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coloring, her manner of becalmed curiosity, and her air of self-understanding that projected an emotional stability that was a rare and fine treasure. Even her sexuality, which stemmed from a harmony of all the other attributes together, was an orchestration of qualities of which he had never tired.
    “Not bad,” she said, raising her eyebrows and pushing up her glasses as if she were considering what to do with such a feeble response. He knew that she had caught him with his mind wandering and was curious about what was preoccupying him.
    For the most part, Nina could live with Haydon’s protean frames of mind. That was the great thing about her and the bad thing about him. If she had been the kind of woman who needed to know what he was thinking every moment, needed to be included in his every waking thought, needed to have an explanation for every queer mood of his nature, or felt slighted by his sometimes introverted temperament, the marriage would never have lasted. Additionally, if Haydon had had to make any fundamental changes in his personality to save the marriage, he couldn’t have done it, though it would not have been for his lack of desire or willingness to do so. It was only that the peculiarities of his character were not susceptible to radical change. He could have willed himself to make the effort; he could not have willed himself to succeed. But neither was Haydon given to self-deception. To his credit, he held no illusions about himself and gratefully acknowledged the good fortune that had come to him in marrying her.
    Nina, on the other hand, would have been equally willing to make a change to save their marriage if it had ever been necessary, but where Haydon would have failed, she would have succeeded. She was a survivor, a woman of strength and resilience, who did not have a personality in conflict with itself. She did not find it necessary to steel herself against invisible threats, nor did she create dreadful fictions that compelled her to do battle with Hydra-headed “what ifs”—apprehensions that Haydon lived with as though they were psychic siblings. She perceived life through a clear and finely ground lens, not through the cloudy-green refractions of an old bottle. If she had needed to change to save their marriage, she would have been good for the sacrifice, and she would never have looked back with second thoughts.
    It was not that neither of them hadn’t made sacrifices. No two people could remain together for eighteen years without experiencing disappointments in the other, without discontents and the painful renunciation of selfish ends, both significant and incidental. But none of their sacrifices had been beyond their ability to make, or more importantly, greater than their regard for each other. The true good fortune of their marriage had been that by virtue of the incalculable odds of serendipity, they had chanced upon that famed, but all too rare, felicitous paradox: the true compatibility of opposites. That, and the fact that they never had forgotten all that was good and exceptional about their beginning.
    Still turned in his chair, Haydon crossed his long legs, rested one arm on the chair back, and with the forefinger and thumb of his other hand, lightly touched his moustache, unconsciously checking the preciseness of its trim.
    “I don’t understand fa ,” he said.
    She nodded slowly, her eyes still on him. They looked at each other a moment, and then they both smiled at the same time.
    “I know what we need,” Nina said. “How would you like a cup of coffee?”
    “Perfect.”
    “What kind?” She put down her magazine and took off her glasses, which she laid beside the lamp on the mahogany table behind the sofa.
    “Something dark.”
    “Colombian Supremo?”
    “Okay, that.”
    “Strong.”
    Haydon nodded. “Grind an extra spoon of beans.”
    “That’ll make it too strong,” she said. But he knew she would do it.
    “And some Lindt’s too,