Seed on the Wind

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There was a little entrance hall, a kitchen and bath, a medium-sized living- and eating-room with two windows both at one end, and a small bedroom with one window in the rear and one on the side court. The place had been recently remodelled and was bright with new plaster and fittings, but the furniture was dismal, nondescript, and — not to be offensive about it — inharmonious. The curtains particularly were soiled and bedraggled, and one of the first things Lora did after she moved in was to take them down and send them to the laundry. Whereupon the colors in the borders ran so outrageously that they were worse if anything than before, and she had to get new ones after all. On a Saturday afternoon Steve went with her to a department store to help select the material; he fancied his taste in such matters.

This was in November, more than two months after their first dinner together — a dinner which Lora never remembered without a quiet inward smile and a chuckle of incredulity at the verisimilitude of memory. She had supposed when she left the office with him that Saturday afternoon that they would drive somewhere in his car and later eat at some outlying roadhouse or at one of the well-known uptown places — for she knew that Steve had an extraordinary salary out of all proportion to his age — among the girls at the office it was commonly reported to be a hundred dollars a week or more. But instead he had driven around the park for an hour or so, apparently preoccupied, talking very little, and then headed downtown, down Seventh Avenue, halting the car finally in front of a dingy red brick building in a part of town she had never seen before. The sign at the nearby corner said Bank Street.

Steve was fumbling with a bunch of keys, locking the car. Without looking up he explained that he had given up his place in Brooklyn and had taken some rooms here, a little apartment in fact — and he had thought it might be nice — he hoped she wouldn’t mind...

Lora saw that he was stammering, almost incoherent with excitement; his hand trembled so he couldn’t get the key in the hole.

The ride had made her hungry. “What about dinner?” she asked.

“It’s coming — that is — I’m having it sent in. From Chaffard’s, in a taxi.” He looked at his watch. “Seven o’clock, I told them. It’s six-thirty. We could have a cocktail...”

Lora looked at him, the man of action, and considered. He has no more idea what he’s doing than the man in the moon, she thought; and she pitied him and felt suddenly tender toward him with all her twenty years.

“What’s the matter, won’t it lock?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s all right now.”

He made the cocktails in the kitchen. After she had taken off her hat and jacket and looked at her hair in the mirror on the wall of the front room, and powdered her nose, she went to the kitchen and watched him, sitting on the wooden chair in the corner. She saw that the refrigerator was stocked with ice, and oranges and grapes and a melon; on another shelf was bacon, milk, butter and cheese; and in a cupboard at one side was a conglomerate array, everything from salt and pepper to two tins of caviar. She observed that he must have been living here quite a while, but he said no, he had moved in only the day before.

She liked the bitter cocktails, and they drank the shaker empty, sitting on the couch in the front room. It wasn’t a couch precisely; it was low and very wide, with neither head nor foot, with a soft dark blue coverlet. Steve gulped the cocktails down, but said little, and seemed immensely relieved when the doorbell rang to announce the arrival of the dinner. They both helped the waiter arrange it on the oblong table against the wall: salami and olives and anchovies, a whole roast chicken smoothly brown and glistening, peas in tambour shells, stringy crisp potatoes, an enormous fruit salad, and two bottles of wine.

“It’s enough for a whole family,” Lora said. “And two bottles! We’ll both be drunk.”

“It’s quite mild, just something to wash it down,” said Steve.

The cocktails seemed to have dissolved his excitement; he carved the chicken neatly and expertly, explaining that he had performed that duty at home for years. “Father doesn’t carve well,” he said, “he maintains that after he gets the legs cut off he can’t tell which is front and which is back.” Later, when their plates had been once emptied and refilled and the first bottle was nearly gone, he got started on the war. He had about decided to enlist, he said, and now with the draft on he wished he had; certainly it was more honorable to go voluntarily than to be forced into it. Not that he approved of war, no man of sense did, but one had to accept the liabilities of citizenship along with its benefits. His mother didn’t want him to go. Only yesterday he had had a letter from her, saying that the only thing worse than having her son murdered would be to have him a murderer. Of course she didn’t mean that literally, it was just her way of putting things.

He got up to take the empty wine bottle to the kitchen and open the second one, and came back and refilled their glasses.

“I mustn’t drink any more,” Lora protested. “My head is like a merry-go-round already.”

