
She did not know how to reconcile these opposites – if opposites they were – and to make things more complicated, it was Louise who wanted the two of them to live together.

Louise was her own world self-contained, solitary, intense. Her lover was at the centre of a busy world.

Her lover’s ship was much bigger and carried crew and passengers. Louise was in a relationship it felt like a ship, though her vessel was a small boat rowed by herself with a cabin for her lover. Louise was travelling alone because she was trying to understand something about love. In 2011 a woman from London named Louise was travelling by Eurostar to Paris. She was excited because she’d heard a lot about Gertrude Stein.

She was going to meet a fellow American living there already. In 1907 a woman from San Francisco named Alice B.
