The dog robber, a corporal, and another private marched past, their eyes sweeping over the crowd, alert for civic unrest. The corporal lighted upon Doris. They all lifted their caps. “Miss Dillon. Good day to you.”

“Yes, good day,” she said and waved with a merry smile. Then in a lower voice, “And may you fall in a cistern.” Simon tossed the apple from one hand to the other. They did not fall into a cistern after all but lingered with the candy seller and his pecan taffies while Doris lifted up an unwanted melon and expressed astonishment at its succulent goodness. At last they went on.

Simon threw up the apple again, caught it, let it roll down the inside of his forearm, and then straightened his arm quickly so that he tossed it into the air with the inside of his elbow. He caught it neatly.

“You’re afraid,” he said.

She took a deep breath and held it a second and then said, “Yes. The colonel.”

“I’m listening.”

“When he is in the house I dare not be alone.”

Simon became very still. The smile drained out of his face. She lifted her head and he saw tears glistening in her eyes. She lowered her head again, ashamed of the tears, and pressed the backs of her hands against her cheeks. “I am just nervous,” she said. Then she quickly turned from him once again to look around the market for people who might be observing them. The maid was busily going through a heap of tomatoes from a winter garden, inspecting each one with studious care.

“This is outrageous,” said Simon. “You, a girl alone come from Ireland, and no place to find help.” Another silence. “This is terrible. There has to be a way to get you out of this.” He put the apple in his pocket and quickly offered the vendor a handful of change to choose from. The man took a two-cent piece and nodded.

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I signed the contract with my own hand.”

They could stand fooling about with the piled fruit for only so long. In a few quick, halting sentences she told him that she kept away from Colonel Webb as much as possible, although both the colonel and is wife insisted she eat breakfast with them and dinner as well. They did not like each other it seemed and they needed her there to talk to or talk at, forks clattering on plates, big silences, then outbursts of mindless chatter, and it was all false as counterfeit money and enough to drive a sane person into lunacy.

They leaned toward each other over the melons. She said in a low voice, “As God is my witness, Simon, they despise each other and the poor girl Jo, caught between. She is becoming a mean-spirited child with a wicked tongue and a breaking heart to see her parents so.”

“Come into the church,” said Mercedes. “We cannot stand here forever.”

“I could,” said Simon.

“No, come.”

Simon untied the borrowed apron and returned it to the fruit vendor. They wove through the crowd, dodged a huddle of sheep being urged on by a boy, mashed through the gate in the low wall surrounding the cathedral, and went through the broad carved doors into the dim interior. A Mass was in progress. Simon took off his hat and stood while both Mercedes and Doris tapped their fingers in the holy water fount, crossed themselves, and dropped a knee. Mercedes went forward toward the altar and Simon and Doris stood together at the back of the pews. In the echoing spaces she told him that the colonel would seek her out if she were alone anywhere and so when she heard his carriage arrive and the front door open, or his dreaded steps on the floorboards, she hurried to find the girl, Josephina, or to be near Mrs. Webb or Mercedes.

“Or what?” he said.

“Or, well, he has stood very near me and tried to take the pins out of my hair, he has asked me to come to their bedroom when she was gone to the neighbors for vinegar-making. Oh God, how I wish I had not come to America!” She put both hands over her eyes but then took a deep breath and straightened. “So.”

Simon stood silent. He felt a prickling crawl of rage rising and for a moment it seemed it would flood through him completely. He tipped his head to look up at the dome of the sanctuary overhead, to slow himself down. Be calm. She was in a state of continual and relentless emotional terror as it was. She did not need his own outrage pouring out upon her. Steady and cool, that was what was needed at present, if he could manage it. All about them the statues of saints and Mary herself either looked to heaven or gazed down upon the suffering; the laces were sooty from candle smoke. Overhead the bells sang out nine o’clock.

He stood with his hat in his hands and his head still turned up to the distant ceiling. “What to do? Come away with me.”

“No, I will not. Not until I have saved my passage home.” There was a tremor in her voice she could not subdue but she kept on anyway. “When I have the price of my passage home I will feel safe, I will know I can make my own choices.” She pressed her lips shut as if this helped her think what to say, how to put it. “Of course you see this is the advisable thing to do. Quite sensible. I am trying to be practical.”

Simon looked down into her face. “Yes. Of course. But how can you? You are not allowed to meet anyone.”

“Am I not?” She tipped her head and then pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her nose. “I shall give piano lessons here and there among the Irish and English people and you will meet me when I go and play the waltzes. I am arranging it.” He saw that her hands were trembling as she pressed them together. “I asked the other army wives to suggest it to him, not myself. They are very good, they all said ‘Certainly, certainly.’ They understand he is strict, but they think it is only to guard me from this new country. I have made them all small gifts, you see, so they think well of me and they know I had to act by indirection. Their husbands all came with us from Ohio, we were all deployed together. And so he could hardly say no without looking very unfair.”

“Yes, good thinking, that was smart.” His estimation of her rose even higher.

“But we must not act as if we were meeting. I know that is very shabby, ’tis very mean and low, but indeed I don’t know what else to do.”

Simon hoped he had a calm and pleasant expression. It was not a sure bet. “No, it’s all right. And so you will say, ‘And now we need someone to play the waltzes. Aha! I know somebody! Just come from Houston!’”

“Yes! Then I can perhaps make a little money and we can come to know each other a bit, then? With care. People talk, someone might run to the colonel telling tales.”

“You are fearless,” he said. “As well as beautiful. And inventive and resourceful. I want you to marry me.”

“We have written but now, Simon, we have only just met.” And then in a shy voice, “I must be sure of myself.”

He said, “I am sure of you.”

Tears came into her eyes again. “Thank you,” she said. “I am not seen as inventive and resourceful. I am seen as a rebellious, sneaking chit. That is the word he used.”

“And has he laid hands on you?”

A pause. “Once. He took me by the upper arm, there was nobody in the house, I broke loose, went out into the street. He said behind my back, ‘You’ll give in.’”

Before he could stop himself Simon said in a low voice, as if it were a sudden, saving thought, “I am going to kill him.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “What have I done? I exaggerated, Simon!” She raised her hand with the palm out as if to stop him. His eyes had changed. There was a flat look to them, stony. “Wait, listen, I didn’t . . .” She put both hands to her cheeks. “Why did I say that?”

“No. It’s all right.” He knew there was a spurious, false tone to his voice, so he then tried for a reassuring smile. Reached out and tugged at her bonnet ribbon. “I am straightening your bonnet for you. It’s come all si-gogglin.”

“I talk too much.” She dropped her head and then raised it again as if it were a great intolerable weight. “Simon, I didn’t mean to cause you to think like that.” She was groping for words. “You can’t mean that, I couldn’t see you again if it were so.”

“Doris, it’s all right. I am a peace-loving man, I promise you. That’s a promise.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “Is it a promise for sure then?”

“Yes. Yes. You have enough trouble and I have just added to it. It is a promise with all my heart. On my mother’s grave, on my soul.” He closed his eyes for a moment. Please, God, kill that man with a fever, his horse falling over backward with him, a Comanche arrow in the eye. And then because he was in a church he added, In the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ amen. Thanks in advance.

They stood for a moment listening to the Latin of the nine o’clock Mass, the responses. She started to speak and then paused, her thoughts leaping from one precipice to another. The pure cold fury in his eyes had frightened her. To distract him she said, “And would you know that tune, ‘The Peacock’s Feathers’?”

“Yes.” The look in his eyes had gone away, it seemed with some effort. “It’s tricky.”