“It’s quite mild, quite mild,” he insisted. His eyes, shining, seemed a little uncertain of their focus. “Oh, I forgot, I ought to make coffee. Should we have coffee?”

“I don’t care. If you want it.”

Standing, he served the salad, spilling a little over the side of the dish and letting it lie there on the tablecloth.

Lora ate her salad carefully and to the end; it tasted fresh and good after all the meat and vegetables she had eaten. She knew she was not drunk, for she heard all that Steve said and was able to decide what she agreed with and what she didn’t. He was talking about the war again. That was nonsense; why did he have the war on his mind? Pete had gone to war. And got killed maybe. All right, what if he had, to hell with him, not a pretty sentiment, but to hell with him; if he hadn’t gone to war he’d have gone somewhere else, and left her like that. Not that it was Pete’s fault, she had nothing against Pete — no, if you were going to talk about fault she would have something to say that wouldn’t be forgotten very soon. She wouldn’t think about that though — she had sworn she would not and she never would. It would have been a year old now — no, it would be — it would be — she couldn’t figure it. Who was that? Oh, it was Steve; what did he mean asking her what was the matter with her? Well... would you believe it, he was right, she was crying, there were tears in her eyes, she could feel them...

She wiped her eyes with her napkin, laughed aloud into Steve’s face, got up and pushed her chair back, and walked across to the couch. Stretching herself out, she put her hands up behind her head and through half shut eyes looked at Steve as he got up from his chair and came towards her.

“No one but a pig would eat as much as that,” she said. “I’m ashamed of myself. I think I’ll go to sleep while you do the dishes.”

He stood beside the couch looking down at her.

“Of course you know—” he said, and stopped. He said it again, and stopped again: “Of course you know—”

She felt removed and skeptical, and her head hurt.

“Of course I know what?”

He opened his mouth but said nothing, and then he sat down on the couch, clumsily bumping against her thigh; she didn’t move. His eyes were bloodshot and he kept looking at her armpits, as she lay with her hands back of her head. Let him, she thought defiantly, I can’t help it if this dress shows spots.

“You know I’m a virgin,” he said.

She laughed directly into his face, as she had before she left the table, but his expression did not change.

“So am I,” she laughed.

He stared at her, and burst out, “But you said—”

“I was just talking. You had no right to ask.”

“I don’t believe it. I tell you I don’t believe it.” His voice trembled and his hands wavered towards her and then dropped again. “If you deceived me — if you made me think — oh, my god—”

And all at once he fell forward beside her on the couch, clutching her dress in his fingers, burying his face next to her body, trembling all over so violently that the couch shook under them; his shoulders went up and down in spasmodic jerks, and unseemly muffled noises came from his buried face. Good heavens, he’s crying, Lora thought, now if that isn’t funny I’d like to know what is. That’s funny, his head and shoulder bumping against me like that, up and down, just listen to him, he sounds terrible. His head was rubbing against her breast, and all at once it ceased to be the head of a crying man, a strange object to be commented on and thought about, and became something directly personal to her; her breast, beginning to enjoy it, swelled toward the pressure with its own welcome, and was encouraged by her hand, which came down and buried its fingers in the hair of his head, holding him against her. “Oh, my god, oh, my god,” he was saying over and over, like a phonograph record with its spiral impeded, unable to leave its groove. Within her was a deep displeasure and a profound irritation, at the very moment that her other hand was working at the fastening of her dress, to uncover the breast to him. Neither the displeasure nor the hand’s betrayal was present in her consciousness; indeed, consciousness had given up the affair altogether, saying in effect, as defeated and embarrassed it turned its back on the painful scene, “Very well, have it your way, but I’m off, I don’t intend to get involved in this sort of thing. See you later.”

So it came to pass that the venerable and somewhat withered bloom of Steve’s virginity had its petals scattered to a September zephyr. Lora did not stay the night. She slept, but later awoke into darkness and, slipping quietly out of bed and groping her way to the kitchen, saw by her watch that it was half-past two. If she stayed there, she reflected, she would lose all day Sunday, and she simply must get that tan dress fixed and her stockings darned. Ten minutes later, dressed but drowsy, she let herself out quietly without disturbing Steve’s gentle and regular snores. Outside his car was standing at the curb and she felt something should be done about it — wouldn’t it be stolen or confiscated or something? At least she would turn on the lights, she knew that was required, but she couldn’t find the switch and so gave it up and went on home.

