He would try, many times afterward, to explain to people what it was like to watch it happen — and he never found a way that did not sound like exaggeration.

The best he could ever do was this: it was like watching a face come off.

The woman who walked through the parlor archway at 9:36 was the woman he had proposed to in the garden.

She was in cashmere and she had her coffee and she moved the way she always moved, which was beautifully.

Somewhere between the archway and the rug, over the course of perhaps four steps, her face changed.

The warmth went first.