The Hussar never does see his English Katherine again except in dreams and hopes and luxurious regret, and the child he dreams turns out to be a boy, not a girl, with flyaway hair.

Go home, Rachel. She so likes to to be there for his return. Zachariah is coming, Zachariah is coming! Rachel is all gravity now, nudged from dreams, a swift transition. Rachel dreams much and often. She is not hunted.

Marry me, Rachel.'

'Not yet.'

'Tomorrow, Rachel. Marry me.'

'Maybe tomorrow.'

'There is no common blood between us. Say it,' pleads Zachariah.

'There is no common blood between us,' murmurs Rachel.

'I am not your brother.'

'I know.'

He traces her face with his swollen fingers, across the brow bones and down the zygomatics, and along the jaw from earlobe to chin, sweeping away the brine as he goes.

'I am your Wolff,' he says.

'And I am your Wolff,' she replies.

Let the day begin.

And as he recalls the old soldier's wisdom regarding bullets and fate, how pointless evasion is when each shot has a man's name on it, he lurches upright, to the waist, a roaring sound in his ears.

The older she grows, the farther she walks. It is a good thing the world is round and she is fond of walking in circles or else she might disappear across three times nine countries in the thirtieth tsardom!

I need to tell you a story, a tale of fate and emergence.