Doctor Dee studied it carefully. Black streaks began to appear on its surface, a dapple of marks coming forth, making shapes.

-Ah, said the doctor.

With a tiny pair of tongs he lifted out the square of metal, turning it this way and that, letting the fluid run off it. Then he took it and the stub of candle to the end of his workbench, and slipped the candle under a little pot on a tripod.

-Mercurius, he said. Smiling, he pressed his finger to his lips.

When the mercury in his pot was hot enough, he held the metal square over it, at an angle, fumigating it, peering at it now and then with satisfaction. At last he pushed open the shutters, daylight flooded the little chamber, he held out the metal plate to Will.

Will took it and looked. On its surface, as on an engraver's plate, but far clearer, there was a picture: a boy, solemn, rigid, standing in a garden, a sundial behind him. Himself.

Himself, these clothes he wore, this old hat on his head; his face. Will was looking into a mirror: a mirror he had looked into a quarter of an hour ago, and still stood looking into. Forever.

Doctor Dee saw him speechless, and with two fingers took the picture from him by an edge.

-A toy, he said, and tossed it into an open box there of other stained plates. There are greater things.

There are even greater toys.

He put his arm around Will's shoulder.

-Now, he said. We will look into Vitruvius. And into your nativity too, is that not it? And see what we can see.

"What's the book?" said a large shadow that had come between Rosie and the window light.

"Hi," she said to Spofford's bulk above her. "Pretty crazy. This sort of magician character just took a photograph of Shakespeare."

"No kidding."

They looked at each other for a silent space, smiling.

"What are you in town for?" Rosie said.

"Brought my friend Pierce in to catch the bus. Picked up some stuff. And you? Mind if I sit down?"

"Well sort of. Yes and no. Oh heck sit down."

He slid carefully into the booth opposite her, watching her lowered face. "What's up?" She huffed out a sigh, cupping her cheek in her hand and staring down at her book as though still reading it. Then she closed it. "I'm going to see a lawyer this morning," she said. "Allan Butterman, up the street." Spofford said nothing, and the wary smile he had retained from his greeting didn't alter, but he seemed to expand in the seat; his long legs stretched out under the table and a brown arm hooked over the booth's back.

"There's something I want to say," Rosie said, folding her hands as in prayer. "I like you a lot. A lot.

You've been great. Swell."

"But."

"I don't want you to think I'm doing this for you . 'Cause I'm not."

"Nope."

"I'm not doing it for you or anyone. I'm just doing it. The whole idea is that I'm doing it alone, it's something that makes me alone. Whatever happens later on." She drummed her fingers on the table between them. "That's why I sort of didn't want you to sit down. Why I sort of don't want you to say anything about it."

She meant she refused to have him as a reason. If other and larger things, more desperate things, could not be reasons, then Spofford, a good thing, could not be one. It was only fair: to her and everyone.

"I won't," he said. He crossed his arms before him. There was a pale fish tattooed on the back of his left hand; sometimes it was invisible. "The black dog's day is not yet."

"What?"

"That's from a story. Seems this lord had a black dog, a good-for-nothing hound, ate him out of house and home, didn't do anything but lay in the doorway to trip over, useless. Wouldn't hunt, couldn't track.

People kept telling the lord to get rid of the dog, and he says, 'Uh-uh. The black dog's day is not yet.' "

"Where did you get this story?" Rosie said laughing. Spofford-it was a thing she liked about him-was always showing himself to be full of surprising nooks and crannies where odd items like that were stored.

"Well," Spofford said, "that story, I would guess, comes from Dickens or from Scott, one. My folks had two humongous sets of these books. Works. Dickens, and Scott. It's about all the books they did have.

And I don't say I read them all, but I read a lot of both. I got them sort of spelling each other, you know, so I can't always remember whose stories are which. I would say that story is Wally Scott. And if it wasn't Wally Scott it was Chuck Dickens. Who would know, probably, is my friend Pierce."

"And that's the whole story?"

"Heck no. The black dog has his day. Saves the guy's life. That's the end."

"Every dog has his day."

Spofford said nothing further, only grinned so that the dead tooth showed in his mouth, so insolently self-satisfied that she had to look away not to grin back.

"So by the way," she said, gathering up purse, book, and change from the table purposefully, ready to go and changing the subject, "how did your friend-Pierce?-how did your friend Pierce enjoy his visit?"

