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mouth, the wide violet eyes, she was clearly not a creature to be competed with, not by others of her sex. And just as clearly, she was meant to be surrounded by luxurious things.
    His room was hardly luxurious. When he had fantasized their Iovemaking, he had imagined much. Musicians somewhere, out of sight of course, floating perhaps, surrounding them with sound, string quartets, piano trios, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt. And perfumed air. And silken sheets (black? Did he dare black?). And their bodies miraculously tinted gold. And— And—
    He finally managed to unbutton his shirt, but before he took it off he turned, glanced at the lone candle illuminating this square, dreary, plain, barren room. “ Too harsh for us, ” he managed. Then to be sure she understood, he added, “ Candlelight. ”
    The perfect f a ce turned toward him.
    He blew out the candle, lifted the shade. “ We deserve to be lit by the moon, Charlotte, ” and he made a quick gesture toward the February night.
    In the dark silence now, the perfect smile.
    He turned away and wa s startled at the amount of courage required to drop his shirt to the floor. For the moment, he was not nearly that brave. It was not the fact that he was so completely inexperienced that blocked him. He had confessed to her that he was still, ye Gods, a virgin. That he had managed to go through four years at Oberlin without once coming close to a naked female form.
    Two truths had to be faced. One was that his body, his naked body, humiliated him. He was that frail, that sickly in appearance. He had never in his life weighed one hundred twenty pounds or stood more than five feet six. Not only did he not look strong, he had little skill at resisting epidemics. When a sickness was around, he would catch it. And he always seemed to have a cough.
    But he had a wonderfully aesthetic face, much older seeming than his twenty-two years. His eyes were pale blue, he was subject to headaches and minor pain, so he had with him always the look of someone brilliant, someone special, someone deeply haunted.
    In other words, he resembled nothing so much as precisely what he was: a young, sensitive, unknown, but unquestionably gifted Romantic poet.
    And he loathed being a cliché .
    “ Theo, ” Charlotte whispered then.
    Startled: “ What? ”
    Calm: “ It ’ s just I like saying your name. Theo. I can say it all I want. Tell me you don ’ t mind. ”
    “ I love you so, ” he told her, which was, of course, true, and saved him from lying to her.
    Because he hated his name. He had been born Theodore Duncan and except for his long-dead mother who used to call him first “ The Bairn ” and then just “ Bairn ” alone, a word from her past, from what was left of her Scottish girlhood, the world had always called him Theo.
    “ Ted ” was his heart ’ s desire.
    Whenever he met a stranger and they exchanged names, he would refer to himself as Ted. “ Ted Duncan ’ s the name. ” Because Ted could be a hero, Ted could be a captain, Ted could smile at girls confident that they ’ d smile back.
    In school, he would sign tests and papers, “ Ted Duncan. ” Sometimes he would underline the “ Ted. ” When things were desperate, he would even draw arrows pointing directly at the name.
    But he looked like a Theo.
    He behaved like a Theo.
    He had a Theo ’ s mind.
    And sadly, a Theo ’ s body.
    So “ Ted ” never took. To that small portion of the civilized world with which he had come in contact, he was then and now and forever, “ Theo. ”
    “ Theo is my genius, ” Charlotte whispered then.
    He believed that she believed it. “ Morphy pales, ” he said.
    “ Who? ”
    “ Paul Morphy. The chess player. No matter what anyone says about the ones today, no one was as brilliant as Paul Morphy. Before he was ten he could beat the world. Before he was twenty-five, he went mad. ”
    “ What a tutor my children have. What a blessing for them. ”
    He looked at her. She was no closer to