“Do you think I’m a child?” she asked.

“Not any more,” said Adam. “I’m beginning to think you’re a twisted human—or no human at all.”

She smiled. “Maybe you’ve struck it,” she said. “Do you think I want to be human? Look at those pictures! I’d rather be a dog than a human. But I’m not a dog. I’m smarter than humans. Nobody can hurt me. Don’t worry about danger.” She waved at the filing cabinets. “I have a hundred beautiful pictures in there, and those men know that if anything should happen to me—anything—one hundred letters, each one with a picture, would be dropped in the mail, and each letter will go where it will do the most harm. No, they won’t hurt me.”

Adam asked, “But suppose you had an accident, or maybe a disease?”

“That wouldn’t make any difference,” she said. She leaned closer to him. “I’m going to tell you a secret none of those men knows. In a few years I’ll be going away. And when I do—those envelopes will be dropped in the mail anyway.” She leaned back in her chair, laughing.

Adam shivered. He looked closely at her. Her face and her laughter were childlike and innocent. He got up and poured himself another drink, a short drink. The bottle was nearly empty. “I know what you hate. You hate something in them you can’t understand. You don’t hate their evil. You hate the good in them you can’t get at. I wonder what you want, what final thing.”

“I’ll have all the money I need,” she said. “I’ll go to New York and I won’t be old. I’m not old. I’ll buy a house, a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and I’ll have nice servants. And first I will find a man, if he’s still alive, and very slowly and with the greatest attention to pain I will take his life away. If I do it well and carefully, he will go crazy before he dies.”

Adam stamped on the floor impatiently. “Nonsense,” he said. “This isn’t true. This is crazy. None of this is true. I don’t believe any of it.”

She said, “Do you remember when you first saw me?”

His face darkened. “Oh, Lord, yes!”

“You remember my broken jaw and my split lips and my missing teeth?”

“I remember. I don’t want to remember.”

“My pleasure will be to find the man who did that,” she said. “And after that—there will be other pleasures.”

“I have to go,” Adam said.

She said, “Don’t go, dear. Don’t go now, my love. My sheets are silk. I want you to feel those sheets against your skin.”

“You don’t mean that?”

“Oh, I do, my love. I do. You aren’t clever at love, but I can teach you. I will teach you.” She stood up unsteadily and laid her hand on his arm. Her face seemed fresh and young. Adam looked down at her hand and saw it wrinkled as a pale monkey’s paw. He moved away in revulsion.

She saw his gesture and understood it and her mouth hardened.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I know, but I can’t believe. I know I won’t believe it in the morning. It will be a nightmare dream. But no, it—it can’t be a dream—no. Because I remember you are the mother of my boys. You haven’t asked about them. You are the mother of my sons.”

Kate put her elbows on her knees and cupped her hands under her chin so that her fingers covered her pointed ears. Her eyes were bright with triumph. Her voice was mockingly soft. “A fool always leaves an opening,” she said. “I discovered that when I was a child. I am the mother of your sons. Your sons? I am the mother, yes—but how do you know you are the father?”

Adam’s mouth dropped open. “Cathy, what do you mean?”

“My name is Kate,” she said. “Listen, my darling, and remember. How many times did I let you come near enough to me to have children?”

“You were hurt,” he said. “You were terribly hurt.”

“Once,” said Kate, “just once.”

“The pregnancy made you ill,” he protested. “It was hard on you.”

She smiled at him sweetly. “I wasn’t too hurt for your brother.”

“My brother?”

“Have you forgotten Charles?”

Adam laughed. “You are a devil,” he said. “But do you think I could believe that of my brother?”

“I don’t care what you believe,” she said.

Adam said, “I don’t believe it.”

“You will. At first you will wonder, and then you’ll be unsure. You’ll think back about Charles—all about him. I could have loved Charles. He was like me in a way.”

“He was not.”

“You’ll remember,” she said. “Maybe one day you will remember some tea that tasted bitter. You took my medicine by mistake—remember? Slept as you had never slept before and awakened late—thick-headed?”

“You were too hurt to plan a thing like that.”

“I can do anything,” she said. “And now, my love, take off your clothes. And I will show you what else I can do.”

Adam closed his eyes and his head reeled with the rum. He opened his eyes and shook his head violently. “It wouldn’t matter—even if it were true,” he said. “It wouldn’t matter at all.” And suddenly he laughed because he knew that this was so. He stood too quickly and had to grab the back of his chair to steady himself against dizziness.