Cora nodded. "If you would, M'sieu. After the second time that coachman-that Bastien-turn me away, I watched the house, and I saw you go in. The cripple-man selling water across the street, he say you was the music teacher for Madame Lalaurie's two girls. He say you also work at the Charity Hospital during the fever season, so when I... I couldn't wait for you to come out of the house, I look for you at the Hospital."

Where there was too much of a crowd for you to want to come up to me, thought January, studying that wary, triangular face. It didn't surprise him that the water seller would know everything about him. In New Orleans, the vendors who sold everything from strawberries to fire irons through the narrow streets knew everything about everyone.

But that, too, was none of his business. This girl's lover had been sold, and she had run away to see him again. For all his mother's talk about the unruliness of blacks (not that his mother was so much as a half-shade paler than Cora LaFayette) he could not blame her for it. "What would you like me to tell Gervase?"

Her smile transformed her like spring dawn, not just her face but her tense little body as well. Joy became her. Then she swallowed, again, thinking hard and contemplating once more the toes of her red-and-black shoes. "Could you ask him if there's a way we can see each other? If there's a way he can get out? Just for an evening, I mean, M'sieu. They keep that gate closed tight all the time. I'll meet you here," she went on quickly. "If that's all right with you, Michie Janvier. Tomorrow night?"

"Wednesday," said January. "Wednesday afternoon. I teach the Lalaurie girls Tuesdays and Fridays, and I'm working at the Hospital Tuesday night."

"Wednesday afternoon." She got to her feet, her smile coming and going, like a child fearing to hex a wish. "'I'll be here, Michie Janvier. Thank you."