But most of her Sunday was lost after all. She slept till noon, then, uncommonly hungry, went out for breakfast; and when she returned found Steve sitting on the stoop waiting for her. He saw her halfway down the block and sprang to his feet and hurried to meet her; his eyes avoided hers, he extended his hand and then drew it back, and finally for greeting awkwardly kissed her cheek. He reproached her for leaving him; they could have had a wonderful breakfast together, he said; what did she mean by going off that way? He had expected to cook breakfast for her and had made special preparations for it.

“You expected?” Lora smiled at him.

He flushed suddenly and violently, then took hold of her arm and looked boldly into her eyes. “I guess you know I did,” he asserted. “Anyway we can go for a ride, a long ride, and have dinner together.” He was squeezing her arm. “Did anyone ever call you Lo? I was thinking this morning, I’d like to call you Lo.”

So the dress and stockings went unmended.

Every evening after that he begged her to go home with him. He wanted her to give up school so they could go to shows and take evening rides and have more time together. “I suppose I seem silly to you,” he would say, “you’re so sensible about it, because you’re experienced of course. I didn’t know how ignorant I was — gosh I was an ass, wasn’t I?” He laughed at the ass he had been. “Going around talking about mistresses — and now I really have one, I keep saying it to myself when I’m alone, I really have a mistress, Lo is my sweet mistress — I love calling you Lo because no one else ever did. One day Father said to me — it was when I was home for Christmas three years ago, I was working up in Canada then — he saw a photograph in my suitcase, just a girl I’d taken to a party somewhere, I’d forgotten I had it even — and he said, Since you say you have no sweetheart I suppose that’s your mistress. I felt myself blushing all over and I was so mad I couldn’t speak. That was the first time, the only time in fact, he ever said anything of that sort to me. I had a notion to tell Mother about it, but I didn’t. Anyway, I remember that night I couldn’t sleep, I kept fancying myself saying, Father permit me to introduce my mistress, and imagining what he would do. I was an awful ass.”

Lora succeeded in preserving her evenings for school, and she spent not more than two or three nights a week in the apartment on Bank Street, but he had his way in another matter. There was no opposing his determination to buy things for her — clothes particularly, but also bracelets, trinkets, flowers, perfumes, bags. The bracelets and earrings were of necessity silver or glass, but were tastefully chosen; he insisted on accompanying her to select dresses and hats; and underwear and nightgowns he bought himself, bringing them to her folded in their boxes, removing them from the rustle of the tissue-paper and holding them up by fragile shoulder-straps for her inspection. On another point he was less successful: his attempts to persuade her to give up both her school and her job and install herself and her belongings in Bank Street. He grew more and more determined about it; it was obviously the thing to do, he said, no man of spirit would want his mistress to work in an office any more than he would his wife, not so much, in fact; but Lora wouldn’t even consider it. She didn’t argue about it; she would let him go on and then smile and merely say, “There’s no hurry; we’ll see.” She was of course awaiting an eventuality the possibility of which seemed, amazingly, never to occur to him; deciding that either he was trusting implicitly to her superior experience or that he did actually believe in storks, she continued patiently to wait.

When in the middle of October it became evident that nature’s routine had suffered no interruption she frowned with puzzled resentment; what sort of cheat was this? Too, she was momentarily alarmed, for her own experience was after all superior to Steve’s only as thick twilight is superior to darkness; but common sense soon told her that the hazards of life are not confined to a dandelion seed fallen upon a stone, and when four more weeks had passed, then five and six, six whole weeks, and the interruption had assuredly occurred, she began to weigh Steve’s proposal seriously. When in the course of the next day or two he renewed it, she replied promptly:

“All right, I will, if you’re sure you want me to.”

“You will!” he cried, blushing with pleasure. “This very evening — well, tomorrow then. Tomorrow?”

“I ought to give them a week’s notice at the office.”

“Nonsense. They’ve got a hundred telephone girls scattered around, what’s the difference. Tomorrow? Please.”

