“Can your parents take care of you?”
She smiled.
“I’ve never thought to ask you about them,” he said. “In fact we haven’t talked about very much but us yet. Are they well-off?”
“Quite.”
They held each other warmly and the minutes ticked away madly.
“I don’t want to sleep,” he said. “It would be throwing time away.”
“You’ll be tired.”
“I’ll have plenty of time to be tired in later.”
Then his head nodded in the firelight and he slept. In the cold darkness before dawn she shook him. He stirred in the chair.
“Four-thirty, Tree,” she said.
“I slept!”
“Yes.”
“And you stayed awake?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t have let me! Oh, you shouldn’t have let me! I wanted to keep the minutes.”
She comforted him.
“I know—it’s time now. You must hurry.”
She held up his greatcoat and he struggled i
