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wall was real, as was the wall between the kitchen and the back bedroom.

"It was a huge room," said Don.

"He built it for her," said Sylvie. "Can't you feel it? She loved to dance, and he built her a dancing place."

"Well, now we know," he said. "Why the house is so off-center. I can't believe I'm worrying about that right now, though. I mean - what does it matter? After what happened to you?"

"But I'm tied to the house," she said. "Now that I'm facing the truth, I might start fading. So the house needs to be stronger."

"If you want to stay," said Don. "The Weird sisters next door, they kept telling me to let the house go. Leave it alone or tear it down. What if they were trying to set you free?"

"Free?" said Sylvie. "I don't want to be free, Don, I want to be alive!"

"But I can't do that."

"Yes you can," she said. "The stronger the house, the realer I get. Tear out these walls, Don. Please."

He studied her face. Her body. Incredible that this might be only spirit. He reached out and touched her again. Her cheek. She brought up her hand and held his.

"Let me dance in this room," she said. "Make me real."

He let go of her and went in search of his wrecking bar.

It took until well after dark. Past midnight, into the small of the morning. Tearing down huge chunks of plaster, then prying out every lath. Then the skillsaw through the timbers - though these were nothing like as heavy as the great masts of that bearing wall beside the stairs. The sledgehammer blows shivered him to the shoulders, to the spine, but the timbers came free of the ceiling, came up from the floor, and he hauled it all outside, a huge pile of junk out by the curb.

Still he wasn't done. He gathered up all his tools, his boxes of supplies, his suitcases, his cot, and moved them all into the south parlor. The real parlor. So nothing was left on the floor but the fragments of plaster and a few eight-penny nails from the laths.

And still there was a job to do. He found his broom and swept the whole floor, it felt like acres of wood, but he swept it all till it was clean.

Only one more job. He found all the nailholes where the new walls had been fastened down to the polished wooden ballroom floor, then filled them with putty and sanded them smooth. It was three in the morning. He was exhausted. He turned to her, there in the alcove, where she had sat as she watched the whole job, her eyes shining.

"How's that?" he asked.

In reply she smiled at him. "Aren't you going to ask me to dance?"

He laughed. "I'm a sack of sweat right now. I must have chalkdust sticking to me all over."

"It just makes you all the more real."

"I'm not the one who felt unreal," he said. But the moment he said it, he wasn't altogether sure it was true. How real had he been, before he found this house?

He walked over to her and held out a filthy hand. "Miss Sylvie Delaney would you be so kind?"

"I think it's a waltz," she said.

"Could well be."

"I'd love to waltz with you."

He pulled her up from the bench. Her hand was solid in his. So was her delicate hand resting lightly on his shoulder, her girlish waist under his hand. He pressed with the heel of his right hand, to let her feel which way they were going, and she followed his lead. One-two-three.

"We need music," she said.

"So sing," he said.

She began to hum, then to sing wordless tunes. He recognized them. The Emperor Waltz. Blue Danube. And others that he didn't know. They danced around and around. He should have been too tired to dance. Or maybe he was only just now as tired as he needed to be, to forget his exhaustion and go on dancing and dancing.

And in his mind, in his weariness, he began to hear, not Sylvie's voice, but an orchestra. And to see, not the light from the worklamp, but the light of a hundred candles in sconces on the walls, in three great chandeliers overhead. Around and around the room, great sweeps of movement, and Sylvie's dress swayed as if there were a bustle under it, exaggerating the movements of the dance. So did all the other dresses in the room, all the men