"He liked it," Spofford said, not rising with her. "He'll be back."

He had liked it. He would think of it often, in different ways and in different contexts; he had already begun to think of it in the frigid airless bus passing away. And-on city streets, still violent with summer, foul with loathsome summer; in his tower apartment, grown too large now as the suit of a wasted starveling; or when steeling himself for the task he now knew lay ahead-he would sometimes feel those scenes he had visited lying just behind him, a pool of golden light, so close that he was uncertain just how he had traveled from there to here: to here where he supposed he must now be for good, or as nearly for good as made no difference.

Two.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," said Allan Butterman, tearing into the office where Rosie had been put. "You were waiting for hours, right? I am really terribly sorry."

He detached from his arm a black band that was pinned there, and dabbed at his face with a large and handsome handkerchief. In a vested black suit and tie, he looked chic, his somehow French features (sharp nose, black eyes and glossy hair, white smooth skin) emphasized, his plump cheeks supported by the starched tall collar. "Oh god," he said; he sighed greatly, and stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket.

"Was it somebody you knew real well?" Rosie said carefully.

"Oh no," Allan said. "Oh no. No. Just an old old client. Old as Methusaleh. Very very old client of the firm. Oh god it's really just too bad." He bit the knuckle of his forefinger, staring out at the river and the day; he sighed again, and composed himself.

"Now," he said. "First of all, how are you, would you like a cup of coffee? I'm Allan Butterman, Allan Butterman Junior , I'm not really sure your uncle has entirely understood that it's me who's been answering his letters and so on lately, my father passed away about two years ago. So." He smiled wanly at Rosie.

"Did Boney tell you?"

"He sort of hinted. A divorce. Or at least a separation."

"That's right."

Allan huffed out his breath, shook his head, stared down at his desktop. He seemed to be keeping one step ahead of awful grief, and Rosie was almost afraid of embarking on details for fear of delivering him up to it. "I'm already separated. I mean I left anyway."

He nodded slowly, regarding her, the lines of his brow contorted. "Kids?" he asked.

"One. A three-year-old girl."

"Oh god."

"It's sort of been in the works for a long time," Rosie said, to comfort him.

"Yes?" Allan said. "When did you guys decide?"

"Well," Rosie said. "He didn't, really. I sort of did."

"He's not in on this?"

"Not exactly. Not yet."

"When did you tell him you intended to seek this?"

"Well, day before yesterday."

Allan spun in his swivel chair. He put the tips of his fingers together, and regarded the day again, but as though it could give him no joy. He laughed, shortly, bitterly. "Well," he said. "I'll tell you what. I don't actually really handle divorces much. Mr. Rasmussen said you had a problem, and I said of course, come in, let's see what we can do. But actually there might be other guys who would do a better job for you than me.

"Okay. Having said that. Even if I were to handle this eventually for you, I would ask you right now just to think very seriously about it, and see whether you've thought it all through. Marriage is real easy and cheap to get into, and real complicated and expensive to get out of. I don't suppose you and, and . . ."

"Mike."

"Mike, you and Mike had any kind of marriage contract or prenuptial agreement about this?"

"No." She'd read about people doing that; it had seemed the kind of grotesque idea only other people thought of, like getting married in an airplane, or buying a common burial plot. Now she wondered. An escape clause: fingers secretly crossed, I take it all back. "No."

"Okay," Allan said. "Let me explain this. It used to be, not long ago, even when I first went into practice, that for two people to get a divorce one of them had to have done some pretty serious wrong to the other. Adultery. Habitual drunkenness. Drug addiction. Mental cruelty, which was no joke then, and had to be really established. Okay? That meant that if two people just didn't want to stay together anymore, no particular reason, then they had to arrange for one of them to lie in court about the reason-and for the other not to contest the lie. And if the court suspected that that kind of collusion was going on, the divorce didn't get granted. It was a very nasty business all around, husbands wives attorneys all lying through their teeth.

"Okay. Nowadays, just since recently actually, we have what's called the 'no-fault' divorce. The laws have finally caught up with the fact that most divorces aren't really due to anybody's fault, and shouldn't be adversary proceedings. So now, in this state, you can get a divorce on the grounds of 'irretrievable breakdown of the marriage and irreconcilable differences between the parties,' or i and i as it's called.

Irretrievable, irreconcilable."

