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own house, and he roamed too much about the rooms, up and down the stairs. So he often fled. He set up a routine; he had his summer schedule. In the evenings Vic and Ellen arranged chairs for them all behind their old farmhouse, in the yard they had thrashed out of the tall weeds and blackberry bushes, and everyone would sit and have a drink and gaze down the hill at the pond and the slow horses meandering through the meadow in the afternoon. There were four adults regularly this summer, now that Ellen’s sister had come. And Claire would sit among them placidly, not so intense as Ellen, but prettier in a traditional manner. Her little girl, Katy, would wander about, and the adults would talk peaceably until it was time for dinner.
    They watched Claire’s child, and she was lovely in the evening grass, beyond the enforced lawn, moving with care among the lanky weeds that dampened her thin arms as she made her way down the hill toward the pond. There was no doubting it, and the adults, sitting there on the lawn, were—each one of them—thunderstruck by her sudden, astonishing beauty. She was so ordinary up close that each person observing her in that instant had a clear idea of her future, and each person felt that shudder of awareness that accompanies so definite a promise of time that is bound to pass. So there under the slanting sun was a tableau that would seem to have been prearranged: Claire, sitting cross-legged on the grass, frozen in that quick glance she sent her daughter’s way; Martin, so awestruck that his expression of perpetual preoccupation—a look that made him handsome—had flown from his face and left him as surprised as a little boy; Ellen and Vic, lovely both of them, all of themselves, sitting so that the sunlight struck down over their faces irradiating their assurance that this moment was only what they had always expected. Theirs was a look of proprietary smugness.
    “Not to get too wet, Katy,” Claire called out to her daughter in such a light voice that the message just barely undulated over the rippling grasses, but Katy did turn back to drift, waist deep in the weeds, in their direction.
    The group resumed motion. Ellen snapped the tough ends off the asparagus and then began the painstaking process of peeling each slender stalk with her little paring knife. “I hate peeling this asparagus,” she said, by the way. But no one heeded her or replied, because she peeled it for herself; she preferred it thus.
    Martin sat quietly, at ease to be in company, and thought idly about Claire’s long hair—such odd hair of a peculiar color between brown and gray. No color at all, really. For these few moments he was suspended in his summer, just himself, alone. For at least that small time this became the essence of his existence, with no comparisons to be made.

Chapter Three
    One Day
    I n the mornings Dinah always felt hopeful; mornings seemed so promising, and now with the uncommon languor she retained from the flu, she lay in bed just a little longer than usual, dozing and waking, and turning over in her mind the carefully ordered events of her day. One day’s schedule, firmly set, had become the schedule of all the summer days. Monotonously reassuring, just as she thought summer days should be, with their variety afforded only by some one person’s unexpected irritation or pleasure, or just by some offhand remark that might turn one’s thoughts in an interesting direction. All in all, she led a limited life here, and it was soothing.
    She anticipated an easy day, imbued with a luxurious kind of boredom, because she needn’t put any thought into this day’s structure, although she did intend to write to Martin this morning. This mild order was a relief from her winter life, which had a frantic pace, and in which she had to allot her energies with such care.
    Dinah awoke in the mornings to that picture at the end of the bed of the pretty girl running. It was oddly invigorating, and encouraged