The moving was simple; two trips did it, with a big brown suitcase he bought for her and one of his own. The first morning he kissed her goodbye and departed for the office, leaving her confronted by a whole day to be disposed of by choice instead of necessity, she sat at the oblong table on which they had eaten their first dinner nearly three months before, sipping coffee which didn’t want to go down and feeling doubtful and ill at ease. She had done it, that was all right, but it wasn’t so simple as you might think. She couldn’t expect long to conceal the fact that every morning she was sick, and Steve would naturally want to know what the trouble was and she would have to tell him something. Almost anything would probably serve, with him; and for that matter why shouldn’t she tell him the truth? She didn’t want to, that was all, she didn’t like the idea. Well, she could say, you’re going to be a father; but that sounded ridiculous; there was something outlandish about it. Or she could say, I’m going to have a baby; but why should she? It was none of his business.

As it turned out she used neither of those phrases; the communication was made impromptu one evening late in December, a day or two after Christmas. Throughout dinner, which she had cooked at the apartment, he seemed nervous and preoccupied, talking but little; and finally, swallowing his last mouthful of salad, he unburdened his mind. He began by glancing across at her and saying with an extravagant effort to be casual:

“Has anyone been here asking about me?”

What is it now, she thought. She replied, “No, who would be asking about you?”

“Oh — I just wondered.” He emptied his wine glass. “You’re sure no one has been here?”

“No. Unless they came while I was out.”

“Sure. Of course. I suppose if you weren’t home they might ask the janitor.” He flushed, and then the flush went away and he frowned. “See here, Lo, I hope you won’t mind. I told them I was married — I put myself down that way. The draft board, you know. After all, what’s the difference, I’m supporting you just the same, I can’t see that it makes any difference. It’s wrong to make a man go to war that feels about it the way I do. The trouble is I don’t know whether they investigate these things or not, but there have been rumors lately, I’ve been worried — I thought I’d better tell you because if they come around asking questions and you didn’t know about it naturally you wouldn’t know what to say and then I would be in for it. I don’t know how much they go into it — just age and a few things like that I suppose — I’m thirty-one, thirty-one last May — and they’d ask if you were my wife and if you just said yes that would be all there’d be to it.”

“Well, that’s easy,” Lora said.

“You’re sure you won’t mind?”

“Lord, no, why should I? I don’t know anything about the war and I don’t care anything.”

“That’s just the way I feel.” He reached across the table and patted her hand. “You’re fine, Lo. Fine all the way through. I never had more respect for you than I have this minute. Anyway, as I said before, I’m supporting you and providing for you, what’s the difference whether we’re married or not?”

“Yes, you’re supporting two of us.”

“Oh, well, as for that, that hardly counts, I’d have to support myself in any event—”

“Two others, I mean. Two besides yourself. I’m pregnant.”

“You’re what?” he exclaimed in astonishment.

Heaven help me, thought Lora, I’ll bet he doesn’t know what it means. “I’m pregnant,” she repeated, carefully getting out all the consonants and raising her voice a little. It is hard to pronounce, she thought.

“But how — I don’t see — good god it isn’t possible.” From the expression on his face it might have been thought she had told him she had a shameful disease. He looked pale, incredulous, permanently stupefied. “You must be mistaken — how do you know — really you must be mistaken...”

Lora shook her head. “I know all right.”

“But I don’t see — I thought it was necessary—” He was speechless. Then, “It’s my damn ignorance, that’s what it is!” he exploded furiously. “Good god, what a mess! I don’t even know what to do. I suppose you do — you ought to know — it takes a doctor of course — that’s the only way out I suppose, I don’t know — it certainly is a fine mess, it certainly is—”

“I don’t think it’s such a mess,” Lora said scornfully.

“Oh, you don’t? You don’t, eh? Do you happen to know that abortion is a crime? Well, it is. I’ve heard the fellows talk about it — my god, I never thought I’d be tangled up in it. It’s a crime, don’t you know that? Women die of it too. It’s dangerous any way you look at it; it’s sickening.”

“I won’t die of it.”

“You might as well as the next one.”

“Well, I won’t. I’m not going to have an abortion, I’m going to have a baby.”

