We hugged and she smiled. Why was it so easy to help other people feel happy, but so hard to help myself? I wondered.

"There really is a new dress to show you," I said, and took her to my closet. Afterward, we joined Paul and James in the living room and had some after-dinner cordials. Jeanne smiled at me when James put his arm around her and kissed her on the cheek. He whispered something in her ear and she turned crimson. Then they announced they were tired and had to go home. At the doorway, Jeanne leaned over to thank me again. From the look in her eyes, I saw she was excited and happy. Paul and I remained on the gallery and watched them go to their car and drive away.

It was a rather clear evening, so that we could look up at the star-studded sky and see constellations from one horizon to the other. Paul took my hand.

"Want to sit outside awhile?" he asked. I nodded and we went to the bench. The night was filled with the monotonous symphony of cicadas interrupted by the occasional hoot of an owl.

"Jeanne wanted some big-sister advice tonight, didn't she?" he asked.

"Yes, but I'm not sure I'm the one she should have been asking."

"Of course you are." After a pause he added, "James asked me for advice, too. Made me feel older than I am." He turned to me in the darkness, his face cloaked in the shadows. "They think we're Mr. and Mrs. Perfect."

"I know."

"I wish we were." He took my hand again. "So what are we going to do?"

"Let's not try to come up with all the answers tonight, Paul. I'm tired and confused myself."

"Whatever you say." He leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. "Don't hate me for loving you so much," he whispered. I wanted to hug him, to kiss him, to soothe his troubled soul, but all I could do was shed some tears and stare into the night with my heart feeling like a lump of lead.

Finally we both went in and up to our separate bedrooms. After I put out my light, I stood by my window and gazed into the evening sky. I thought about Jeanne and James hurrying home after a wonderful meal, wine, and conversation, excited about each other, eager to hold each other and cap the evening with their lovemaking.

While in his room, Paul embraced a pillow, and in mine, I embraced my memories of Beau.

Shortly after Paul left for work the next morning, Beau called. He was so excited about our next rendezvous, barely squeezing in a breath as he described his plans for our day and evening, that at first I couldn't get in a word.

"You don't know how this has changed my life," he said. "You've given me something to look forward to, something to cheer me through the most dreary days and nights."

"Beau, I have some bad news," I finally inserted, and told him about Mrs. Flemming's daughter. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to postpone things."

"Why? Just come in with Pearl," he pleaded.

"No. I can't," I said.

"It's more than that, isn't it?" he asked after a pause.

"Yes," I admitted, and told him about Paul.

"Then he knows about us?"

"Yes, Beau."

"Gisselle has been very suspicious lately, too," he confessed. "She's even uttered some veiled threats and some not so veiled threats."

"Then maybe it's best we cool things down," I suggested. "We must think of all the people we might hurt, Beau."

"Yes," he said in a cracked voice.

If words had weight, the telephone lines between New Orleans and Cypress Woods would sag and tear apart, I thought.

"I'm sorry, Beau."

I heard him sigh deeply. "Well, Gisselle keeps asking to go to the ranch for a few days. I guess I'll take her next week. The truth is, I hate living in this house without you, Ruby. There are too many memories of us together here. Every time I walk past your room, I stop and stare at the door and remember."

"Talk Gisselle into selling the house, Beau. Start new somewhere else," I suggested.

"She doesn't care. Nothing bothers her. What have we done to each other, Ruby?" he asked.

I swallowed back the throat lumps, but fugitive tears trickled down my cheeks. For a moment I couldn't find my voice.

"We fell in love, Beau. That's all. We fell in love."

"Ruby . . ."

"I've got to go, Beau. Please."

"Don't say good-bye. Just hang up," he told me, and I did so, but I sat at the phone and sobbed until I heard Pearl wake from her nap and call to me. Then I wiped my eyes, took a deep breath, and went on to fill my days and nights with as much work as I could find, so I wouldn't think and I wouldn't regret.

A quiet resignation fell over me. I began to feel like a nun, spending much of my time in quiet meditation, painting, reading, and listening to music. Caring for Pearl was a full-time job now, too. She was very active and curious about everything. I had to go about and make the house child-proof, placing valuable knick-knacks out of her reach, being sure she couldn't get into anything dangerous. Occasionally Molly would look after her for me for a few hours while I shopped or had some quiet time alone.

