occasional swish of automobile tires through the puddles. I recalled that day when it had rained equally hard as Sam and I walked along the canal in Middle Hill.
That Sam had read Izzy’s journal explained a lot. It explained everything. In particular it explained her manner with me while she had been here in Paris, for the break in the peace conference. The more I thought about it, however, the more puzzled I became. If she had read the passage, as I was sure she had, if she had decided that I had behaved—well, beyond all humanity—why had she come to Paris at all? Why not just turn her back on me and disappear, taking Will with her? Or why not have it out with me, there and then, in Paris— one hell of a fight, with every blunt truth aired? That she hadn’t followed either course of action didn’t make sense.
Five A.M. came. I stood at the window, looking out at the rain. There were a few stragglers going home from their revels, uncertain on their feet, but most of the people I saw were the solitary night people—policemen, off-duty waiters, newspaper deliverymen, early morning bakers who had no choice but to be up at this sad hour. Will would be fast asleep now, the smell of soap about him. Occasionally, he would turn in his sleep and absently rub the scar on his arm where it had been slashed at the Battersea fair. I had watched him do that on countless evenings when I stood over him, before silently bidding him good night.
Five-thirty came, five forty-five. Was there a possibility still that Sam had learned to love me, and loved me even now; that she liked our life, looked forward to living in my father’s house; and that she understood my actions—that with a war on, with all the danger and uncertainty it implied, what I had done was forgivable? That I deserved some credit for saving Will’s life?
Then I asked myself again the question I had framed many times over—whether love, the slow burn when you have learned to love someone, is ever the same as the explosion of love at first sight?
Six o’clock came. I took a bath and, while I was in the bath, I finally realized what Sam had done.
Everything at last, and for the first time, was out in the open between us. Now she was saying: Hal, you have to decide what to do. You, the man who wrote the book on the moral cost of the war, have shown an amorality beyond all conscience. She had kept her promise and had never mentioned Wilhelm’s name since that day in the field when we had scattered Izzy’s ashes, not even in Paris. So she was saying, in effect: Your actions got us into this situation, this predicament, this love story of sorts, and all via dishonesty, opportunistic deception, and luck. What are you going to do?
Except, of course, that Sam still didn’t know everything. She thought she did, at long last, after a wartime of not knowing. But once again, and ironically—bitterly ironically—she didn’t have all the facts. But I did. I knew that Wilhelm was still alive, still in love with Sam. I even knew where he was! Once again, as before, at the very start, I was the only person who knew everything, who had the whole picture.
Sam didn’t know that Wilhelm had been in Paris, where he had promised to take her, at the same time she had. Wilhelm, having seen us, thought we were a family and because of that wouldn’t go looking for Sam, as he’d once vowed—to her and to me—that he would. If I pretended to Sam that I hadn’t yet had time to read Izzy’s journal, if I could spin it out for even a week or two, it would soon be more than six months since the Armistice. There was chaos, violence, and talk of revolution in Germany. Once the peace conference ended, Wilhelm would go back to Berlin and our lives would diverge forever. If I did absolutely nothing, nothing at all, the attractions of life with me would continue to grow even as Wilhelm’s prospects receded still further. Will loved me. I was engaged in work of historical importance, and Sam knew that. I was to be knighted; Sam could become Lady Montgomery if she wished. Life with me was a much better life than no life and was I so