That made it worse than ever. His stupefaction returned, his jaw hung open, he glared at her in the effort to comprehend this new threat in all its enormity. Finally, so pale now that faint purple tracings showed on his forehead, stunned out of his fury into the chill of fear, he stammered at her:

“I see — that’s it — that’s the trick, is it — you think I’ll have to marry you — that’s it—”

Lora wanted to throw something at him. It was unbelievable, she thought, that any man could be so great an idiot. Such a talent for asininity transcended all ignorance; you couldn’t even laugh at it; it befuddled you and made you think you were standing on your head. She made him sit down again, for he had got to his feet and stepped back as if to retreat from imminent and deadly peril; she made him sit down, held him there with her eyes, and explained carefully and lucidly that, first, she did not want an abortion, second, she did not want to be married, third, she would be at pains to inform any inquirers that she was his lawful wife, and fourth, she would leave, or he could leave without interference from her, at any time that such a course seemed to either of them desirable. No repetition of these assurances could remove all his suspicion; plainly he was still harassed by the possibility of deception and disaster; but at length he grew much easier. There did remain the fact, as he himself remarked, that it was easy enough for her to talk of non-interference with his freedom when she knew very well that he was practically chained to her by the necessity of maintaining his claim, as good as publicly made, to the responsibilities of a husband; but to this she replied that an explanation could be found for that if necessary, and anyway such things were almost certainly not investigated — if all those details had to be checked up for everyone who registered it would take a whole army just for that. This seemed to satisfy him; he admitted its reasonableness; but his brow remained clouded, hours later even, after he had got his pipe lit, turned on the reading-lamp, adjusted the easy chair by the table, and sat down with a book.

That night she left the inner room to him, making up a bed for herself on the wide low couch in the living room. It was soft and comfortable, but it was a cold night even for December and there were not enough blankets, so she used their overcoats and a rug from the bedroom floor. This arrangement he tacitly accepted; as she was spreading the sheets on the couch she saw him watching her over the top of his book and thought he was about to remark on it, but he said nothing.

The following afternoon he arrived home a little later than usual, carrying an enormous bundle; it proved to contain two pairs of thick warm blankets and some sheets and pillowcases. “The landlord really should furnish extra bedding, what would you do if you had guests,” he observed; and Lora nodded, and thanked him. The new blankets were much softer and finer than the others; she started to use them in the bedroom, but he insisted that she keep them on the couch for herself. “I’m something of a Spartan that way,” he declared, “I’m not at all particular just so I don’t freeze.”

The blankets were his last gift, and that was almost his last speech — at any rate the last which contained any friendly implications. More than four months were to pass before his final flight, months during which Lora often felt that if she were called upon for one more sacrifice — of pride, or convenience, or more especially of the skin of her defense against the scratches and lacerations of his suddenly hostile and alien claws — one more sacrifice for the sake of a breath of a hope which she scarcely dared believe in — she would — she would — well, she would do something. Only there was nothing to do; she was trapped. So without any outward sign she accepted the rather difficult conditions which followed upon Steve’s emancipation from his novitiate. His gifts ceased abruptly; within a month he had stopped entirely coming to the flat for dinner, though he still slept there. For a while he continued to give her money, a little now and then, but it was not long before that too stopped. She tried running a bill at the delicatessen shop, but at the end of the week he refused flatly to pay it, standing at the door with his hat on, on his way to the office, looking her straight in the eye and reminding her that she had said he was free to leave whenever he wished. “If I was gone I wouldn’t be paying your bills, would I?” he demanded, which of course was unanswerable. Lora, not bothering even to observe that the delicatessen account included the morning coffee and cream which he helped to consume, let him go without a reply, and then systematically and thoroughly went over everything in the house. When she got through she had a pile on the living-room table of varied and miscellaneous objects: an etching he had once bought for her, two little figures of carved ivory, a fur neck-piece, three pairs of gloves she had never worn, bracelets, earrings, finger rings, a fountain pen, fifteen or twenty books, a tiny gold compact. Then she stood and considered: what to do with them? She bethought herself of two girls in the flat on the ground floor whom she’d grown to know fairly well; one was Janet Poole, who did designs for wallpaper, and the other Anne Whitman, a slim pale quiet girl, younger than Janet, who was studying at a music school. She went down and rang the bell; Anne opened the door and invited her in.

“I can only stay a minute,” said Lora, “I just came down to ask you a favor. I have some things I’d like to leave with you, only I’m afraid it will be a bother, I’ll have to be coming in from time to time, it’s nothing that will take up any space to speak of, just a few small things...”

It sounds idiotic, Lora thought, I should have made up some kind of plausible excuse. Obviously Anne didn’t understand the unusual request, she looked puzzled; but she was very nice about it, it wouldn’t be any bother at all, she said, they had plenty of room. So Lora made three trips up and down the stairs with the new suitcase Steve had given her, on the last trip leaving the suitcase itself, in a closet in the girls’ bedroom. Anne helped her, declaring that Lora mustn’t overdo; she had known of Lora’s pregnancy for a month or more and was quite excited about it, asking all sorts of questions.

