“What will you tell him?” the girl asked.
“Seems to me,” answered the woman, “I may as well tell him the truth: that I’ve had a bit of a clack with you. That you will do all you can to help him. That’s right, isn’t it?”
The girl nodded.
The woman took the girl’s face in her two hands.
“Not sure you’re not getting the best of it,” she said. “I often used to lie awake beside my man, and wish I could always think of him as he was when I first met him: brave and handsome, with his loving ways and his kind heart. I saw him again when he lay dead, and all my love came back to me. A girl thinks, when she marries, that she’s won a lover. More often she finds that she’s lost him. It seems to me sometimes that it’s only dreams that last.
“Don’t bother to come down,” she said. “I’ll let myself out.”
She closed the door softly behind her. The girl was still kneeling.