“Miss Dillon,” he said.

“Oh!” She became still, a figure halted and upright. A short silence. “You are Simon! God above!” Her eyes were round as dollars and one of the men lifting a birdcage turned in surprise at the tone of her voice.

“I am indeed.” He looked into her eyes and was moved almost beyond speech. “I am so glad to see your face again, my dear.” For a moment he couldn’t think of more to say but only gazed into her startled face and stretched out one hand to her, one empty hand balanced on the noisy air.

“You’ve come!”

“Yes, yes.”

She wore that same black-and-brown striped dress, a straw bonnet close set around her face and the tie ribbons loose down her shoulders. Such blue eyes. In all the noise and bustle of the market, in the drifting smoke, she took his hand.

He said, “I’m sorry to surprise you like this. It’s terrible, I know. I didn’t know how to get word to you that I was here. I have been looking for you every day.”

“You have?”

“Every day. Here.” He could not stop smiling and his delight was so intense he felt airborne. He did not let go of her hand.

“Oh, dear Simon,” she said. “At last I see you again.”

He bent down to kiss her on one cheek very carefully. “Miss Dillon, your letters have meant a great deal to me. A great deal. And the memory of you.”

He let go of her hand reluctantly. People called out what it was they had to sell. ?Tamales de puerco! they yelled. ?Nopales! ?Los mejores melones! She took in a breath and was suspended and then in a kind of smiling desperation said, “And look! Here is Mercedes, who carried your letters.”

Mercedes clasped her hands in front with a solemn expression. “I did it,” she said. “Culpable.” She and Simon shook hands over a job well done.

“All my thanks,” he said in a happy voice. “You are very good.”

“Oh de nada,” she said. “You have come at last!”

Doris said, “Put your hat on, Simon! You will catch cold or be burnt up by the sun.” And she took it from his hand and as he bent obediently she placed it on his head. “There. Simon, tell me of your journey here, and about Galveston and the raccoons and all.” She too was helplessly smiling, and laughed, and said, “You are here!”

“My dear,” he said, and fell silent. He could not take his eyes from her face. “So much has happened.”

“Simon, you will tell me all that has happened. You took care of the boy Patrick.” She laid her hand on his arm, lightly, as people moved past them and paused to glance back at them. “You did not desert him.”

“Of course not.”

“Simon, you have a good heart.” The wind took her bonnet ribbons and wisps of her black hair. “You have a good heart.”

“I wish it were true.”

“It is true. And your music took hold of me, it was like songs from home.” She paused, caught up in confusion. “Listen, Simon, I must tell you my sight is not terribly good. I had some eyeglasses but lost them aboard ship coming to America.”

“Ah.” Simon put his hand over hers, regarded her large dark blue eyes, the little bonnet surrounding her face like a portrait frame. He liked every bit of her. He liked her intent expression, her way of searching faces, her wide eyes, and now he knew why. He released her hand and held up his own. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Oh, twenty.” She laughed and then tied and untied her bonnet strings. “Twenty and a half!”

“What color are my eyes?”

“Green. No gray. No, a sort of greenish gray. Are they?”

“My dear Irish person,” he said, and then, at a loss for conversation, “I am so relieved to see you again finally, finally, even here in the market. Right in front of God and everybody.”

“Oh yes, yes, even though we are both surprised out of ourselves and can hardly think of a word to say, are we not then?” She laughed in a nervous burst and said, “Do you have work? Are you well? Tell me.”

“I have work. We are at the Plaza House, we play at other places too. I am well. I’m here in San Antonio because you are here. Because you are being held a prisoner in a castle by an evil troll and I alone am the man to rescue you. You are not being courted by somebody else I hope?” He bent to hear her answer. San Fernando’s bell rang eight and a quarter; someone pulled a rope and so the great bell tilted and poured out its deep tones like coins.

“They sit outside on the steps for hours,” she said. “At least ten at a time. They all have enormous mustaches.” She glanced up at him when he laughed. “I tell you, Simon, I knew you would arrive here, with that music in your head, God’s gift, if not the spirits.”

“I’m here,” he said.

“Oh, how I would love to talk all day and hear about your adventures coming here. And . . .” She paused. “About you.” They could not stop looking at each other, this strange public disclosure of themselves after the privacy of letters, the privacy of imaginings, hopes misplaced or not. No masks. He found himself studying her; for all her dark hair she had thin eyebrows, she had an admirable little nose, a rounded mouth. So here they were in the town plaza like creatures in a public drama without a script.

“I would love to tell you about anything. Name it. Cats, horses, fiddles, and the journey to here.”

“Anything,” she said, smiling, in a kind of hypnotic repetition. “Music then.”

He held his palm out flat. “I have here a great many tunes and every one of them is for us. ‘Shenandoah,’ ‘A Young Man’s Dream.’” He saw her smile. “And ‘Red River Valley.’”

“I must learn them.” She took his hand and folded up his fingers as if to guard the songs there, against public view or damage or disappearance. “And I will, then.”

The maid turned away to a man selling pecan candies on a tray, then cleared her throat and searched for something else to do before the man sold her one.

“Tell me how many years you have left in your contract with the Webbs. Come with me, this way.”

They walked together to a fruit stand, where a sideboard had been let down. All the apples and melons were artistically arranged with twigs of live oak leaves stuffed in between. Her skirts swung as she turned, her fine hands clutching a shopping list.

“Maybe half a year, now.” She ticked the numbers off on her fingers. “Yes, and Simon, those are the days I am counting.” They both laughed. Her gaze seemed to dismantle him, he felt loose in all his joints. “Simon, I am not allowed to meet anyone,” she said in a low voice. “I must live like a Carmelite. You’d think I had taken Holy Orders and gotten bricked up in a tower.”

“We could meet here at the market. Do you not come every day?”

“Yes. But often Mrs. Webb comes with me, or Josephina.” They now stood carefully apart from each other in the midst of people coming and going in the broad open plaza, among men calling out to other men from the hay wagons, waiters arguing with vendors, the women with baskets on their arms. They were seen and probably known. Simon the fiddler from the Plaza, the maid herself waving to her friends.

“I had no idea how to get a note to you, you being bricked up in a tower. Could you not invite me there where you live?” His eyes in the shade of the hat brim were dark with an intent sort of trouble. “Can you not have any visitors? None?”

“Oh no. No. Colonel Webb swears if I meet with young men he will put me out of the house and I will starve on the streets.”

“Is he serious?”

A different look came over her face. “Yes,” she said.

Simon was silent for a long measure and then said, “Not while I live.”

Mercedes said, “Dorita, soldiers are coming.”

Doris Dillon turned her head and fear came into her face. She put her hands on her skirt front as if she were prepared to hike up her skirts and run and her slim figure was poised taut as a wild animal. “It’s the colonel’s dog robber.” She turned to Simon. “They’ll tell. I have to go. Or you go.” She then shut her hands together in a distracted gesture. “There is going to be trouble.”

Simon said, “I will not.”

He ducked around the end of the fruit stand, came behind it, grabbed an apron off the wagon wheel and tied it around himself. He bent over the melons. “Yes, miss? Would one of these do?” He thwacked one with a knuckle. “Hear that? The sound of a happy melon. It’s calling your name.”

The fruit vendor stared at Simon in astonishment, but Mercedes spoke to him in Spanish, a fast ripping explanation so quick that Simon could not understand, but the vendor raised his eyebrows, then laughed, then handed Simon an apple and tipped his hand toward Doris.

Simon offered her the apple with a triumphant and slightly wicked smile.