"Is this what she looks like?" Burr whispers. He holds out his pinkie and she sucks on it, searching for milk, wiggling unhappily when she does not find it.

He opens his shirt, guides her to his breast, and she latches on easily, sucking while he winces. More than worth it, to see her face bleed into contentment, pressed against him.

"She likes it," he says. Then, wanting to glance at Hamilton yet unable to tear his eyes away, "She looks like Montgomery."

A strange, queer feeling then, to have this thing out of him that was so long inside. A person, with thoughts and emotions and one day a self, identity. A responsibility, whose father was dead before she was so much as a speck. How easy it had been for Monty to die, a strong and virile man, who seemed often to eclipse life itself, who was more than that, for Burr. And here she was, so small and delicate, breakable, looking so like him.

He finds suddenly that he cannot look at her, panic welling within him, and though she is nursing he pulls her away, thrusts her out towards Hamilton as she begins to wail.

"Do you want to--you should hold her, take her," he says. He will break her, or she will break, and Burr will break along with her.