Three days later, a Sunday, Lora, happening to look out of the living-room window around midday, saw Steve’s roadster, in which she had in days gone by had so many pleasant rides, standing at the curb below. The day was sunny and extraordinarily mild for February, and the top was down; thus her view was unobstructed of Anne Whitman on the roadster’s seat, in a fur cap and coat, with Steve beside her warming up the engine. Lora drew slightly back from the window and watched them until the car jerked forward and rolled off down the street; then with a grimace she said aloud, “Damn the luck anyway,” and turned and went directly downstairs and rang the bell at the ground floor flat. Luck was with her here at least; Janet was at home, in a pink negligee and fur-lined slippers. Half an hour later everything which had three days previously been so laboriously carried down had been equally laboriously lugged back up. Janet thinks I’m crazy, maybe I am, Lora reflected as she put the things away in the two lower drawers of the bureau. Would Steve’s emancipated ideas extend to the appropriation of the gifts of his former tenderness? She would have to chance it.

She lived on the proceeds of her cache for nearly three months. None of the objects had great value, but she squeezed all she could out of them, and on two or three occasions good fortune attended her; the fur neckpiece, for instance, brought a generous thirty dollars from Mrs. Crosby at the tea-room, who also took the books, the etching and the fountain pen. Lora was niggardly with everything but food; she did the laundry herself, in the tub in the kitchen, and with remarkable ingenuity made over her old dresses to accommodate the swelling amplitude that had already set in and would soon be discernible even to a casual eye. She was relieved of the expense of Steve’s coffee and cream, for he began to take his breakfast out, leaving, usually without a word, as soon as he was dressed in the morning; often, indeed, he did not come to the flat at all, and when he did come it was commonly long after Lora had gone to bed. They seldom spoke to each other, and Lora avoided occasions for speech as much as possible, for when he addressed her his tone was so laden with resentment, with contempt and hatred even, that she shrank in pure physical repugnance. This attitude of his had come on gradually, growing steadily and as from one day to another imperceptibly, like a poisonous fungus on a tree, and she did not at all understand it. She did not hate him; why should he hate her? One morning as he was tying his shoe with his foot upon a chair in the living room, he expressed the opinion, apropos of nothing, that she was a whore; the word came out of him tight and intense and he repeated it and was incited by it to further observations. Lora made no reply. She found it painful but only because it was ugly; he was an ugly noise, that was all. Once or twice, minded to leave, she vetoed it at once; no, as long as he paid the rent she would stay. Too late; it was too far along for avoidable risks; for some time, trembling, breathless with apprehension, exultant, in an ecstasy of hope, she had been aware of the pushing within her; and now, when she lay quite still in a certain position with the palm of her hand on a certain spot, she could actually feel it, the little devil seemed actually trying to make a break for it... No you don’t, she would admonish it, no you don’t, you’ll just have to be patient a little while and so will I...

At the very moment that Steve called her a whore she had her hand there, for since he had stopped breakfasting in the flat she often stayed in bed till after he had gone. Usually she did not feel well when she awoke in the morning; to move at all was an effort and this disinclination was increased by the certainty that if she did get up and squeeze oranges and make coffee it was heads or tails whether they would be wasted. But it would be only a few minutes before she would frown at this weakness, sit up for a moment or two until the worst of the dizziness passed away, get up and get dressed and start the day’s activities. She made a point of getting out for a walk at least twice a day; towards noon she would go to the market on Hudson Street and make her modest household purchases, and after lunch it would be Washington Square or perhaps across to the river and back. When the springtime brought warmer days she found an isolated corner on one of the piers near Fourteenth Street where she could sit in the sun and watch the tugs and ferryboats and an occasional great liner gliding by. This ought to be good for it, she thought, the sun and the beautiful river and all the movement of the boats with the smoke curling up. Then, after leisurely making her way through the narrow streets back to the flat, never failing to be amused at her absurdly timid care at street crossings or when the sidewalks were wet, she would languidly, slow-motion, remove her hat and coat and hang them in the closet, and stretch herself out on the couch; and wait. That was all she did: wait. There was no virtue left in the world but patience, and no interest but expectation. It was May; her cache was empty, her money nearly gone, and Steve no longer bothered even to call her a whore. Somewhere within her was the conviction that she was acting like a stupid fool, but smothering and effacing it was a much livelier and more intimate conviction that action must wait upon emergency and that emergency, however desperate, must inevitably carry its solution along with it, like a kite its tail. Consolingly but dangerously she believed in life, much as a metaphysician believes in truth or a husband in chastity.

