"No one is going anywhere." Lorian's words sounded like ultimate words. "No one," he repeated, "is leaving this place until the engagement. We will leave this place only after we have our house key. And you will sit beside me at that table, and you will smile, Olga, because that is what you are for, and you have done it for thirty years, and you will do it for one more year."
Something in Olga's chest, a small lit corner of it she had kept walled and dark for a very long time, opened a single inch. "The way I sat and smiled," she repeated, "and I will do this for years?" A sardonic laugh escaped her throat. "I realise now that you have always been a stranger to me. If I had known this side of you, I would never have married you!" Olga was more certain than ever that she would never reveal Cixi to Lorian. Her decision was the right one.
