I poked into my potato; it was still hard in the center, and with my paper folded lengthwise I stood at the stove reading on. The trial of Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, had continued today, Guiteau conducting his own defense as usual; the inquiry into the Star Route scandals dragged along, an entire family living on an isolated Wyoming farm had been found scalped. My front doorbell jangled.

Newspaper at my side, I walked down the long, wide old hall in my carpet slippers, opened the front door, and Katie was standing in the hallway. In an ankle-length winter coat, a scarf tied on her head, she stood smiling nervously, waiting for me to say something. After a moment during which I just stood staring, she slid quickly past me and into the living room. I turned, automatically closing the front door behind me, saying, "Katie? What the hell?" But she was crossing the room, shrugging out of her coat. She tossed it to a chair and turned to face me in a bottle-green silk dress trimmed in white lace, buttoned at neck and wrists, and its hem, still swaying from the motion of her turn, brushed the insteps of her buttoned shoes. In one swift sweeping motion she peeled off her dark scarf as though afraid I'd make her keep it on if she didn't hurry. Her hair was parted in the middle, drawn straight back off her forehead, and gathered in a bun at the nape of the neck.

I had to smile with pleasure, she looked so good; that thick dark coppery hair, her pale slightly freckled skin, those big brown defiant eyes, with the shimmering bottle-green of her dress; she knew what she was doing when she picked that color. As soon as I smiled she said quickly, "I'm going with you, Si. To see the letter mailed. It's mine, and I'm going to see it, too!"

I like women, I never run them down as somehow inferior to men, and I have a contempt for men who do. And I think, for one thing, that women are just as principled as men — but they sure as hell aren't the same kind of principles. I knew I could trust Kate in virtually anything, relying on her absolutely, her sense of right and wrong as lively as mine. Yet now we argued interminably: Kate at the stove, where she'd taken over dinner preparations, I at the kitchen table, waiting; then, sharing my two chops, we continued the battle at dinner. I began to feel like a hick upholding my own stuffy notions of morality. Because it simply did not matter to Kate that this was a government project, of the utmost seriousness, brought into being at tremendous expense and effort, and involving important people from all over the country. With no trouble at all Kate saw through the transparency to the truth — the feminine truth — underneath the serious pretense. She knew this was really a great, big expensive fascinating toy; we were all of us playing with it, and like a determined tomboy on a playground shouldering her way into a circle of boys, she was damn well going to play, too.

I switched to practical arguments but that was a blunder. Because she was instantly able to point out — shaking her fork at me, her food getting cold — that she was prepared, too; that she'd learned as much about the 1880's as I had. As a matter of fact, she pointed out, she was better prepared now than I'd been at this time last night, because now she knew as I did that it was really possible.

Under my verbal argument lay the knowledge that she was right. I knew in my bones that I'd succeed tomorrow; it wasn't just optimism but a matter of certain knowledge. And I knew, if I can convey this, that the sheer strength of my certainty could carry Kate along with me. I knew absolutely that we could succeed, both of us, and in the living room after dinner, the dishes washed, the argument dwindled out.

I never agreed in so many words. But she was pacing back and forth arguing, that long skirt swinging and making an audible swishing sound as she'd turn. I sat watching her, having a little trouble now not to smile because she looked so fine — her hair had a new special shine as she'd pass under the gaslights of the overhead chandelier. She looked so great, I just got up, finally, walked over, took her in my arms, and kissed her. She responded, we kissed again, then she stepped back. She'd won; the arguing was over. We'd said it all and she knew I wasn't going to throw her out bodily. She said, "No more, Si. Only one thing matters, and that's success tomorrow. We can't let anything at all interfere with that."

During the days and weeks I'd spent here alone, I'd daydreamed about having Kate here with me, and now she was here. But what she'd just said was so clearly true that there could be no question about accepting it, and we spent a quiet, domestic evening of the eighties: reading Harper's Weekly, Leslie's, then trading; and finally, over a cup of tea, we played some dominoes.

We went to bed around ten thirty. While I turned out the overhead chandelier, Kate walked to the closet beside the front door. From the pocket of her heavy winter coat she brought out a rolled-up white bundle, her nightgown, and I smiled, shaking my head, at her certainty that I'd let her stay. My hand on the key of the little green-shaded student lamp on the game table where our dominoes still lay, I waited for Kate to light the hall light. I heard the faint pop of the gas, then the wavering light steadied on the wall of the hallway, and I turned out the student lamp.

Kate stood waiting in the doorway of her room; the L-shaped bracket of the open-flame hall light was just over her head and to the right of her doorway, and again I noticed the special glow that gaslight gave the red of her hair. She said, "Good night, Si; see you in the morning."

"Right. Good night, Kate."

"It's going to work, isn't it, Si?"

I nodded. "I think so. You shouldn't be here but I'm glad you are. And I think it'll work."

We spent most of the next day — once breakfast, the dishes, and the morning paper were out of the way — reading aloud. I got a coal fire going in the living-room fireplace first. Then I found, where I'd left it on the floor near the windows, the book I'd been reading when I'd glanced down at the park and seen the snowstorm — only day before yesterday, I was mildly shocked to realize. This was a book from the living-room shelves: a bright, fresh new copy of Tried for Her Life, by Mrs. Emma D.E.N. Southworth, published a year or so ago, in 1880. It was a two-bit paperback but there were no semi-naked women on the cover, just black type on plain red paper.

I gave Kate a synopsis of what I'd read so far, then — sitting comfortably slouched in a chair, my feet in carpet slippers up on a hassock — I found my place and picked up the story aloud. It was a good day to be in here, snug and comfortable, the fire occasionally snapping; outside it looked cold, the sky gray and completely overcast. " 'When Sybil recovered from her death-like swoon,' " I read, " 'she felt herself being borne slowly on through what seemed a narrow tortuous underground passage; but the utter darkness, relieved only by a little gleaming red taper that moved like a star before her, prevented her from seeing more. A presentiment of impending destruction possessed her, and overwhelming horror filled her soul and held her faculties.' " I looked up to smile at Kate, who was on the settee, her feet tucked under her. I was smiling in acknowledgment of this overblown prose; I was certain that reasonably sophisticated people of the eighties did smile a little at this sort of thing, too. But I didn't smile much, and Kate took her cue from me. I'd read a lot of these books now, and whatever slight amusement there might be in their style, it was worn thin long since, and — skipping a lot — I was able to read for the stories, which weren't any better or worse than many a modern mystery I'd read.

We took turns reading, stopping for coffee, and stopping for lunch, finishing the book by midafternoon. It ended the way nearly all these books did by giving you some idea of what happened to the characters after the story ended. It's not really a bad idea; I've read many a book and wished I had some notion of whatever happened after the final page to the people I'd come to know, especially those I liked. In fact, the better the book and more real the characters, the more I've wanted to know.