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I turned to her and laughed. “You don’t want to worry about that,” I said. “This happens to me every eighteen months. There’s only another seven or eight months to go before I start again. I run pretty regularly to schedule.”

She eyed me a little wistfully. “I wish you didn’t live alone.”

I laughed. “I’m not going to—not next winter, anyway. I’ll pay some sweet young thing a salary to come and live with me.” I think that reassured her a little, because she was smiling when I went away. We succeeded in making a joke out of what might have been a most embarrassing affair, and so it is that my last memory of her is of her laughter.

All that night her laughter followed me along the winding roads that stretched brilliantly in front of me and eddied into dust behind. I remember that there was a bridge. I stood there for a moment staring down the stream, and as I stood there listening to the rippling of the water it seemed to me that here was a pause in my journey, a little time when I might be alone. I had left my hat somewhere, and a wind came down the river lifting the hair upon my forehead and blowing coolly in my face. My mouth was dry and parched. And so I went down the bank a little way until I reached the gravel spit where the cattle went down to drink. I had an apple with me in my hand, and as I stooped to drink I thrust it deep into the pocket of my ulster to be safe. I can remember that the water was very cool and sweet upon my face, dipping it up and drinking from my hands, and the moon most infinitely clear. Beyond the bridge the Bentley loomed silent by the roadside, a dark mass pierced by the brilliance of the red tail light. It was very quiet by the stream.