"Yes," said Sophia. "I think so too. It's possible to do what you believe right and still be wrong. I expect we'll both manage it sooner or later."
He laughed, and looked up, and found her watching him with the expression he had first seen in the meadow at Chalk Farm.
"You said I might ask you," he said, "on a day when nobody was shooting at either of us. Why you came."
"I did say that."
"Is this such a day?"
Sophia considered. She looked at the window and the garden, at Tibby sewing with tremendous concentration, at the ink stain on her own second finger, and then at him.
"It might be," she said. "But I find I'd rather you didn't ask me yet. Not this week, while all London is waiting to see whether you will. Ask me in October, after the inquiry, when you know what you are and what your father is and what your name will be worth. Mine will be worth whatever I make it worth. I'd like to know what I'd be adding it to."
"And if it's worth nothing?"
"Then it will be a great deal easier to carry." She smiled, the first unguarded smile he had ever seen from her. "Come on Thursday again, Mr. Garrow. And the Thursday after. Bring the numbers for the *Hardy*. The widows want to know."
He went out into Brook Street in the long gold light of the June evening. He did not go home to Clement's Inn. He walked east instead, through the city and over the bridge and down the long road through Bermondsey, and came to Deptford as the sun went down. He stood a long while outside the cooperage gate in Butcher Row, listening to the hammers that should have stopped for the night and had not, *tock, tock, tock,* a few men working late, perhaps, on the last of something.
Then he went in.