The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

THE NIGHT BEFORE PROHIBITION

When Walter Coolidge Swift woke up in his room at the Adams House he could see at once from the darkness of the morning that it was snowing, or about to snow. Turning over in bed, he saw the large flakes gliding down against the sooty wall of the court, outside the window, far apart and peaceful and leisurely; and immediately a sensation of relaxation and luxury overcame him. He smiled, clasped his hands under his head, half closed his eyes, and gave himself up to reminiscence. It was odd, the way this always happened—not the snow, of course, but the way that every time he came to the Adams House, on his semi-annual visits from New Hampshire, this same mood arose in him. No sooner would he be awake, in the morning, than he would begin thinking about the good old days when he lived in Boston—about the bars he had loved—Frank Locke’s, the Holland House, Jacot’s, the Nip, the Bell-in-Hand—about the theaters, the burlesque shows, the prize-fights, the ball-games—and then at the end, always, he would think, and most of all, about Eunice. Why was it that this never happened to him at home? He supposed it must be because he was always busy—busy at the office, busy with his wife, Daisy, and the children, busy at the Club. There was never any time for sentimental reminiscences. And besides, he had really settled down when they moved to Nashua—all that gay life had stopped as suddenly as if it had been cut off with a knife. With no theaters to speak of, no bars at all, and no boon companions, he had found himself with no longer much motive for dissipation, and in the twinkling of an eye his whole mode of life had changed.

Natural enough, no doubt—natural enough; but just as natural, too, when he came to Boston, to think delightedly of that other life, eight years ago, and all its pleasures. The old crowd was gone. Scarcely a soul was left that he knew, or much wanted to see: even the newspapers had changed. And the old Record office, that battered disorderly firetrap, where he had spent so many free hours, and helped Mike at midnight with his reviews of the latest musical comedy—that too was vanished, and with it every man and woman whom he had known there. The Negress elevator girl with red hair—Bill Farley, the sports writer, who had spanked the Follies girl in the lobby of the Lenox, and who had later died of consumption—the Virgin Queen, with the enormous breasts, who had edited the household page—where were they now? Where was gallant little Mary, who nightly picked her husband, Hal, out of the gutter beside Frank Locke’s, and did his work for him in addition to her own? Nice people, nice people, and quite possibly dead.… And where, above all, was Eunice?

It still struck him as odd that he had made so little effort to keep in touch with her. Of course, he had fallen in love with Daisy, and then he had moved away—but even so, it had shown little foresight, and little knowledge of human nature or of himself. He might have known that he would eventually want to see her again—even if he couldn’t have known that he was more than half in love with her. That was almost the strangest part of it: that he could have lived with her for three years without realizing the depth and beauty of their feeling for each other. Somehow, the affair had just seemed gay, and good; its note had been one of light-heartedness; the evenings had come and gone as so much mere amusement. It seemed to him that they had always been laughing—yes, from the very beginning, from the first moment of their meeting, when, in the Park Street Subway, reaching hastily for a strap, he had by accident taken her hand firmly and completely in his own. That had made her laugh—he had heard her laugh before he had heard her speak. She hadn’t moved her hand from the strap, which she had held before him—she had merely turned and laughed, looking up at him with astonished amusement. And then, before he had been able to pull himself together, she had said, “My goodness—! You surprised me.” He remembered vividly, still, how she had blushed, and with what enormous courage he had left his hand where it was.… And after that they had gone—where was it?—to a dirty Chinese restaurant, for tea. And then had had dinner together, at the Avery. She had explained how it happened—she would never have done such a thing if she hadn’t had three cocktails at lunch. Never. And they mustn’t, of course, meet again—she would walk with him along the Esplanade, he could see her to her door in Newbury Street, where she lived in a nurses’ home, and that would be the end. The end! It had been the beginning of the happiest three years of his life, and perhaps of hers. They had dawdled and argued along the Esplanade—it was a fragrant night in June—sat on one bench after another, as he persuaded her to delay, and hadn’t reached her door till midnight. What a torrent of farcical nonsense they had talked! And now he couldn’t recall a single word of it—not a single word. Nothing but the sound of her voice, the sound of her laugh.

