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"No, Mama. Not unless you think you'll need me."

"No. There's nothing for you to do and it might take most of the night. I guess there's no sense in both of us staying up," she said. "If your daddy comes home early for some reason, you'll tell him where I've gone."

"Yes, Mama."

"You all right, honey?"

"Yes, Mama," I lied.

She paused a moment. "I gotta go," she said. "Poor woman's in pain."

"Okay, Mama."

She descended the stairs and was gone. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and for a little while I did fall into a deep repose, but suddenly my eyes popped open. My heart had started to drum as if it knew something I didn't. I lay there staring up into the darkness waiting for it to slow down. When it didn't, I sat up and then went to the window.

There he was, outlined in the moonlight, staring up at the house, waiting . . . Pierre. My ghost would not go away.

I threw on my dress and hurried down, closing the screen door softly behind me. He was waiting on our dock.

"Gabriel," he said as I approached. "I was afraid to come to your house to ask for you."

"I'm glad you didn't," I said, stopping a foot or so away from him.

"Why? Why did you write that letter?"

"I had to," I said as harshly as my lips would permit me to speak to him. He stepped toward me. "Mama knows," I added, and he froze for a moment. "She threatened to go to New Orleans and knock on your door if she had to," I added.

As the moon peeked over the shoulder of a passing cloud, the light caught his face and revealed a pained expression.

"What is it your mother thinks of me?" he asked softly. "What has she told you?"

"You are rich, Pierre. You can go anywhere, do anything, see anyone you want."

"Oui, " he said. "That's true, Gabriel, but I didn't go anywhere else; I didn't do anything else, and I haven't seen anyone else but you. You were right in your letter. Our love, my love for you, is a doubleedged sword, and when you sai

d you couldn't see me again, I felt its sharpness in my heart. Do you know what it's been like being here, looking up at your window at night?"

"Pierre . ."

"And during the day."

"During the day?"

"Yes. I've watched you from a distance, seen you walking, seen you working, talking to people, but I was afraid to approach you in daylight. Remember the exquisite torment of being beside each other and not touching? It wasn't exquisite this time; it was just torment.

"You think I have other lovers, don't you? You think because I am rich, I can go anywhere and have affair after affair and then one day pick up and leave, breaking someone's heart without caring?"

I was ashamed to say yes, but I had thought it. He nodded and turned away for a moment.

"Other men I know, wealthy, married men, fit that description. I would not deny it, but you are the first woman I have kissed passionately since I married Daphne. You must believe me."

"Didn't you love her?"

"I. . . thought so. She's a very beautiful woman and she comes from a family as distinguished as mine, although not as wealthy. Ours was more of an arranged marriage. We were thought to be the perfect couple, but things happen, things change. I'm a very lonely man these days, Gabriel, and despite what your mother might fear for you and even what you might think at this moment, I am not one to go wandering and philandering. I do not give myself liberally.

"But when my eyes feasted on you, when I first saw you, I felt something so deep and so sincere in my heart, I could not deny it; I will not deny it. I swear I'm not here to take advantage of you and then leave you in the lurch. I will never do anything to harm you or make you unhappy. Somehow, I want to be able to take care of you.

"I can't believe," he continued, raising his voice and his clenched hands in the air, "that this love is not meant to be. What a horrible trick Nature has played on us then. To bring me here, to permit me to see you and you to see me. To permit us to kiss and hold each other and pledge our feelings to each other, and then to rip us apart mercilessly like this . . . no. No!" he cried. "I won't permit it to happen. Tell me what I must do to be with you and I will do it."