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she wanted, the old or the new, and she said the old. But at the door of the brownstone castle, she turned away. To her the past was a dingy pedestal erected so she could be alive in this moment. She turned away and walked along the Mall in the sunshine. The subsiding afternoon, the pavement dappled with shadows and seeds, the Popsicle hawkers, the tinted-windowed tourist buses stuffed with glaring Americans, the flocks of children, the fairy ring of fluttering red, white, and blue flags planted around the base of the great obelisk, the little Indian women wearing saris and Brahmin dots and nostril pearls and carrying both parasols and briefcases were for Sally all fragments of a fair; in the distance the Capitol dome, cleaner than its grey wings, had the glazed lustre of a piece of marzipan. The sunshine, imprinted everywhere with official images, seemed money to her as she walked past the Natural History Building, up Twelfth Street, through the dank arcades of the Post Office Department, along Pennsylvania Avenue to the fence of the White House. She felt airy, free. The federal buildings, fantastically carved and frosted, floated around her walk; their unreality and grandeur permeated her mood. Through the gaps between guards and greenery, she looked in at the White House; it was made of brilliant fake stuff, like meringue. She thought of the walleyed young Irishman who reigned here, wondered if he were good in bed, and didn’t see how he could be, he was President. She turned up Fourteenth Street, strolling to her fate.
    Sally carried a toothbrush in her pocketbook, and that was her luggage; she had inherited from her father a love of travelling light. Free, cool in her black linen, she felt like an elegant young widow returning from her husband’s June funeral; he had been an old man, greedy and unkind. In truth, Richard, heavier than ten years ago, was still handsome enough, though his head seemed to weigh more on his shoulders and his quick gestures had been slowed and blurred by what he called, with a clipped, resentful intonation, his ‘responsibilities’. When their marriage was young, they had lived in Manhattan, and in their poverty had walked miles as amusement. She felt Richard’s ghost at her shoulder, remembered the novel rhythm of walking with, of having , a man. She had hated schools, prim places of Eastern exile. Richard had rescued her from Barnard and made her a woman. Where had it gone, her gratitude? Was she wicked? She couldn’t believe it, feeling still so full of sky from the aeroplane ride, sidewalk mica glinting under her, her nostrils pricked by the peppery odour of tar. The crosswalk stripes had been tugged and displaced by the melting summer heat. On the wide pavements her stride kept overtaking the saunter of Southerners. Church chimes, the chimes of lemon-yellow St John’s, sounded the hour. It was five. She walked west along I Street. Government clerks in flapping lightweight suits squinted through her, towards the wife and Martini waiting in Maryland. A multitude of women had been released. Like a rolling golden ornament the sun rode the glassy buildings on her left, and its rays warmed her face into self-awareness. She realized she was pouting as she searched the faces for Jerry’s face.
    How he would grin! Despite his scruples and premonitions he would grin to see her; he always did, and she alone could bring out that smile in him. Though only a few months older than she, and remarkably innocent for a man of thirty, he made her feel like a daughter whose every defiance testified to a cherished vitality. Sally felt carved on her face a deep smile answering his imagined one.
    Danger flicked from the other faces. She seemed to see a man she knew, about to turn the corner of the BOAC building, across from Farragut’s gesturing statue – a young Wall Street scion Richard had had to the house. His name was Wigglesworth, preceded by two initials she could not remember. His face,