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still trailed clouds of lackeys to do his bidding and bank accounts to pay them with. He behaved as if a Rolls-Royce waited at the door and a dozen appointments were being ignored as he railed at Letitia. He behaved, in short, as if he was still the same George Damarosch who once had a right to enter this room unannounced—who could come here just because he wanted to: because he was George Damarosch. But now, as he began to speak again, it was the new George who spoke: the one in the crumpled suit and the dusty shoes.
    “I have loved you since I first set eyes on those hands, Titty. How well—how easily I remember. That hand that lifted back your hair on a summer’s day. You were the Little Virgin then, in earnest. How we all loved you, Titty. Every one of us. The whole of America sat at your feet, those lovely little Virginal feet. That day at Falconridge, and you, dressed in blue—always in blue—dancing across the lawn with Bully. Damn! Damn Bully Moxon! Laughing. Laughing. Oh—such laughter. You were every dream I ever dreamed come true.”
    “Yes. I remember. It was so.”
    “Carving your name on the steps…”
    “One down from Wally Reid, one up from Marie Dressier.”
    “Not a fitting place, between those two, but how was I to know? Oh, Titty, how was I to know? Nobody knew how great and powerful you would become.”
    “George?”
    “Yes?”
    “The Little Virgin needs your help.”
    “Anything. Anything.”
    “I need a million dollars.”
    George dropped his sherry glass on the floor. It was empty.
    “I haven’t got a million dollars,” he said. “I haven’t got any. You know that. I’m broke—forgotten.”
    “Will you get it for me?”
    “No.”
    “Then, good-bye.”
    “Good-bye? You’re mad.”
    “Good-bye, George.”
    “No!”
    “Yes. Good-bye.”
    George went to the center of the room. The window behind him, cruel, showed his roundness and the shortness of his stature.
    “May I have—one—last look?”
    “No, George. No more looking.”
    “Oh, please. Just one…last look, Letitia.”
    “No.”
    “Your hand. Not even your hand? Your foot?”
    “Good-bye.”
    George went to the door. “Why do you want a million dollars, Titty?”
    There was a pause. She would dissemble, just a little.
    He didn’t know it, but she smiled.
    “To save America, George,” she said. “That is my mission.”
    To save America?
    “I hope you get it, then.”
    “I will.”
    “Yes. I suppose you will, being you.”
    “So?”
    “Good-bye, Little Bitch.”
    “Good-bye, George.”
    He was gone. The door clicked.
    From the bed, a sigh. Longer than before. Quite final.
    The Little Virgin’s appointments were over.

The Chronicle of
the First Butterfly
    August 8th to September 16th, 1938:
    Western North America

    The journey covered a distance of roughly fifteen hundred miles. It began on an island off the coast of British Columbia and ended just south of Santa Monica, California.
    The traveler was a butterfly—a monarch (Danaüs plexippus), a male. It had spent the past few months on the edges of a pine forest near a quiet inlet on the southeast coast of its island. The prevailing winds blew from the northwest.
    On the eighth day of August, a Monday, it was sufficiently cool (sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit) and there was enough of the scent of flowers lying to the south to prompt the butterfly to commence its journey.
    Part of this journey would be over water, but the monarch would avoid this whenever possible.
    For a week it moved steadily southward, roosting between twilight and dawn—more because of the cooling air than the darkness. Its roosting sites were near water if possible, and the trees it chose were maples and pines. Occasionally it found a willow tree, but these were rare.
    It fed on its way from the abundant fields of nectar-filled flowers that were scattered in its path. Prize feasts were provided by late-blooming milkweed. It had first spread its wings earlier that summer on the