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was sure of that, had a kind of freedom to it, a contrariness that echoed her elusiveness. What was the beauty of her, really? Was it the line of her slender neck? Was it, in fact, how lean she was? A beauty that would be lost if she filled out to a more womanly shape? He didn't think so.

At last she sensed his eyes on her, and turned to look at him. She smiled. "What are you looking at?" she said.

"Beauty," he said.

"I laugh." But she didn't laugh.

"I'm trying to figure it out myself," he said.

"Thanks."

"I start with the beauty, Sylvie, and figure from there."

"Truth is beauty."

"Is that it?"

"I was just quoting Keats," she said.

"Are you the truth?" he asked. "That's pretty heavy. The truth is dead but still beautiful, haunting us but always out of reach."

She rose lightly to her feet and came to kneel beside his cot. She kissed his cheek. He touched her face and kissed her lips, warm and sweet and slow. "Not out of reach," she said.

"Oh, Sylvie," he said. "Don't you know how tempted I am just to live here forever with you? Keep the place up, leave only to earn enough money to come home to you?"

"Then do it," she said. "Oh, do it, please."

He rolled onto his back, looked at the ceiling. "For how long?" he said. "Until I'm sixty and you're still whatever age you are now?"

"I won't mind."

"I will," he said.

"Then you'll die and we'll be together."

"This is a good plan?" asked Don.

"The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" she said. "Did you ever see it?"

"There are some old ladies next door who are being destroyed by this house."

"Only because they fight it."

He turned to her. "They should come and live with us, too? Is that what you're saying?"

"I don't know why this house is so strong, Don. I didn't make it that way. They were trapped before I was born."

"I want to do the right thing, Sylvie."

"The right thing for whom?" she asked.

"The right thing."

"The greatest good for the greatest number? Did you ever take ethics?"

"Sylvie," he said. "I'm blocked. I'm stopped cold. There's nothing I can do that doesn't ruin somebody's life."

She kissed him. "I know."

"And if I don't do anything, that also ruins lives."

"Beginning with your own."

"Maybe," he said.

"Because you need children," she said.

He shuddered.

"Don't you?" she asked.

"I don't know if I could ever do that again. Now that I know what it does to you when you lose one."

"Is it any worse than losing a parent?"

"Yes."

"Worse than losing yourself?"

"I've never lost myself, Sylvie. Neither have you."

"I must have," she said. "Because it feels so good now that I've found myself again."

"You think because we danced, because we kissed, because we love each other - we do love each other, don't we?"

She kissed him again.

"You think," he said, "that this means our problems are over. But they're not."

She sat crosslegged on the floor. "Something's still wrong."

"Right. But what is it? What's the thing that if we fix it, everything will be all right?"

"It's not the house," said Sylvie. "The house isn't aware, really. It's strong, but it doesn't know anything. It... holds people. That's all it does. It makes them yearn for this place. It's a home."

"And that's not bad."

"That's not bad if you want to be here. My point is that the house isn't what's wrong. It just is."

"The ladies next door don't feel that way."

"You know what the problem is? She's still out there."

Don's mind was on Miz Evelyn and Miz Judea and the mysterious Gladys upstairs. "Who?"

"Lissy. My roommate. My murderer."

"Don't I know it."

"I know I can't live here forever, Don. If you can call me alive."

He squeezed her hand.

She smiled at him. "I know that if you're really going to be happy you have to love a living woman."

"I do," he said. "You."

"I know that maybe if I could let go of this place, if I could drift away. I mean, think about it. Who is it the house holds onto? Not the Bellamys. When they died, they drifted away."

"True," said Don. "And why didn't their children get caught up the way the ladies next door did? They grew up here and yet they could leave, they could even sell the place."

"That is odd, when you think about it. Why would two prostitutes be tied here, and not the others? Why me, and not the others who died here?"

"Maybe because you lost something here. Maybe you all lost something."

"My life," she said. "What about them?"

"I