other but no, we only do each other harm. I think this has only brought out the truth about us how far apart we are. And now I'm far from everyone; I don't have any friends anymore and everyone looks silly and foolish and not related to me. She drew him through a living room, up a stairway and across a hall and into a bedroom. "No," he said, "wait. This is not what I want.' Just sleep," she told him. "Lie down and sleep.' That seemed reasonable. She removed his coat and hung it in a closet. She knelt and untied his shoes. He stepped out of them obediently. She hung his trousers and shirt over a chair back. He dropped onto the bed in his underwear, and she drew the cover over him. Next he heard her moving through the rest of the house, turning off lights, running water, saying something in another room. She returned to the bedroom. Her robe was old, made of silk, the color of red wine. Then she got into bed and lay close to him. "I just want to sleep," he told her. But there was this silk material next to him. He felt how cool and soft the silk was, cool silk over warm body. the night he heard a child cough, and he swam up through a sea of dreams to answer. But he was in a room with one tall blue window, and the child was not Ethan. He turned over and found Muriel. She sighed in her sleep, a soft sound full of remembered pain, which seemed to say to Macon, About your son I am wounded too. We're all wounded. You are not the only one.