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He was certainly not vain, freely admitting his thick girth, his imperfect health. After they had eventually made love satisfactorily (as far as she could assume for both of them), he stood and tested his calves in a naked leap, then strolled to the window, opened it and smoked a cigarette there, g…

France had meant a quiet and anonymous time for Anna. Apart from the visits of Monsieur and Madame Q, she saw no one. And there was nothing in the house of the writer to remind her of North America. She was escaping the various aspects of her professional life—acquaintances, deadlines, requests for…

The husband, smoking his pipe, would walk the perimeter of the walled garden and consider how well the pollarding of the trees had succeeded. He would eventually circle the house to where the door leading to the back pasture would be open, and through the opening see Anna hunched over the table wri…

The manoir had once been the writer’s home, and she found herself in some modest contrapuntal dance with him.

Do you think Claire knows?

Claire talks to me every night, and I don’t say a word about you, and she must wonder why I don’t say a word about you.

Then Claire knows.

Some afternoons she spoke to him in an earnest schoolgirl French—as though she were not someone who had grown up alongsi…