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“You cannot know. You can only choose.” I leaned forward. “You may choose to believe that every one of us is Marguerite Lacroix. You may spend your life hunting for the ones who are not. And you will wear yourself down to a shadow, and you will hurt a great many people who never touched her, and in the end you will find yourself in a room like this, alone, with a picture of a woman who would have hated it.”

“She would.”

“I know.”

“She would have said—” He choked. “She would have said, Gideon, you idiot. Go home and eat something. “

“Then perhaps,” I said, “you should.”

He laughed. It broke in the middle. He put his hand over his eyes.

I waited.

After a long while he lowered it. His face was wet and gray and very old. He looked at me for a while, and I saw him make some decision, arduous and irreversible.

“You have never killed anyone,” said Roake.

“No.”

“You said you did not, in the warehouse. I did not believe you.”

“I know.”

“It is true?”

“It is the one thing about me that has never changed.” I met his eyes. “In eleven hundred years, I have not taken a human life. Not once. I have been very careful. It is the only rule I own.”

He nodded, slowly.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For answering.”

I stood.

“There is a folder,” said Roake, before I reached the door. “In my study, in Providence. Under the desk. It contains the names of everyone in my network. Brandt. The others. The accounts.” He drew a breath. “I have told my lawyer to give it to your sister.”

I turned.

“I do not deserve your forgiveness,” he said. “I do not ask it. But I have done a great deal of harm, and I would like to undo what I can.” He looked at his cast. “Tell the boy I am sorry. Tell him I hope he is happy. Tell him I saw the ring.”

I stood there for a moment.

“I will,” I said.

I left him in the little room, a man in an orange jumpsuit with a broken wrist, looking at his own hands.

Sabine met the Pendletons on a Saturday.

I had been dreading it for a week. I had prepared her, with great care, in a series of long telephone calls, on the subject of manners, discretion, and the importance of not mentioning, at any point, that she was two hundred and sixteen. She had listened with polite irritation. “I am fine, Maksim,” she had said. “I have met kings. I once had dinner with Rasputin’s cook.”

“That is exactly what I mean.”

“I will behave.”

She arrived at noon in a taxi, wearing a vintage green coat and an enormous scarf, and carrying a bottle of wine, a box of Belgian chocolates, and a canvas tote bag that said Kurosawa Was Right. She swept up the drive like a small elegant hurricane, and Mrs. Pendleton met her at the door with both hands extended.