Chapter 39: One Lamp

She lit one lamp. Not the big lamp on the desk that she read by, but the small one, the clay one with the chipped spout that she kept on the shelf for when the oil ran low. She trimmed the wick short so it would burn low and slow, and set it on the floor in the middle of her room, between the bed and the cold brazier, and sat down beside it. It was the night of the eighth. Outside, the snow had stopped. The courtyard was white and silent, and the ginkgo stood black in the middle of it, and the window paper was gray with reflected moonlight. He was sitting across the lamp from her. She had found out on the walk home that he was easier to see by lamplight. In the gray light of the outer hall he had been nothing but a warmth…