And there it was. Frankly, Rufina felt rather foolish not to have realized sooner that her husband's encampment was out of necessity, yes, but also out of desire—a desire that had always been far more intense than their desire for one another. He was, after all, a man of Mysteries; she should have easily concluded that he would be looking for a fix for his predicament. She softened.

"Some time away from your research would allow you to return to it with fresh eyes and a clear head," Rufina tried again with a bit more patience, though still resolved. She did not tell her husband that his mission seemed to her a fool's errand, that if a number of healers trained in the workings of the body hadn't found a patch for his condition in decades, centuries, he was quite unlikely to do so before he shuffled off the mortal coil. "We are often blinded by our proximity to our fixations, after all."