"Look at my poor hands, dear. Look at my nails!"

"Seriously, how come..."

"Travis, darling, a long time ago-maybe not so awfully long ago really, but it does seem way way back-I told Meyer that you had picked up all the pieces of me and put me together, and that if you were ever in need of the same he was to find me through my gallery, and let me know and if I did not happen to have any compound fractures, I would come to you on a dead run. I got here a week ago yesterday."

"So that"s why Meyer has looked so bland and smug and mysterious. Why didn"t you come to the hospital?"

"Hate them, darling. Sorry. Wasn"t this better?"

"This is as good as anything can get. My G.o.d, you look lovely. You are something way out else, Heidi."

"Do you need putting together?"

"Haven"t you noticed me?"

"Oh h.e.l.l, I don"t mean looking like sudden death. That"s a body thing. I mean putting together."

I looked at her and knew that I did. "Something was going wrong and it went further wrong. I don"t know. I lost it, somehow, without knowing what I lost. Some kind of... sense of light and motion and purpose. I went ragged around the edges and bleak in the middle. The world seems to be coa.r.s.ening, and me with it. Everything that happens takes away, and less flows back. And I respond less, and in the wrong way. I still amuse myself but there"s some contempt in it now. I don"t know... I don"t know..."

"Darling, there"s that water from the eye syndrome again."

"Sorry."

"There"s nothing so really wrong with you, you know. It"s second adolescence."

"Is that it?"

"Of course, Travis, darling. I had delayed adolescence. Remember your absolutely dreadful a.n.a.logy of comparing me to that old yellow Packard you bought when you were a child, and finally got running so beautifully?"

"Indeed I do."

"In your ravings you let Meyer know you had promised the cruising month of June aboard this fine houseboat to a lady who, for reasons he wouldn"t tell me, won"t be able to make it. You may tell me or not, as you wish. But I am subst.i.tuting."

"That is very good thinking, Heidi."

"The cure for my delayed adolescence was a grown-up man. And I think a grown-up woman can cure a recurrence of adolescence, don"t you?"

"Shock treatment, eh?"

"McGee, I am a very grown-up woman, far more so than that grim day we said good-by on that lovely island."

"I think you are. Yes. I would say so."

She looked at me and I suddenly knew exactly what Mona Lisa was thinking about. It was exactly the same smile, though on a face far more to my liking.

"I think, dear, that it is going to be absolutely essential for the health of both of us, and the sanity too, if you will kindly get a lot of lovely sleep, and eat the rich marvelous foods I am going to cook for you, and exercise a little more each day, and take the sun and..."

"I guess it"s pretty essential. Yes, indeedy."

"Because we are going to further places on our cruise, darling, than anybody has ever reached before on a boat this slow in one single lovely month."

I finished the drink. She took the gla.s.s. She told me later that I fell asleep smiling, and that Raoul, the cat, joined me later, curling into a warm nest against my waist.