"They are just like love," he said.

She smiled at the idea. Yes, it was true. The more love one gave, the more there was to give. But strength and energy? She was not at all convinced by the analogy. She could see, though, that he wanted to walk on the beach, that he wanted to believe his strange theory. She could see that he was happy here at Cartref. Why should she try to curb his happiness merely so that she could guard his little remaining strength and keep him with her a few days longer? She had married him so that she could love him into the next world.

"Do it, then, you foolish man," she said. "I shall even come with you. But do not expect me to carry you home."

"Soon," he said, "I'll be able to do that for you, Adèle." His eyes softened, filled with that look again, the one that made her breathless because it was new and unexpected and undreamed of. "I want to be whole for you. I am going to be whole for you."

She had expected nothing of this marriage except a fulfillment of her own dream. She ached with sudden longings that she did not want to feel. She did not want to have more pain than there was going to be anyway.

And yet there was the hope. And the knowledge.

"To the beach," he said, taking her hand and leading her to the door. "No more procrastinating."

"To the beach, sir," she said, trying to match the lightness of his tone.

He had only one real fear and it was a fear that puzzled him at best and made him feel guilty at worst. He feared being suddenly projected forward into his own life again- though there seemed nothing particularly alien about this life. He feared every time he woke up from sleep that he would be back in the Cartref Hotel in the middle of the 1990s.

It was a fear that puzzled him. Could he want to be trapped in a former age, cut off forever from the life he had known for twenty-eight years? Could he want to live without the trappings of late-twentieth-century civilization? And without the conveniences-electric lights and shavers, central heating, running water, zippers, to mention just a few. And without his red sports car?