DOMINIQUE STOOD AT THE GLASS DOOR OF HER ROOM. WYNAND saw the starlight on the ice sheets of the roof garden outside. He saw its reflection touching the outline of her profile, a faint radiance on her eyelids, on the planes of her cheeks. He thought that this was the illumination proper to her face. She turned to him slowly, and the light became an edge around the pale straight mass of her hair. She smiled as she had always smiled at him, a quiet greeting of understanding.

“What’s the matter, Gail?”

“Good evening, dear. Why?”

“You look happy. That’s not the word. But it’s the nearest.”

“ ‘Light’ is nearer. I feel light, thirty years lighter. Not that I’d want to be what I was thirty years ago. One never does. What the feeling means is only a sense of being carried back intact, as one is now, back to the beginning. It’s quite illogical and impossible and wonderful.”

“What the feeling usually means is that you’ve met someone. A woman as a rule.”

“I have. Not a woman. A man. Dominique, you’re very beautiful tonight. But I always say that. It’s not what I wanted to say. It’s this: I am very happy tonight that you’re so beautiful.”

“What is it, Gail?”

“Nothing. Only a feeling of how much is unimportant and how easy it is to live.”

He took her hand and held it to his lips.

“Dominique, I’ve never stopped thinking it’s a miracle that our marriage has lasted. Now I believe that it won’t be broken. By anything or anyone.” She leaned back against the glass pane. “I have a present for you—don’t remind me it’s the sentence I use more often than any other. I will have a present for you by the end of this summer. Our house.”

“The house? You haven’t spoken of it for so long, I thought you had forgotten.”

“I’ve thought of nothing else for the last six months. You haven’t changed your mind? You do want to move out of the city?”

“Yes, Gail, if you want it so much. Have you decided on an architect?”

“I’ve done more than that. I have the drawing of the house to show you.”

“Oh, I’d like to see it.”

“It’s in my study. Come on. I want you to see it.”

She smiled and closed her fingers over his wrist, a brief pressure, like a caress of encouragement, then she followed him. He threw the door of his study open and let her enter first. The light was on and the drawing stood propped on his desk, facing the door.

She stopped, her hands behind her, palms flattened against the doorjamb. She was too far away to see the signature, but she knew the work and the only man who could have designed that house.

Her shoulders moved, describing a circle, twisting slowly, as if she were tied to a pole, had abandoned hope of escape, and only her body