“She had no criticism of his dress, which was bagged at the knees, dropping at the lapels, rucked around the buttons, while she-although she wore a flowing white cotton-appeared (she knew it and wished it was not so) as starched and pressed as a Baptist in a riding habit.They were different, and yet not ill matched.They had both grown used to the attentions that are the eccentric’s lot-the covert glances, smiles, whispers, worse. Lucinda was accustomed to looking at no one in the street. It was an out-of-focus town of men with seas of bobbing hats.But on this night she felt the streets accept them. She thought: When we are two, they do not notice us. They think us a match. What wisdom does a mob have? It is a hydra, an organism, stupid or dangerous in much of its behaviour, but could it have, in spite of this, a proper judgement about which of its component parts fit best together?They pushed past bold-eyed young women with too many ribbons and jewels, past tight-laced maidens and complacent merchants with their bellies pushing so forcefully against their waistcoats that their shirts showed above their trousers. Lucinda was happy. Her arm rested on Oscar’s arm.She thought: Anyone can see I have been crying. She thought: I have pink eyes like a dormouse. But she did not really care.”

“Well,” Leigh said, because there was nothing else. She looked back at the picture of herself and Pam in the blue dresses. “We did have it easier than she did. I’m sure we did. And I should thank her for that, I guess.” Pam nodded. She looked calm, untroubled. Leigh, tapped her foot on the ottoman and glanced at her mother’s photographs. “But it felt like that was all she saw when she looked at us.” She leaned forward to get Pam’s attention. She wanted her sister to understand, to see things the way she had. “You know? I always felt like she never saw me, me as a individual. Do you know what I am saying? She gave us everything she ever wanted. But she never thought about what we wanted that it may be different. Or that we might need something that she didn’t. She never saw us separate from herself. She never saw us.” She paused, nodding in agreement with herself. That was it. She decided. She’d never put words to the feeling before, but that was it. That had been the whole trouble between them. But when she looked back at Pam, her satisfaction vanished. Her sister’s mouth was pulled tight, her eyes wide. She looked away from Leigh, saying nothing, still the loyal confidante. But Leigh already knew. She knew what she couldn’t guess before, what Pam thought of the two of them on the porch swing, Kara talking, Pam listening. Leigh didn’t have to guess anymore. She could hear the words come out of her daughter’s mouth as clearly as they’d just come out of her own.”

“Alice's robes were seasonal. She hadn't exactly plannedit that way, but that's how it evolved. In winter there was a long,warm, deep purple terry-cloth robe. In spring she changed to a newblue-and-white cotton kimono. In summer there was a white chenillebathrobe with a pattern on it, and in the fall she wore a cotton robe herhusband had bought her as a surprise gift. They were useful, practicalgarments, but when she thought about it, she realized she wore them asmuch for the feelings and memories they evoked as much as their physicalcomfort. When I told her I thought her robes had become like templegarments, she smiled,"Yes.”

“William Shakespeare. She knew him. They were,the three of them-Lucinda,Daniel,and Shakespeare-friends. There had been a summer afternoon when Daniel had taken Lucinda to visit Shakespeare at his home in Stratford. Toward sunset,they'd sat in the library,and while Daniel worked on his sketches at the window, Will had asked her question after question-all the while taking furious notes-about when she'd first met Daniel, how she felt about him, whether she thought she could one day fall in love.Aside from Daniel,Shakespeare was the only one who knew the secret of Lucinda's indentity-her gender-and the love the players shared offstage. In exchange for his discretion,Lucinda was keeping the secret that Shakespeare was present that night at the Globe. Everyone else in the company assumed that he was in Stratford, that he'd handed over the reins of the theater to Master Fletcher.Instead,Will appeared incognito to see the play's opening night.When she returned to his side,Shakespeare gazed deep into Lucinda's eyes. "You've changed.""I-no,I'm still"-she felt the soft brocade around her shoulders. "Yes, I found the cloak.""The cloak,is it?" He smiled at her, winked. "It suits you.”

“She was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things,”

“White people were dangerous and snakes were dangerous and now the two were working together, each doing what the other told it to. She was sure she had seen a snake in a weeded ditch with the head of a white man. Right after she came out of the house on the way to Big Joe's, which she had immediately forgotten, she saw it, long and black and diamond-patterned in the ditch with a white man's head. It had blue eyes. The bluest eyes any white man ever had. She was sure she had seen it. She thought she had seen it. Maybe it was only a dream or a memory of another time. Whatever it was, she still saw it every time she closed her eyes, coiled there on the back of her eyelids, blue-eyed and dangerous.”