I love your loins, that's all,' Rachel says quietly. 'And now I love the word itself, and how words change, I love that too. And all the parts of you, I love them. That's all. And I'm not sad,' she whispers, gasping a little at the shock of her own tears, hot and extravagant, tears that catch the light in her lashes before they drop and roll across Zach's thighs, sparkling capsules, kaleidoscopic, the flow dynamic.

Rachel believes in it, the laws of of pattern formation and how they are universal: whatever she sees, crystallizing, a landscape of fractals, of emergence and symmetry, her world falling happily into shape where he must forge it, a pioneer of industry, sooty and scarred. For Rachel Wolff, quite simply, there are patterns everywhere, she can't help it; she is an illustrator, naturalist, cartographer—and her eye, a kaleidoscope.

Hell! His beard grows fast as blazes, like a damp wicket in springtime sun, green, and Rachel's skin is so fine, his bristles can score her red the way a new ball marks a bat, English alum on English unbleached willow, finest quality, special selection, Rachel-grade. Zach, my man, you have cricket on the brain! Thomas has asked him to play on Sunday. Bring Rachel, he said. Thomas 'All Souls' Aubry, gentleman, corinthian at heart, and half French yet more English than a true-born.

Zach's eyes flash with light, caught by the peculiar greenness of early summer grass and the strobe effect of sun through wrought-iron fencing and trees. He kicks at dust and gravel with his unlaced desert boots, cricket spikes slung around his neck by the laces, his tread lazy and ostentatious, full of close-of-play sensuality.

It is perfectly scientific,' Lev protests, rising to draw the heavy dining room curtains against the streetlamp light, reducing it to a glow that bleeds amber round the edges and between the panels of plum brocade. Lev turns back into the room but stays by the window a moment to observe the new play of light, the chandelier casting shards of glitter upon mahogany and bold shadows across the high brow and long sharp plains of Katya's timeless face. Oh my wife.

Her cut finger has begun to bleed slightly and she licks the blood away. Salt, metal, black earth. Blood has such a tenebrous taste.

Here at the dining table in Chelsea, nearly two years after Katya's death, Rachel fingers a path through a film of sparkling dust around Mama's plate and breakfast cup and linen napkin, orbiting twice.

In Aleksei's fanciful dream of two Katherines by Caucasian blue waters, his sister and his English love, there is a child also, a fairy-tale girl, he fancies, with flyaway hair at the nape. She chirps gaily as a bird and is rosier than a red rose and whiter than white snow.