“I can imagine nothing less safe than staying close to you, Mlle Treville, and nothing more desirable.”

She frowned. “That is unworthy of you, Dr. Montjean. Men don’t seem to realize that automatic, boyish gallantry can be a terrible bore. A woman must either pretend that she did not hear it, or she must respond to it. And often, she’d rather do neither.”

I felt my ears redden. “I am sorry. You are quite right, of course. May I make a confession to you?”

“I don’t know. Will the confession be a burden? Will I be obligated to keep your secrets? Or to pretend at compassion?”

“No, it’s an altogether trivial confession.”

“Oh, then by all means confess to me. I’m quite comfortable with the altogether trivial.”

“It’s actually more an explanation than a confession. That ‘automatic, boyish gallantry’ you quite rightly objected to is a result of a terrible habit I’ve fallen into. When I’m alone and daydreaming, I practice at confecting clever lines of dialogue. But when I inflict them on people in real life, somehow the cleverness dissolves in my mouth, and only a stilted artificiality is left. I didn’t mean to be forward. I confess, however, to being maladroit. Can you forgive me?”

She turned to me and searched my eyes with hers. “What is your given name, Dr. Montjean?”

“Jean-Marc.”

“Jean-Marc Montjean. Sounds like a character in a nineteenth-century novel. No wonder you’re stricken with romanticism.”

I shrugged. “Didn’t I hear your brother call you Katya?”

“Yes.”

“Katya? Russian diminutive for Catherine? But you’re not Russian, are you?”

“No. And my name isn’t Catherine. With brutal disregard for the delicate feelings of a young woman, and with no ear for poetry at all, my father baptized me Hortense. As soon as I realized that one could do such things, I changed my name to Katya.”

“Changed your name? By legal process?”

“No. By simple force of will. I merely refused to respond to the name Hortense, and I did nothing I was bade unless I was called Katya.”

“And you accuse me of being a romantic?”

“It wasn’t an accusation. It was simply a description.”

“What a strong-minded child you must have been to force everyone to call you by a new name.”

“ ‘Little brat’ might be closer to the mark.” She turned and continued down the narrow path.

As the overgrowth pressed in on us, the acrid smell of damp weeds rose from the cold earth and I felt a sudden ripple of chill over my skin. “Well, well. The ghost must be nearby,” I said, seeking to pass off my discomfort with a joke.

She stopped and turned to me, her expression quite serious. “Ghost? I’ve never thought of it as a ghost.”

“Well… what haunts this place then, if not a ghost?”

“A spirit. I’m sure she’d rather be called a spirit than a ghost.”

“It’s a woman then, the gho—spirit?”

“Yes. A girl, actually. Ghost indeed! What a grim idea!”

“Perhaps, but there’s something inevitably grim about ghosts. Being grim is their mйtier.”

“That may be true of ghosts, but it is not true of spirits, which are an altogether higher order of beings. And that’s all I want to hear about the matter. Well, we have arrived. What do you think of my private library?”

I surveyed the ruin of what had once been a charming little summerhouse. “Ah… Oh, it’s… magnificent. Magnificent! Perhaps a touch of paint would not be inappropriate. And I don’t think the replacement of some of the broken lattice slats would harm the effect overmuch. But I do like that quaint touch of rot around the foundation. And that nonchalant sag of the beams! It’s an architectural wonder, your library, standing as it does in defiance of the laws of gravity.”

“It’s a light-hearted little building, and therefore doesn’t have to obey the laws of gravity. Why do you pull such a face?”

“What a wretched pun!”

“You don’t care for puns?”

“Not overly, as I told you before.”

“You never told me you were a sworn enemy of the noble pun.”

“Yes I did—ah, no. It was your brother I told. Is this addiction to puns a family trait—a genetic flaw?”

“We are willing to allow words to function irreverently, if that’s what you mean.”

“It’s not what I meant, but it will do.” I looked about. “You can’t see the house from here.”

“What’s more to the point, you can’t be seen from the house,” she said, smiling at me.

After a second of wondering if I could interpret this as an invitation to some kind of intimacy, I took her hand and held it in both of mine. She did not resist, but her hand was limp and there was no return of my affectionate pressure. She simply searched my eyes with a little frown of—not annoyance, really—of doubtful inquiry.

