwful?” said Lincoln. He put his arms around her. His darling, tactful Polly almost never slipped. It was very clear to him how miserable she must be.
    â€œYou know what I mean,”