Paul was busier than ever; deliberately so, I thought. He was up at the crack of dawn and gone some days before I came down for breakfast. Sometimes he couldn't get back in time for dinner. He told me his father was doing less and less at the cannery, and talking about retirement.

"Maybe you should hire a manager, then," I suggested. "You can't do it all."

"I'll see," he promised, but I saw that he enjoyed being occupied. Just like me, he hated leisure because leisure made him reflect on what his life was really like now.

I thought it would go on like this forever until we were both old and gray, rocking side by side on the gallery and looking out at the bayou, wondering what life would have been like had we not made some of the decisions we had made when we were young and impulsive. But one night after dinner toward the end of the month, the phone rang. Paul had already settled himself in his favorite easy chair and had the journal opened to the business pages. Pearl was asleep and I was reading a novel. James appeared in the doorway.

"It's for Madame," he announced. Paul looked up curiously. I shrugged and rose.

"Maybe it's Jeanne," I suggested. He nodded. But it was Beau, who sounded like a voice without a body . . . a wisp of himself, so soft and stunned, I questioned whether it was really he.

"Beau? What is it?"

"It's Gisselle. We're at the ranch. We've been here for more than a week now."

"Oh," I said. "She knows about us, then?"

"No, that's not it," he replied.

I held my breath. "What then, Beau?"

"She was bitten by mosquitoes. We thought nothing of it. She complained like crazy, of course, but I rubbed alcohol on her and forgot it. Then . . ."

"Yes?" My legs felt as if they might turn to air and float out from under me.

"She started to have these severe headaches. Nothing I gave her helped. She took nearly a bottle of aspirin. She had a fever, too. Last night the fever went way up and she was hallucinating. I had to call the doctor from the village. By the time he arrived, she was paralyzed."

"Paralyzed!"

"And she was babbling incoherently. She couldn't remember anything, not even who I was," he said, amazed.

"What did the doctor say?"

"He knew what it was immediately. Gisselle has contracted St. Louis encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain caused by a virus mosquitoes transmit to people."

"Mon Dieu," I said, my heart thumping. "Is she in the hospital?"

"No," he said quickly.

"No? Why not, Beau?"

"The doctor said the prognosis is not good. There is no known treatment of the disease when it is transmitted by viral infections other than the herpes simplex virus. Those are his exact words."

"What does this mean? What will happen to her?"

"She can remain in this condition for some time," he said in a voice devoid of any feeling, a voice drained and lost. And then he added, "But no one back in New Orleans knows about it yet. In fact, only this doctor and some servants here are aware of what's happened, and they can be persuaded not to talk about it."

I held my breath. "What are you suggesting, Beau?"

"It came to me just a little while ago while I stood by her bedside and watched her sleep. When she's asleep, she looks so much like you, Ruby. No one would question it."

My heart stopped and then began to pound so hard, I thought I would lose my breath and consciousness. I shifted the receiver to my other ear and took a deep breath. I knew what he was suggesting.

"Beau . . . you want me to assume her identity?"

"And become my wife now and forever," he said. "Don't you see what an opportunity this is?" he asked quickly. "None of the secrets of the past have to be revealed and no one has to be hurt."

"Except Paul," I said.

"What good is it if we're all unhappy?"

Could we do this? I wondered, my excitement building. Would it be wrong?

"What will happen to Gisselle?"

"We'll have to institutionalize her, secretly, of course. But it won't be hard to do."

"That's terrible. You remember when Daphne tried to do that to me," I said.

"That was different, Ruby. You were alive and well and had your whole life ahead of you. What difference will it make to Gisselle? She has accidentally given us a gift, repaired so many wrongs she has committed. Fate wouldn't hand us this opportunity if Fate didn't want to right the wrongs, too. Come to me," he pleaded. "With you I can restore my troubled soul and become someone I can respect again. Please, Ruby. We can't waste a moment of this chance."

"I don't know. I have to think." I turned and looked toward the study. "I have to talk it over with Paul."