“You came when I was in trouble,” she said. “I see you now.”

“This isn’t how things usually go,” he said.

“I know.”

They saw their barge.

It swept around the bend in the river, majestic in the night. Its lights shone across the water.

Randall shouted, and the answering sound of the horn drifted, melancholy and beautiful, over the dark moving river.

“I have gumbo,” Catherine said, on their way back into town.

“It was contributed by Mrs. Perkins; she’s from Louisiana, and I’m sure she’s an excellent gumbo cook.”

“Is that an offer?”

“Yes,” she said, shy again since they had left the levee.

“I’m hungry.”

The gumbo was excellent.

“Shall I stay?” he asked.

The weight of the next day descended prematurely. They would become employer and employee again. Then she couldn’t stand herself for letting the thought cross her mind.

She was tempted to say yes, to get all the good out of this day she could, fearing it might not last, might never happen again. She had not trusted tomorrow for a long time.

She gambled.

“No, let’s wait,” she said.

8

AFTER THE SHOCK, fear, and joy of the weekend, Monday began badly. Catherine wanted to wear something she had never worn to the office before, in Randall’s honor. But her closet held only the unexciting shirtwaists she had worn as a freshman in college, when girls still wore dresses to class. She had worn them all scores of times.

If Randall and I go out this weekend, I’ll have to go to Memphis one evening this week and buy something to wear, she thought cautiously. I’m damned if I’ll wear one of these.

She pulled on her least-faded dress, in a snit of anger at herself.

“Morning,” she said curtly to Leila Masham as she entered the Gazette’s front door, which faced onto the town square. Her temper was not improved by the sight of long-legged Leila in a brand-new summer dress that bared Leila’s golden shoulders. The girl flagged her down with an urgent wave, so Catherine had to stop instead of marching through the reporters’ room.