Eben was amazed to learn that he had aged into 1980 in a previous timeline, having lost Jennie to a death at sea, and had prompted this Richard Collier to travel back and change things.

"In their case, the writer, the man, is the one living out of time," said Jennie, "I guess I'm a bit like Elise, except I'm the time traveller. I was at Hammerstein's. Elise is on the stages of theatres."

"So Richard Collier's from 1980," said Eben, "He's gone back in time as surely as I somehow did the day you took me to see the sisters take the veil."

"I was too young to understand that we were traversing time that day. I thought you were in my time, and you thought I was in yours, during all of our early meetings. Now it doesn't matter, but we have to see them."

On the night of the first performance of the play, Richard Collier was seated in a box seat, looking at his wife's performance. Before he could get up to leave, he was approached by Jennie.

"Jennie Appleton!" he said, "After all these years."

"Fewer years for you than for me," she said, "Like you I time travelled and married my beloved in his time, not mine. Only I went forward, not backward in time. I'm not much older than I was when you warned me to avoid Lands End Light."

"And this is Eben?"

"Yes."

Richard shook his hand.

"You have to join us for coffee after Elise has taken her final bow."

For the first time, all four of them were able to sit in Eben's favourite restaurant. The lamps in Central Park did not reveal much, but these four had all the important images in their memories anyway.

"So you don't know it, Eben, but you made sure Richard came to me to stay," said Elise.

"But how can I still have done that, if I live a different life now that I have Jennie with me to stay?" asked Eben.

"My professor himself couldn't have answered that one," said Richard, "He never did tackle the subject of time paradoxes. I guess time just made everything right for all four of us."

"We're sitting on the biggest secrets of … pardon the unintended pun … all time," said Eben, "Only Elise and I are in our native time period."

"While Richard and I are out of ours," said Jennie, "But nobody else needs to know. I don't know what Cecily Brown would think, if she saw me now and wondered why I didn't look as old as I should in the late 1930s."

"There are rumours of another great war approaching," said Eben.

"I know all about it," said Richard, "I studied World War II in high school. It runs from 1939 to 1945."

"WORLD War TWO!" said Elise.

"It won't affect us. We won't get involved. We're used to keeping our time displaced spouses out of the way," said Eben, "And we will again. Elise and I were meant to live beyond 1945 in the previous timeline, because we did. We made it to the 1970s. So we will in this timeline too."

"And there won't be any birth certificate for Richard Collier in the 1930s, since I'm not born until several years' time," said Richard, "And Jennie's records will be confused by her sudden disappearance from her native time."

"I looked into that anonymously. The sisters assumed me missing, but not dead. Officially, I probably did die as Jennie Appleton some time in the years approaching 1920. So Jennie Adams has no records in 1937 either."

"So even if conscription could be applied to us, which it can't," said Richard, "We don't officially exist in this time period. I will write something to help the morale of the war effort though."

As the years rolled on, all four of them avoided any encounter with the younger Richard Collier of his native time, once he was born, and they avoided any encounter with the professor as well, so as to prevent any further time paradoxes from eventuating, especially those which might undo all that had happened to bring them together. The four of them remained close friends and continued to double date, until old age claimed both Richard and Elise in the 1970s.

Eben and Jennie Adams continued to enjoy their twilight years, until Eben died in January 1983. Jennie lived on, a widow out of time, but contented with many happy memories, until she died peacefully, after falling asleep while watching a movie in bed, on a Saturday evening in April 1989.

Not only were the strands of Jennie's and Eben's lives interwoven together. Not only were the strands of Richard's and Elise's lives interwoven together. The best outcomes for all of them were facilitated by the fact that the strands of both couples' lives had been interwoven together, uniting all four of them across several decades.

And due to a rare positive outcome of a phenomenon known in recent years as the Butterfly Effect, one other thing had happened. In 1938, Matthews and Spinney had married.

In the end, time had been kind to all of them.