The old man had a curious device: a box fashioned from tin, with a clever mechanism inside that rolled his cigarettes for him. I did not get a clear view of how it functioned—it seemed to consist of two rollers and a leather sling, the whole affair taking up so little space that the tin could be used to store his tobacco and papers—and so, as each perfectly rolled cigarette popped forth from the slot in its lid, it seemed more than a little like magic. He offered me one and I lit it with the candle in the center of our table. “Neither of them have ever known a man, then?”

He leered at me. “You would really buy one of my daughters?”

“Would you really sell one?” I countered. “You made the offer. Was it in jest?”

“That all depends.” He lit a cigarette for himself, waggling his bushy eyebrows in what he no doubt intended as some sort of conspiratorial gesture.

“Upon the quality of the merchandise in question? I quite agree.” The cigarettes were oddly flavored, with a fine spicy tang which I fully enjoyed; the only first-class thing about this gentleman so far. “One has to wonder at the beauty of daughters a father’s so eager to sell.”

“I can see, sir,” said he, with a pride only faintly dinged, “that you aren’t a father, or, if so, you’ve been blessed with sons. Me, I once had three daughters. Wedding of the eldest nearly bankrupted me, between dowry and ceremony. Second’s got her heart set on marrying as far above her station as the first, not even noticing how I must scrimp and save to pay her school bill every year. To take one off my hands would be a blessing.”

“If the price is right.”

His attempt at an ingratiating smile was pathetic. “If, as you say, the price is right.”

I had nothing better with which to entertain myself, and so when he offered to show them to me, I accepted, stubbing out the cigarette on the scarred table (and earning a scowl from Molly, then). He led the way, brandy sloshing not a little from the glass in his hand. —He had taken one of the back rooms for them, as he confided in me on the way up the narrow flight of stairs; room only for one narrow bed for the two of them. He himself had to sleep in the commons. Just one more in the long line of inconveniences in having daughters, it seemed.

“Why, then, do you travel with them?” I asked.

“Eliza is on her way back to school. Holidays are over, after all. And Lucy, that’s my youngest, can’t bear to be parted from her until the last possible moment. She loves her sister, that one does. They’ll be sleeping, you know. You’ll be quiet.”

“Of course.”

The room was indeed small, and quite close, and retained much of the day’s heat. The girls had gone to bed wearing only stockings and chemises; they had covered themselves in a sheet and a thin, threadbare quilt, but had kicked these aside, perhaps, in their restlessness, until the bedclothes lay rucked about their feet. “That’s Lucy there,” hissed the old man, “and that’s Eliza.” He held the candle above my shoulder, that I might better examine them. “Lovely, eh?” —That they were. Lucy, whom I judged to be about fifteen or so, lay on her back, with one pretty leg half-raised. The skirt of her short child’s chemise had fallen about her hips, leaving her raised thigh bare for all of its pale, slender length. Its collar was unlaced and fell open between her small breasts, to which it clung, rendered faintly translucent by a thin film of sweat. Her blond hair was unbound and spilled in a mad curly profusion over the pillow and down to the floor. Her sister lay on her side, her head nestled on Lucy’s shoulder; their hair, I noticed, was of the same shade and texture, so much so that, mingled together on the pillow, I could not tell where one’s ended and the other’s began. Lucy’s mouth was half-opened, her face turned up and back, whereas Eliza kept hers pressed close to her sister, despite the heat. One hand seemed to be cradled beneath her head, while the other lay in seeming innocence in Lucy’s lap, and she had twined her legs, as pale and as slender, about her sister’s.

“Well,” said the old man, in my ear.

I was aroused; more than that. In my first glimpse of these sleeping sisters (and here I look down, and spy them sleeping again; all innocence gone now, heads pillowed on each other’s thighs, Lucy smiling in a surfeit of pleasure, one arm lifted toward her sister’s feet, raising and flattening a breast with a pretty little nipple as pink as the inside of any fresh conch shell; Eliza, her fingers still tangled in the curls between her sister’s thighs, still sticky with that pleasure, shivering as I stroke her cool, bare flank), the mad scheme upon which I am embarked sprang full-blown into my mind. It was too providential to be a coincidence. I was meant to find these girls, meant to take them away with me into my brief exile. If not me, after all, then someone else: men, who would separate them, break their fragile union and spend the rest of their lives resenting them, and hating them, for a reason they could never fathom. Better a brief time of happiness than a life of misery. —But the simple truth is, I had to have them. And I will have what I must.

The old man moved past me then, slurping noisily at his brandy, to take up the quilt tangled about their feet and pull it up and over them, their legs and bellies, their breasts. Lucy turned restlessly as he did so, her arm flopping over the side of the bed so that her fingertips brushed the floor. Eliza murmured something, and snuggled more closely to her sister, spooned against her back. The old man stood over them both, looking down with a kindly and indulgent eye.

“I would have them both,” I said, my voice suddenly loud in the close room, and hoarse, from the smoke, and not a little from desire. He stiffened visibly, his head snapping up. “What? What!”

“Shh. Else you will wake them.”

He turned on me then, a flare of anger lighting his eyes. It faded. He waved a dismissive hand. “You jest.”

“Never. About something so important, that is.”

The anger returned. “Sir, I—”

“Papa?” Lucy had stirred, and opened her eyes. I could not see their color then, in that light, but even then I could imagine it: pure cornflower blue, startling in intensity. And Eliza’s are a cloudy green. —“What is it, Papa?”

“Nothing, my sweet.” He bent to kiss her cheek, and I took that moment to open the door. “I was just checking on you.”

I held the door for him as he walked out, his back stiff, his gaze cutting away from mine. As I turned to close the door, I looked back. Eliza had also stirred, and raised herself on her elbows; her chemise had also been unlaced, and had slipped over her shoulder. From where I stood I could see her breast, slightly larger than her sister’s, the shadow of her nipple quite clear against her pale skin in that flickering, receding candlelight. She caught my eye as it traveled from her breast along her throat to her face, and there held it with a steady gaze and a small, unconcerned smile. She made no move to cover herself. Lucy, also, stared at me, motionless, and her face was without expression. I smiled at them, and blew them a kiss, and closed the door. My head was light and my knees were weak. “They are indeed most beautiful,” I said to the old man as I joined him in the hall. “Their mother must be quite a woman.”

“Sir, I—”

“What began as a jest—your jest, sir, I believe—has become something else entirely.”