“You don’t trust your intuition in everything then.”

She gave me a severe look, and then lightly took my arm as she led me on. “If there was a Department of Young Men I should certainly take you to it. I would like to have you identified.”

“And then keep me labeled on a shelf?”

“I might give you as a present to someone.”

“Am I yours to give?”

She looked through the windows at the gallery’s end.

“I should like the whole world. I could give it to something so much better than what possesses it now.”

A wistful smile at me, both self-mocking and self-revealing. She was defining possession, and giving. Was that why we had met in a museum? Could anyone possess anything? Tailboys, tables, Chippendale mirrors—we were walking in a world of objects possessed by nothing but themselves. Giving and possessing seemed infinitely superficial and transitory; the decor was chosen.

She pressed my arm after a long moment, then let go of it. “They say there’s a plate like mine on display. Just through here.”

We went into a long deserted gallery of china. Once again she seemed to know her way about—had rehearsed?—because she went straight to one of the walicases. She took the plate out of her basket and held it up, walking along, until from the back of a group of cups and jugs an almost identical blue and white plate was staring at her. I went beside her.

“That’s it.”

She compared them; wrapped her own loosely in its tissue paper again; and then, taking me completely by surprise, presented it.

“It’s for you.”

“But—”

“Please.” She was smiling at my ginger look.

“But really… I mean…”

“I bought it with Alison.” She corrected herself. “Alison was with me when I bought it.”

She pushed it into my hands. I unwrapped it. In the middle of the plate there was a naïvely drawn Chinaman and his wife; two children between them. A remote echo; peasants traveling steerage, the swell, the night wind.

“Supposing I break it.”

“I think you should get used to handling fragile objects.”

She made the double-meaning very plain. I looked down at the plate again, the small inky-blue figures.

“That’s really why I asked to meet you.”

Our eyes met; she gently mocked by embarrassment.

“Shall we go and have our tea?”

“Well,” she said, “why you really asked to meet me.”

We had found a table in the corner.

“Alison.”

The waitress brought the tea things. Those teas at Bourani; I wonder if she had chosen that on purpose as well.

“I told you.” Her eyes rose to meet mine. “It depends on her.”

“And on you.”

“No. Not in the least on me.”

“Is she in London?”

“I have promised her not to tell you where she is.”

“Look, Mrs. Seitas, I think—” but I swallowed what I was going to say. I watched her pour the tea; not otherwise helping me. “What the hell does she want? What am I supposed to do?”

“Is that too strong?” I shook my head impatiently at the cup she passed.

Her eyes weighed mine. She seemed to decide to say nothing; then changed her mind. “My dear, I never take anger at its face value.”

I wanted to shrug off that “my dear” as I had wanted to shake off her hands the week before; but she placed it with a faultless precision of tone. It was condescending, but its condescension was justified, a statement of the difference between our two experiences of life; and there was something discreetly maternal in it, a reminder to me that if I rebelled against her judgment, I rebelled against my own immaturity; if against her urbanity, against my own lack of it.

I looked down.

“I’m not prepared to wait much longer.”

“Then she will be well rid of you.”

I drank some of the tea. She began calmly to spread honey over her toast.

I said, “My name is Nicholas.” Her hands were arrested, her eyes probed mine. I went on, “Is that the right votive offering?”

“If it is made sincerely.”

“As sincerely as your offer of help was the other day.”

She went on with her toast. “Did you go to Somerset House?”

“Yes.”

She put down her knife.

“Wait as long as Alison makes you wait. I do not think it will be very long. But I can’t do anything to bring her to you. Now it is simply between you and her. I hope, I hope very much that she will forgive you. But I shouldn’t be too sure that she will. You still have to gain her back.”

“There’s gaining back to be done on both sides.”

“Perhaps. That is for the two of you to settle.” She stared a moment longer at me, then looked down with a smile. “The godgame is ended.”

“The what?”

“The godgame.” Her eyes were on mine again; at their gentlest.

“The godgame.”

“Because there are no gods. And it is not a game.”

She began to eat her toast, as if to bring us back to normal. I looked past her at the busy, banal tearoom. The discreet chink of cutlery on china; sounds as commonplace as sparrows’ voices.

“Is that what you call it?”

She said, “I’m not going to talk about it, but yes… that is, well, a kind of nickname we use.”

She went on demurely eating.

I said, “If I had any self-respect left, I’d get up and walk out.”

Her eyes crinkled. “Please don’t. I’m counting on you to get me a taxi in a minute. We’ve been doing Benjie’s school shopping today.”

“I can’t see Demeter in a department store.”

“No? I think she would have liked them. Even the gaberdine mackintoshes and gym shoes.”

“And does she like questions? About the past?”

“That depends on the questions.”

“The things Maurice told me—the First World War, the count with the chateau, Norway—were they in any way true?”

“What is truth?”

“Did they happen?”

“Does it matter if they did not?”

“Yes. To me”

“Then it would be unkind of me to tell you.”

She looked down at her hands, aware of my impatience. “Maurice once said to me—when I had just asked him a question rather like yours—he said, An answer is always a form of death.”

There was something in her face. It was not implacable; but in some way impermeable.

“I think questions are a form of life.”

“You’ve heard of John Leverrier?”

I said cautiously, “Yes. Of course.”

“I think he must know far more about Maurice than you do. Do you know why?” I shook my head. “Because he never tried to know more.”

I traced patterns with the cake fork on the tablecloth; determined to seem guarded, unconvinced.

“What happened to you that first year?”

“The desire to help him through following years.” She was smiling again, but she went on. “I will tell you that it all began one weekend, not even that, one long night of talking… perhaps it was no more than that we were bored. I think historically bored—as one was in the entre-deux-guerres. Certain leaps were taken. Certain gaps bridged. I imagine—don’t you?—all new discoveries happen like that. Very suddenly. And then you spend years trying to work them out to their limits.”

For a time we sat in silence. Then she spoke again.

“For us, Nicholas, our success is never certain. You have entered our secret. And now you are a radioactive substance. We hope to keep you stable. But we are not sure.” She smiled. “Someone… rather in your position… once said to me that I was like a pool. He wanted to throw a stone into me. But I am not so calm in these situations as I may look.”

“I think you handle them very intelligently.”

“Touché.” She bowed her head. Then she said, “Next week I’m going away—as I do every autumn when the children are off my hands. I shan’t be hiding, but just doing what I do every September.”

“You’ll be with Maurice?”

“Yes.”

Something curiously like an apology lingered in the air; as if she knew the strange twinge of jealousy I felt and could not pretend that it was not justified; that whatever richness of relationship and shared experience I suspected, existed.