She was lying on the couch late of a May afternoon when the door opened and Steve entered. This was extraordinary; not for many weeks had he appeared at such an hour. He extended no greeting, but proceeded directly to the bedroom, and Lora lay and listened to the noises he made in there, interpreting them, at first indifferently and half unconsciously, then with an access of awareness and interest. The scraping and subsequent plop was certainly his suitcase being drawn from under the bed and being planted on a chair; the other suitcase followed. She smiled to herself: not hers; it had more than a week back been transferred permanently to other hands. Drawers were opened and closed; collars rattled; a trip to the bathroom was made; now, she thought, only one toothbrush is left on that rack, and his bathrobe is no longer hanging so you can’t close the door. He had not been about it long, not more than ten minutes altogether, when the sound came of a suitcase closing, followed by a click; then another. At the approach of his footsteps, heavy with the weight of the bags, entering the room where she lay, she opened her eyes.

She didn’t know why she spoke, except that it seemed insane, not human, for him to go off like that without a word and for her to lie silent watching him go. All she said was:

“You might as well say goodbye.”

Nearly to the door he turned and looked at her, his shoulders pulled down by the heavy bags.

“I’m leaving an overcoat and two suits; I haven’t room for them,” he said. “I’ll send someone for them tomorrow. Why should I say goodbye? I don’t want to say anything to you, goodbye or anything else.”

His tone was incredible; Lora shivered at it, struck by an odd uncomfortable fancy: it was as if a man done to death, rotting in his coffin, should suddenly, at sight of his murderer, open his mouth to let the fumes of his defeated hate mingle with the other unpleasant odors suitable to the circumstances. She shivered and said nothing, though an instant before it had occurred to her to say this at least, “I have three dollars and the rent will be due day after tomorrow.” Surely she could say that much; but it remained uncertain whether she would actually have got it out before he disappeared, for just as he put down one of the suitcases to reach for the knob the doorbell rang sharply, startling them both. He pulled the door open, and a girl stepped in; it was Janet Poole from the flat below. She stood there glaring at Steve, small and dark, sharp-featured, her little black eyes pinning him to his spot.

“You’re a lousy bastard,” she said with certitude.

“Get out of my way,” Steve said, picking up the other suitcase.

“Good god,” she went on, “if they squirted skunk-juice all over you it would be a big improvement.” She turned to Lora. “Do you know what? Anne’s down at the door waiting for him; they’re going off. I don’t know which is worse, leaving you like this or taking that poor kid — it’ll be something to think about while I knit. From this day on I’m either a Lesbian or a nun, I don’t care which; if you ever catch me with a man again you can geld me without even a local; I’ll watch it with pleasure.”

Steve was trying to push past her but, hampered by the suitcases, couldn’t make it.

“If I don’t spit on you,” she continued, feet spread out, refusing to budge, “it’s only because I’m a little particular about my excretions. What am I doing? Relieving my mind. I’ve been trying to hammer sense into her, and it’s no use. She must have necrophilia.”

Lora was thinking, all I need to do is tell her how Steve got exempted from the draft. Ha, wouldn’t she jump on that though! All right, I’ll tell her, why shouldn’t I? Then I wouldn’t have to worry; it would take him about one minute to get the suitcases unpacked and his bathrobe back on the door. He must be crazy, he knows very well I could do that just with one word to her, or anyone, and it would be all up.

She said nothing. Janet Poole was still paying her respects to Steve in her colorful and expressive idiom, until all at once he charged, head-on, with the suitcases held in front of him for battering-rams, knocking her into the hall with some violence, but without apparent injury, for she continued to relieve her mind. Lora could hear him lumbering downstairs, with Janet’s unceasing fire following him from the landing. Then there was a pause, during which all other sounds were lost beneath Janet’s voice now raised to a shout, and finally there came from below the slam and rattle of the outer door closing, and all was suddenly silent.

Janet appeared in the open door.

“Shall I stay?” she asked abruptly.

Lora shook her head. “Please not now.”

“All right. See you later.”

She reached in to close the door, and then was gone.