Chapter 40: Balance

He was still there in the morning. She knew it before she opened her eyes. She could feel him along her side, fainter than it had been at midnight, and the weight of his hand on the quilt, which was no weight at all, only the place where a weight should have been. She lay still in the pale dawn and listened. He was breathing, slowly, a long way off, like the sea heard from a hill. She turned her head. In the daylight she could barely see him. The pillow showed through his face. But his eyes were closed, and his mouth was a little open, and he looked, as far as she could see him, younger asleep and not at all charming, only tired. She got up without waking him. She dressed. Blue robe, padded jacket, the spare brush through the knot of her hair. At the door…