I'm alone for an instant, between dance and dance, standing in the shadows for a few seconds before someone else who is not you comes to lay claim to me for the next minuet, and my eyes seek you out. You are almost as far from me as you can be across the expanse of shining floor; we were closer before, but the figures of the dance swept me away. Your head is bent, and you are listening with polite, slightly drowsy indifference to a dowager chattering away. She is flirting with you, I think, but you have no suspicion of it. You understand so much of other people sometimes, my husband, and have precious little comprehension of how you affect them. Beneath all your quiet cynicism there is a core of trust, of compassion, of almost naïveté, that I can see now; what tears your heart in two would hardly faze some of the cultured, powdered, worldly women swirling around me.

Your eyes catch mine, only briefly, and I am thrilled, electrified, in as cliché a manner as anything I ever played. Your gaze is suddenly liquid fire, spilling into my soul, and the joy that flows out from it gushes to every crevice of my body. You quirk one eyebrow, questioning, and I know that I need only smile a certain way and you will abandon that old cow that is pretending you are hers and come instantly to my side, and you know that you have only to make the slightest gesture with your hand and I will run to you, tripping over my skirts and my dignity. I could weep in joy and in gratitude for this moment…

I do not smile, but shake my head the tiniest bit, and you let your eyes drift back to your duties of society, and my contentment, my euphoria leaks slowly away, until I can almost imagine it spreading like a shining film on the floor around me.

Percy, I'm frightened. For a year I lived in a nightmare, praying each night that somehow with the morning we would wake and all would be as it had been; now I live in a dream, and I dread the same kind of sudden, irreversible wakening that shattered the nightmare. You watch me with the eyes of a lover, gentle, possessive; you help me dress in the morning, your slender fingers perfect and graceful on the intricate laces and fastenings. You smile at me like a friend, casual, comfortable; you seek me out each time you return not only to kiss me but to tell me stories, to thrill me and make me laugh as you downplay your dangers and paint all the absurdities of human nature you so piercingly understand. And you do not understand my fears. You have your friends, your work, your life apart from me; you love me, more than I have ever been or ever will be loved by a man, and yet…

I am not accustomed to live in fear. When your parents are torn from you, when you study on charity besides girls whose dresses are worth more than your life, when you never know where next month's rent or even next week's food will come from, when a man you have never seen can nearly kill your brother for a love letter…you can't live in fear, or fear would be all you know. I have never woken each morning as I do now, dreading what might come to pass by sunset in a country that is no longer my own, or even in a house that I have only just made my own.

The terror of losing you to France is nothing compared to the terror of losing you to my own foolishness. It took a few words before to drive us apart; what safeguards can we erect against that, Percy? A few words, a few meaningless sounds strung together…what might it not do to my heart? One morning I will wake, and go into your room, and you will look at me coldly and say something flippant about your tailor and wait for me to leave. One day I will trail my hand along your shoulder, and you will shift away, sending a subtle knife into my heart. One day…

So for now I live in the dream, devouring it. I cling to you with a hunger you must find surprising, perhaps even irksome from this wife who seemed so self-sufficient, who seemed not to need or even notice you. I snatch at every moment, every kiss, every breath, every word, as if somehow I can satiate my heart and have it stay that way; I am stockpiling effervescent memories against the inevitable ending, against my black dress or merely my vanished charm, building a fort of flowers to protect me from the impending storm. Percy, Percy, I am frightened, and your vows can't chase away that fear, your kisses cannot melt it. The chasm between us is only bridged, not annihilated. Perhaps it is closing, slowly, day by day and year by year; perhaps every time I make you laugh it shrinks a little more, and one day we will stand on the same firm rock we married on. That is what I pray, but I pray with a doubting heart, with anxious tears. Perhaps...

I can't do this now; I can't dance and flirt and smile. I leave the ballroom and seek out a balcony, where I let the wind sweep through my skirts and the cool rain baptize me anew into trust and faith. We committed ourselves and all that we create between us to Him…if the unthinkable, the unendurable should come, if your life or your heart should be torn from me, somehow it would be for the best….

"Margot?"

I turn, and your beautiful hand comes up to trace the tears on my face, and your beautiful eyes search mine for the cause.

"Dearest, what is it?"

I shake my head, a little foolishly; if I tell you, you will be torn between anger and guilt, furious at me for my lack of trust and furious at yourself for having earned it once. Forgive me my doubts, Percy, as you forgave me my cruelty; they will be gone in the morning, and it will be as though they never were. I know you love me; I know it in those feted wits of mine and in this troubled soul of mine. I only forget sometimes; and then you know how to remind me.

Your hands fall to my shoulders and brush my hair away; your eyes trace the outlines of my face, and my hands, which have traveled to your face, feel you swallow. Your voice is no more than a whisper.

"Are you real?"

Everything inside of me explodes in a frightened, famished laugh, and I am suddenly in your arms, and my tears and fears evaporate in the warmth of your kiss and the perfect way I fit in your embrace.

I will stay in the dream; I will live the dream until it is reality. The memory of a dream with you will leave me stronger than a lifetime of lonely reality.

For too long we were careful, Percy, you and I, safe and secure, firm walls between us that we might not be hurt by any loss. For too long we turned away, for too long we protected ourselves, for too long I was a wise and bitter woman, sure that if I hid my heart long enough it would wither away and cease to hurt. It was that woman who needled you, laughed at you, who walked night after night past your closed door and never knocked as she longed to. I will not be that woman again.

I am brave enough to live within a dream – so long as the dream is with you.