When she raised her head, he expected her to ask if she were distracting him; but she said only, “There is something wrong with your music.”

“I missed practicing last night. You lay off even a day with this kind of tune, and it shows right away.”

Sia shook her head. “I didn’t mean that. Your music is beautiful, but it has no place, it belongs nowhere.” Farrell could feel his face stiffening and flushing even before she said, “Your music is like you, Joe.”

He made a joke of it. He said, “Well, lute music belongs wherever the acoustics are good. I always keep that in mind as I go along.”

She bowed over the carving again, but she was smiling, showing her neat white teeth with the little spaces in between. “Yes,” she said, “yes, you are a master at living in other people’s houses.” Farrell had been trying to float the galliard off the rocks; now he stopped playing for a third time. Sia said, “It is not such a bad thing. It is really quite lovely to see, like a hermit crab fitting himself into an empty shell. You can match yourself to any surrounding.”

“That’s chameleons,” Farrell said. He fussed with the lute, running a cloth under the strings to dust the fingerboard, squinting as he checked the tied gut frets. The lute whispered in his hands, answering his anger.

Sia began to laugh. “But you are so good about it all.” The knife never stopped its bright stroking. “The way you play in the evenings, every night, after you have washed the dishes. We would have to break your arms to keep you from doing the dishes. And the way you always bring home something extra on Thursday or Friday—wine, ice cream, cheese, pâté. Never cherries, not since the first time when I said they made my mouth hurt. You remember everything like that.”