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tingle to spread to her limbs. She takes another sip and gives the cup back to him.
    Since dinner, Haskell has loosened his collar. His jacket lies over the back of the wicker rocker on which he is sitting. She is painfully aware of her bare ankles and feet, which she tries to hide by sitting up straighter and tucking the offending appendages out of sight.
    Setting the cup aside, John Haskell leans back in his chair, which is so close to hers that if she extended her hand, she could touch his knee. The shivering begins in earnest in her upper arms.
    “You lingered at the seawall too long a time,” he says.
    “It is the night of the summer solstice,” she answers, as if that were explanation enough.
    “So it is. You were too kind to me in your earlier comments on my book.”
    And there it is, she thinks, the dismissal. But she is mistaken.
    “You would seem to be my perfect reader,” he adds.
    “Of course not,” she says quickly. “Your intent will be apparent to any reader.”
    “If I can but reach them,” he says. “I fear I have erred in producing a book that will have only a handful of readers. I should have published a pamphlet, as my instincts originally urged me to. But pride, I fear, got the better of me.”
    “You feel some urgency to reach a wide audience?” she asks.
    “I must,” he says. “The conditions are appalling. Enlightenment, I fear, has been replaced by successive layers of contempt and neglect.”
    “I see,” she says. She knows that she should go up and change into dry clothes, but she is unwilling to leave the porch just at that moment. “And you wish to regain some of that lost ground?” she asks.
    He shakes his head. “Nothing so grand,” he says. “It is the health of the millworkers with which I must first concern myself. Their personal health, their sanitary conditions, their medical care, all of which are quite wretched, I can assure you.”
    “And so you will work at the clinic.”
    “Yes, I have already begun.”
    A small silence fills the space between them.
    “It is more than kind of you to ask to see the pictures,” he says.
    “I
should
like to see them,” she repeats.
    “Well, then I shall send for them.”
    “I would not want you to go to any trouble,” she says.
    “No, none at all.”
    “I must go,” she says, standing abruptly. And in doing so, her hair, which has been jostled in her walk across the lawn (or perhaps in the startled movement of her head when the sea soaked her skirt), lists slightly to one side and releases a comb, which clatters to the porch floor. John Haskell, who has stood with her, bends to retrieve it.
    “Thank you,” she says, holding the comb in her palm.
    “How poised you are,” he says suddenly. He tilts his head, as if to examine her from another angle. “How self-possessed. Quite extraordinary in a young woman of your age. I think it must be a result of your singular education.”
    She opens her mouth, but she cannot think how to reply.
    “I was there yesterday,” he says. “On the beach. I saw you at the beach.”
    She shakes her head wordlessly, then turns on her heel, belying in an instant the truth of Haskell’s compliment.

A FTER HER ENCOUNTER with John Haskell on the porch, Olympia climbs up to her bedroom in an agitated state. She opens the window, puts her hands on the sill, and bends her head. A fine dampness covers her face and hair and throat.
    She dresses in a white linen nightdress, a garment she has not worn since the previous summer. The thinness of the fabric is a pleasure to her, although she notes that she has grown so much during the winter months that the sleeves are at least an inch too short. At the cuffs is a delicate tatting her mother has knotted, tatting being a skill that suits her invalid status and one she has tried to pass on to her daughter without success. Olympia sits on her bed and, as usual, plaits her hair, her feet bare against the slightly damp wooden floorboards. She has long