“Just what I…,” Sam was saying, and, “Nothing but a touch of…,” and, “Left some medication on the…” Then he and Mr. Maxwell were shaking hands, and he said, “Dee?” and she stood up without a word and stepped through the door that Mr. Maxwell held open.

Outside, the grass had grown white with dew and the air itself seemed white, as if dawn were not far off. Delia climbed into the car and started the engine before Sam was completely settled. “You have to feel for those folks,” he said, shutting his door. “Aging all alone like that, they must dwell on every symptom.”

Delia swung out into the street and drove slightly above the speed limit, concentrating, not speaking. They were nearly home before she said, “Mr. Maxwell told me they were your very first house call.”

“Really?”

“The second day you worked here.”

“I’d forgotten.”

“He said he asked which of the Felson girls you planned to marry and you said the youngest.”

“Hmm,” Sam said, unzipping his bag. He checked something inside and told her, “Delia, remind me tomorrow morning to pick up more-”

“‘The oldest is too short and the middle one’s too plump,’ you said, ‘but the youngest one is just right.’”

Sam laughed.

“Did you say that?” she asked him.

“Oh, sweetie, how would I remember after all these years?”

She pulled into their driveway and turned the engine off. Sam opened his door, but then, noticing she had not moved, he looked over at her. The little ceiling bulb cast sharp hollows in his face.

“You did say it,” she told him. “I recognize the fairy-tale sound of it.”

“So? Maybe I did,” he said. “Gosh, Dee, I wasn’t weighing every word. I might have said ‘too short’ and ‘too plump,’ but what I probably meant was ‘too unconventional’ and ‘too Francophile.’”

“That’s not it,” Delia said.

“Why, Linda spent half the evening speaking French, remember? And when your dad made her switch to English, she still had an accent.”

“You don’t even know what I’m objecting to, do you?” Delia asked.

“Well, no,” Sam said. “I don’t.”

She got out of the car and walked toward the back steps. Sam went to replace his bag in the Buick; she heard the clunk of his trunk lid.

“And Eliza!” he said as he followed her to the house. “She kept asking my opinion of homeopathic medicine.”

“You arrived here that very first day planning to marry one of the Felson girls,” Delia told him.

She had unlocked the door now, but instead of entering she turned to face him. He was looking down at her, with his forehead creased.

“Why, I suppose it must naturally have crossed my mind,” he said. “I’d completed all my training by then. I’d reached the marrying age, so to speak. The marrying stage of life.”

“But then why not a nurse, or a fellow student, or some girl your mother knew?”

“My mother?” he said. He blinked.

“You had your eye on Daddy’s practice, that’s why,” she told him. “You thought, Til just marry one of Dr. Felson’s daughters and inherit all his patients and his nice old comfortable house.’”

“Well, sweetheart, I probably did think that. Probably I did. But I never would have married someone I didn’t love. Is that what you believe? You believe I didn’t marry for love?”

“I don’t know what to believe,” she told him.

Then she spun around and walked back down the steps.

“ Dee?” Sam called.

She passed her car without slowing. Most women would have driven away, but she preferred to walk. The soles of her flats gritted against the asphalt driveway in a purposeful rhythm, reminding her of some tune she could almost name but not quite. Part of her was listening for Sam (she had a sense of perking one ear backward, like a cat), but another part was glad to be rid of him and pleased to have her view of him confirmed. Look at that, he wont even deign to come after me. She reached the street, turned right, and kept going. Her frail-edged shadow preceded her and then drew back and then fell behind as she traveled from streetlight to streetlight. No longer did she feel the cold. She seemed warmed from inside by her anger.

Now she understood why Sam had forgotten his actual first glimpse of her. He had prepared to meet the Felson girls as a boxed set, that was why. It had not figured in his plans to encounter an isolated sample ahead of time. What had figured was the social occasion that evening, with marriageable maidens one, two, and three on display on the living-room couch. She could envision that scene herself now. All it took was the proper perspective to bring it back entire: the itchy red plush cushions, the clothlike texture of her frosted sherry glass, and the fidgeting, encroaching, irritating plumpness of the middle sister, next to her.

On a branch overhead, the neighborhood’s silly mockingbird was imitating a burglar alarm. “Doy! Doy! Doy!” he sang in his most lyrical voice, until he was silenced by a billow of rock music approaching from the south. Teenagers, evidently-a whole carload. Delia heard their hoots and cheers growing steadily louder. It occurred to her that even Roland Park was not absolutely safe at this hour. Also, her housecoat wouldn’t fool a soul. She was running around in her nightclothes, basically. She took a sudden right turn onto a smaller, darker street and walked close to a boxwood hedge, whose shadow swallowed hers.

Sam would be back in bed now, his trousers draped over the rocking chair. And the children didn’t know she was missing. With their jumbled, separate schedules, they might not know for days.

What kind of a life was she leading, if every single one of last week’s telephone messages could as easily be this week’s?

She walked faster, hearing the carload of music fade away behind her. She reached Bouton Road, crossed over, and turned left, and one split second later, whomp! she collided with someone. She ran smack against a stretch of tallness and boniness, overlaid by warm flannel. “Oh!” she said, and she recoiled violently, heart pounding, while somehow a dog became involved as well, one of those shaggy hunting-type dogs shouting around her knees.

“Butch! Down!” the man commanded. “Are you all right?” he asked Delia.

Delia said, “ Adrian?”

In the half-dark he had no color, but still she recognized his narrow, distinctly cheekboned face. She saw that his mouth was wider and fuller, more sculptured, than she had been imagining, and she wondered how she could have forgotten something so important. “ Adrian, it’s me. Delia,” she said. The dog was still barking. She said, “Delia Grinstead? From the supermarket?”

“Why, Delia,” Adrian’said. “My rescuer!” He laughed, and the dog grew quiet. “What are you doing here?”

She said, “Oh, just…,” and then she laughed too, glancing down at her housecoat and smoothing it with her palms. “Just couldn’t sleep,” she said.

She was relieved to find that he was not so well dressed himself. He wore a dark-hued robe of some kind and pale pajamas. On his feet were jogging shoes, laces trailing, no socks. “Do you live nearby?” she asked him.

“Right here,” he said, and he waved toward a matted screen of barberry bushes. Behind it Delia glimpsed a porch light and a section of white clapboard. “I got up to let Butch here take a pee,” he said. “It’s his new hobby: waking me in the dead of night and claiming he needs to go out.”

At the sound of his name, Butch sat down on his haunches and grinned up at her. Delia leaned over to give his muzzle a timid pat. His breath warmed and dampened her fingers. “I ran off with your groceries that day,” she said, ostensibly to the dog. “I felt terrible about it.”

“Groceries?” Adrian asked.

“Your orzo and your rotini…” She straightened and met his eyes. “I considered hunting up your address and bringing them over.”

“Oh. Well… orzo? Well, never mind,” he told her. “I’m just grateful you helped me out like that. You must have thought I was kind of weird, right?”