Not knowing why, she left her half-packed trunks and clothes in her room. She began to wander the house. It was so empty and quiet. Everything so much the same. Yet so irrefutably different. On a hall stand, in an empty rose bowl, she found a stickpin. His. She’d seen it stuck through his cravat on several occasions. A tiny sword with a diamond hilt. She carried the pin out onto the terrace, fiddling with it. The leaves of the large maple trees at the side of the house were beginning to turn. Autumn. Life went on. Adrien had been gone four or five hours, and already it felt like a lifetime ago. She felt like the autumn leaves. Cycling into a reddish, yellowing phase. Awaiting the wind to take her down, down to the earth; reality. She unclenched her fist to look at the pin. It reminded her so of him. A dandy, she smiled. He was that. He groomed himself with a flourish, with an eye toward the ladies. Christina looked at the pin more closely. Yet she believed him when he said he had not been with another woman all summer.
