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They are anchored together. She made a vow and she sees no choice but to keep it. And there were years when she did enjoy the best things about Teddy—their love of animals, his happy-go-lucky nature, the way he could tell a story and charm their friends. But it is difficult to recall them now, even when she tells herself to.
    In recent years, Walter Berry has become an international lawyer. It’s an impressive and important role in the world, and Edith is proud of him. As much as she has grown to love him, she is still glad she didn’t marry him. Walter would have had no patience with her, would not have allowed her to spurn her marital duties as Teddy has. Yet his presence in her life as intellectual sparring partner and loyal friend is infinitely more precious. She is grateful Teddy doesn’t mind. The way Teddy sees it, he won the contest, and Walter is simply first runner-up. Allowing him to come around just confirms Teddy’s superiority. That the “prize” is somewhat shabby and disappointing seems to have no bearing on Teddy’s sense of triumph.

    Edith lies in bed now, and when she closes her eyes, she sees again the resplendent and daunting Anna de Noailles shaking her hand good-bye: such a warm, ironic smile, the dusky stain of her cheeks, the tumble of her dark, infinite hair, the green feathers at her shoulders shuddering with every breath. Mythic.
    Tonight, the salon was not as Edith had expected and yet it was more thrilling than all the other evenings at Rosa’s. Can she learn from de Noailles? What if Edith’s own smile could be so seductive? What if she had the power to make Mr. Fullerton’s cheeks color, to make his hands shake?
    And Fullerton, with a face she might find in a John Singer Sargent painting. Those icy eyes. Those sweeping black lashes. Why did he watch her all through dinner? When she thinks of it, she experiences a sweet drawing beneath her ribs. What was he thinking as he stared? And what was he about to tell her when Comtesse de Noailles interrupted by entering the party?
    In the next room, Teddy finally comes to bed. She hears the familiar groan as he removes his slippers, the scuff of the sheets, the sigh as he settles onto his soft mattress. She soon detects that distinctive snore that rises only from a heavy blanket of brandy. She doesn’t know why tonight—a night so full of new people and ideas and pleasures—the widening distance between them should bathe her in such despair.

    Anna Bahlmann slowly climbs the stairs to her room at the top of the
hôtel.
It lies along a hallway she shares not just with Catherine Gross and Cook and Marthe, the Whartons’ servants, but with all the servants in the building. The narrow gaslit passage is made to feel wider with walls the color of clotted cream and pretty prints of odd-shaped houses from Japan. Her room is spacious for a servant’s room, and in the late mornings, when she comes back for a respite after typing up Edith’s pages, sunlight spills from an east-facing window and she likes to lie in its warm embrace. The bed is especially comfortable, with a cherry satin eiderdown and a fat bolster. More than at The Mount, and almost as much as in her beloved rooms at 882 Park Avenue in New York, Anna feels at home here. Now, at the end of her very long day, she finds comfort under the eaves.
    Once, many years ago, after years of boarding, she bravely took a flat of her own on the top floor of a house on Ninety-fifth Street. It was airy and clean, and she furnished it with family things her brother sent her from Missouri and a beautiful chest her cousin shipped her from Virginia. She adopted two kittens, and after a long day they would greet her with a symphony of demands. How rich she felt in that little flat! Free. But how lonely! After years graced with the music of other people brushing teeth in the hall bath, arguing, sneezing and singing to themselves, the long silences of her evenings were too accusatory, and ultimately