“Mlle Treville…” I said, with nothing further to add.

“Yes?”

“You are… very beautiful.”

She laughed at me. “That’s not really true, you know. I believe I am a handsome woman. Healthy. Pleasant to look at. But I am not beautiful, and it’s foolish of you to say so.”

I suffered in silent confusion. I wanted to explain that my gesture of affection implied no disrespect. It was simply that she seemed so free and fresh, so… modern, I guess… that I felt she would understand my frank– Ah! I couldn’t find the words to explain myself.

“Does it please you to hold my hand?” she asked with a tone of mild interest.

“Ah… yes. Of course.”

“Very well, then.” She stood quite patiently, her hand unresisting but mute in mine, until growing feelings of awkwardness caused me to release it with a last pressure of farewell.

I feared that my boldness had ruined our former effortless amicability, so I searched for anything to say. “Ah… your father, I take it, is unwell?”

I was surprised at the effect of this random observation. Her expression clouded and she stepped back from me. “Why on earth do you say such a thing?”

I stammered, “Well… you said your family was here for reasons of health. You are obviously… healthy.” I sought to make a little joke. “And, apart from his compulsion for leaping from moving bicycles, your brother seems fairly normal. So I naturally assumed that it was your father who was ill.” I shrugged.

“Oh. I see.” Her expression cleared and she smiled. Then, to my surprise, she slipped her hand into the crook of my arm and led me back up the path towards the house. “I’m afraid my bicycle is going to be a bit of a problem,” she said, with what I would soon come to recognize as a characteristic habit of shifting from topic to topic with a glissando of non sequiturs that made internal sense to her but to no one else.

“Problem of what sort?”

“Of a minor sort, I suppose. I don’t really feel like returning to Salies just now. I wonder if you would mind collecting my machine from the square and keeping it for me until tomorrow?”

“I should be delighted. But how will you get into town tomorrow?”

She shrugged. “I’ll walk of course. It’s only a short ways.”

“Ah yes. Exactly two and six-tenths kilometers, as I recall.”

A look of delighted wonder animated her eyes. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if it really were? I’ve never actually measured it, you know. I have noticed that people are impressed by exact measurements, so I provide them out of my imagination. But wouldn’t it be amazing if one of them were accidentally correct?”

I dared a slight pressure on her hand by flexing my arm. “You are a strange and exceptional person. Do you know that? May one say that much without being guilty of boring you with automatic, boyish gallantry?”

“One may.”

We passed around the terrace to the sulky, where the patient old mare stood stoically, occasionally fluttering a shoulder muscle to discomfit the flies.

“Until tomorrow then?” she said.

I smiled at her and nodded. “Until tomorrow.” And she returned to the house.

As I approached the trap I noticed a pebble of particularly interesting veining beside the wheel, and I automatically picked it up, following a senseless habit from boyhood, a habit that used to annoy the aunt I lived with after the death of my parents. She would throw away scores of pebbles whenever she came across them in her cleaning. The loss never disturbed me, as I was not interested in collecting stones, only in picking them up. And the reason I picked them up was one that made excellent sense to me, though I knew better than to expect anyone else to understand: If I didn’t pick them up… who would?

The sulky had not gone thirty meters down the rutted lane when I heard Katya’s voice calling after me. I reined in and turned to see her running towards me, one hand holding her skirt aside, and my doctor’s bag in the other. I had climbed down to meet her by the time she arrived, flushed and a bit out of breath. “What must you think of the doctor who forgets the tools of his trade?” I asked.

She laughed. “Our Dr. Freud would say you did it on purpose.”

“And he would be right, Mlle Treville. And I’m afraid I have left more behind here than my kit.”

She shook her head sadly and smiled as one might smile at a persistent, mischievous child not totally lacking in redeeming charm. Then, on an impulse, she rose to her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek lightly.

I searched for words, but before I could speak she touched the place on my cheek with her fingertips, as though to seal it, and said, “Hush.” Her lucid grey eyes searched mine for a moment. “May I tell you something? You are the first man outside my family that I have ever kissed. Isn’t that remarkable?”

“Yes… remarkable. I…” But I could find no words. “Here,” I said, pressing something into her hand.

“What’s this?”

“A gift. A pebble.”