And that was the biggest change in him, she thought, and the one she had been most trying to ignore, because she had accepted the way he was and had thought to be happy with it long after he had gone. She had accepted that he loved her but that there was no magic in his love.

Since their arrival, since that coughing spell and the short sleep of exhaustion that had followed it, he had been different. There had been something in his eyes, something in his voice, something in his kiss… And something in his words, too, though she guessed he was speaking them out of tenderness and gratitude to her. He knew that she loved him more than life and he knew that she was going to have a leftover life to live very soon. He was being wonderfully kind to her as he always had been.

But there was something in his eyes. The eyes cannot deceive as well as the voice can.

On the third day he decided that they would go walking on the beach.

"John." They were in the dining room at the time, having just risen from breakfast. ' 'Is it wise? You are so much better. Would it not be wiser to rest today? To get your strength back gradually?" She stepped closer to him and framed his face with her hands. "There is even a little color in your face today."

"Perhaps in time," he said, "you will even have a halfway handsome husband, Adèle."

His face blurred beyond the tears that sprang to her eyes. "You are the most handsome man in the world," she said.

He laughed-oh, how she loved to hear him laugh. "Did you not know," he asked her, "that the most sure way to build strength and energy is to use them?"

He had some strange ideas, this new John who had appeared just the day before yesterday. "How absurd," she said.