The huge words made Rosie swallow. "Well, it's not really anybody's fault," she said. "Really." Allan had picked up a long yellow pencil and now held it balanced between his fingers like a drumstick, bouncing its eraser on his desktop. "Really?" he said. "You know what it seems to me, Rosie? It seems to me that maybe you haven't really tried everything to work this out with, with . . ."

"Mike."

"You seem to be sort of jumping into it, if you don't mind my saying so. I mean maybe therapy . . ."

"Mike's a therapist."

"Oh ho. Shoemaker's children, huh."

"What?"

"What I'm saying," Allan said, "is that I think you should wait. I think you should try other solutions, other than divorce I mean. Take a vacation. Rest. Get away from each other for a few weeks. See how it looks to you then." His drum-taps altered. "To tell you the straight truth, Rosie, I would not be willing myself to initiate proceedings for you at this point."

Whatever way it was that Rosie looked at him then, whatever her face said, caused him to gesture at her defensively with his pencil, as though sketching, and to say, "Now wait a minute, wait a minute, all I'm saying is this: I'm going on vacation myself for a couple-three weeks, starting tomorrow, I'd have gone today if it wasn't for, oh well, anyway: let us, you and I, make an appointment to get together exactly three weeks from today. And see. And just see what's become of everything in that time.

"You never know," he said.

A strange sickening letdown had begun within Rosie; it could not be that she had urged herself to this to have it all come to nothing, to one more exhortation to patience: could not be. She crossed her arms, feeling truculent.

Allan tossed down his pencil. "Don't get me wrong," he said. "I'm not saying your problems are trivial or anything, or that in three weeks you might not still want to pursue this. But the thing is, in the no-fault divorce we've been talking about-even if you decide divorce is the only way for you-this no-fault divorce requires that both parties be in agreement about it. You can't get it by yourself."

"No?"

"No. In a no-fault divorce, you're going to the court and saying We agree that our marriage has failed . If one of you doesn't agree, well then."

"Then what."

"Then you would have to go back to the old method. You'd have to sue for divorce, and you'd have to have grounds."

"Uh-huh," Rosie said.

"A reason," Allan said. "You'd have to have a reason to get a divorce; a good reason." Subject to his dark and mournful gaze, Rosie lowered her eyes. "Do you feel you have grounds?" Rosie nodded.

"What grounds?" Allan asked.

"Adultery," she said.

Earl Sacrobosco was tickled, really tickled (his words) at Pierce's recapitulation, which was total and just in time for the semester's beginning. He had never really doubted it, he said, and had never ceased including Pierce in his plans for the year; he rubbed his hands and grinned as though he had personally brought Pierce back alive to the hard chair before his desk.

The deal offered Pierce in the spring had been somewhat sweetened by an exiguous raise, but it was saccharine to Pierce, the extra would be going chiefly back into the Barnabas coffers, remaking his loans had burdened him with a higher rate of interest. There was a penalty too to be paid for his quick arrogance in the spring: a speech had to be made, Earl would not have minded a prolonged one, about Pierce's reason for a change of heart. Well, he had come to see (he said) that he had dismissed too quickly a position and a college he had invested many good years in; he had had time to think (humble jailbird before his parole board) and a maturer eye could perceive that, though the road ahead might be a long one and the journey couldn't be hurried, Barnabas deserved Pierce's commitment. All this said as briefly as was consistent with true repentance, while ashes fell in Pierce's heart. He didn't need to say what his real reasons for returning were; Earl was aware, and communicated his awareness, that Pierce had simply nowhere else to go.

It was further agreed (Earl clearing his throat and getting down to business) that in place of the ambitious course of Pierce's own devising which had been rejected by the Curriculum Committee, Pierce could take on two additional units of Elements of Communication, which was reading and writing for analphabetic freshmen.

"Getting back to basics," Earl said. He had discarded the rug he had long worn, and looked better for it, though it was evident why he had worn it: his bald pate was the sort that grows a dirty fuzz all over, with a dark smudge at the front like an Ash Wednesday penitent's. "Personally, I was very interested in the course," he said, clicking the mechanism of a ballpoint and releasing it. "It did seem pretty graduate-level, though. And I'm afraid that I agree with the committee that there just wouldn't be the call for it."

"It was an experiment," Pierce said. His long arms hung between his knees, he wrung his hands, he wanted to get out.

"We've already got a reputation to fight of being a fad school that gives a useless degree. Enrollment's down, transfers are up. We've got to have solid food here."