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attempted to banish any possible ill feelings from the previous Sunday. Merian nodded warmly, acknowledging that their fight was now behind them, and followed the couple into church, where they took a pew in back. Some who noticed him there a second week tried to be more generous in their gestures toward their outland neighbor. There were of course also those who did not. He took both sentiments in stride as he sat on the bench and listened to the Easter service.
    That week was a different preacher than the one before, and his talk was all of schisms and something he kept calling Utopia, which they would build right there in the newbornland. The sermon was a towering success, and everyone brimmed afterward with talk of this grand enterprise the preacher kept calling by that name all the rest of them seemed to know. The idea, at least in its rough form, was not unknown to Merian, but the word itself was new, and when he asked about its exact meaning later he was told it was a vision for the perfection of place. He smiled with pleasure, savoring its optimism. It was years before he found it also meant nowhere.
    â€œI am building a utopia in the woods,” he said, later that afternoon, when he was introduced to Dorthea’s cousin, Sanne.
    â€œAre you now,” she asked, with bemusement. “And how far have you gotten with it?”
    â€œOh, I’d say about as far as that preacher,” Merian answered, his face atwinkle.
    Sanne cast her eyes downward, then looked across the room, where Dorthea was busy attending to her other guests. “I had better see if my cousin needs any help,” she said, and with that slipped out of the range of his admiration.
    â€œI see you met Sanne,” Content remarked, when he found Merian in a corner off to himself, appraising the room.
    â€œI did.”
    â€œWhat did you think of her?”
    â€œShe is lovely,” Merian answered, holding in check anything that might appear overeager. “Is she married?”
    â€œWidowed,” his friend answered. “Since a year ago.”
    â€œHow many children did he leave her?”
    â€œThey had none.”
    â€œThat must be very hard for her,” Merian said, looking out into the crowded room and trying to make sight of her. He said nothing else but felt a growing wave of empathy for the woman who had suffered what everyone he knew seemed forced to bear: to be widow or widower or else orphan—as he himself was—or in some other manner bereft of kin and mooring to fellow beings. It is simply how things go, he thought, and no use complaining over it.
    When Sanne gathered the courage to look over at him again, a sadness sat on his face that made her want to reach toward him but also to draw away, for she could not read what was behind it and distrusted any emotion in people so close to the surface.
    What if he is in his nature just a sad man? she wondered. She could imagine few worse things than to be perpetually phlegmatic. It would be worse than a curse, she surmised. Not that she herself was all light humors, but she believed in governing what was willful or overstrong in Nature.
    When he caught sight of her staring at him, Merian flashed her a smile of such easy warmth she could not help but beam brightly in return. Why do the sad ones always have such lovely smiles? she thought to herself, starting to smile about the corners of her mouth almost involuntarily, though there was nothing insincere in her gesture.
    Before he left that afternoon, Merian made his way purposefully toward her. “We did not talk as much as I would have liked,” he said, “but I hope I might happen to see you again.”
    â€œI will be back for Whitsunday,” she volunteered.
    â€œWhat is that?” he asked, knowing neither what it meant nor, more important, how far away it was.
    â€œIt is also called Pinkster. Seven Sundays from today.”
    â€œWe never had that where I grew up,” he told