For a while I had suspected Clara of having reconciled with her husband the Chair, who in turn had materialised in the department after his extended absence. He was magnanimous for a stretch of time, issuing furloughs from administrative duties to his favourites, promising an improved workload model, and providing on his own initiative additional cases of wine at the Wednesday seminars. For a man who had never before shown evidence of any leadership qualities, he appeared conscious all at once that certain duties, long left undone, might have been expected of him, and instead of taking these on in silence, he initiated an apology tour that took him around the department, appearing unbidden in each of our doorways, soliciting indulgences from one member of the faculty after another and lingering over our desks until he received his due expiation. I understood that their marriage afforded Clara certain protections – from the point of view of a social life, there was the usual run of dinner parties and drinks, the expected conversations and affairs everyone knew about but which never resulted in scandal, they were after all part of the right set, certain transgressions were expected; from a fiscal perspective, he had come up in another time, would never now lose his Chair, and in any case had a certain amount of inherited wealth in the form of property, had a portfolio of some kind, made canny investments. In a formal sense, exactly half of this security now belonged to Clara, but it was not about the money, not really, nor the respectability, although either would have been easy enough to understand given her irregular upbringing. In truth it was easy to follow what Clara saw in him: briefly, he was a man who did not understand anything and would not try to, he would not ask questions, would leave her alone. That is what he could offer, and it was no small thing: he would let her be.