But the next afternoon—ah, that was another matter. In that absurd little bow-windowed room at the nurses’ home, sitting side by side on the stiff cretonned sofa, while outside the open window the gardener was clipping the ivy. That gardener had been their best friend. His persistent presence there at the windows—moving from one window to another, slowly adjusting his ladder to a new position, solemnly climbing, solemnly clipping, and now and then of course glancing into the room—this had acted as a terrific restraint upon them both. Just at the moment when they most wanted to talk, to explore each other’s minds, they had been compelled to be shy, and to speak in monosyllables, and to gaze. And, good Lord, how they had gazed! They had gazed and smiled, and smiled and gazed, and waited—and the waiting had made it all the more inevitable. How soon would the gardener be finished? How soon? When he wasn’t looking, they had grimaced at him; but he must have stayed for a solid hour. It was getting on for sunset—the light was low and level and rich; and he remembered how it had shown him for the first time the beauty of her hair, a deep chestnut with an underglow of copper. But when the gardener had actually gone, and the clippers were quiet, and it was at last possible for them to talk-why then, strangely enough, they hadn’t wanted to talk at all—they had merely wanted to kiss. And so they had kissed. And at once Boston had put on a rainbow, and the world was changed.

But now, when he tried to summon up particular moments—days—hours—weeks—it was astonishing how hard it was to get hold of anything specific, any speech, or gesture, or event. They had dined together so often, during that first phase, at the same hotels, that all those delicious dinners now seemed exactly alike, with the same bands, the same Benedictines and coffee (she had claimed that Benedictine made one passionate, and having confessed this had giggled) the same gaudy girls singing “M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i.” Their meetings in the lobby seemed always to have been the same, at the same hour, by the same palm tree or brass spittoon. Gradually this new adventure had changed from the unknown to the known, had become a delicious ritual, a new and rich complex of habits. He had spent fewer and fewer evenings with Mike and Bill, had got out of the habit of going to ball-games and prize-fights, and instead had allowed his life to be wholly absorbed in his preoccupation with Eunice. The first three months had had a special charm—before they had begun to live together, and while there had still been an element of mystery. That odd nurses’ home, for example—the pathetic little old bundle who was matron of it, Mrs. Burgess, from New Bedford—and the nurses, Miss McKittrick, Miss Lamb, and Eunice’s roommate Miss Orr—what a singular adventure it had seemed to him, all at once, to be plunged into an environment so strange to him, but so complete in itself! And slowly, as night after night they had dined together and then returned to the little bow-windowed sitting room, always with a formal greeting to Mrs. Burgess, he had possessed himself of that quiet and organized life which was as peaceful as the life of a nunnery, but by no means always as virtuous. Eunice had loved to gossip about her sister nurses. There was always some new little breeze of scandal coming up, and he smiled as he remembered the look of delighted mischievousness with which she would preface the telling of it. She would put her handkerchief to her mouth, and hold it there as if to repress the quite irrepressible little laugh, and then blush. And out the story would come. There had been, for instance, the nocturnal invasion of the “Tech” boys from next door—the adjacent building had been a private dormitory for Technology undergraduates. The two buildings were exactly alike, and from the back of each, at the third story, extended a flat roof on which it was pleasant to sit and smoke on summer evenings: one simply stepped out of the window of Miss McKittrick’s room. The two roofs were divided by a low brick wall, only, and it was while Miss McKittrick and Miss Lamb were sitting there on cushions one night, in their “kims,” that suddenly two impudent young faces had appeared over the wall. This had led to a series of gin-parties, now on one side of the wall and now on the other, which poor Mrs. Burgess had somehow never discovered. In fact, the two boys had once come into the bedroom, and Miss McKittrick had only just managed to shoo them out before the Doctor came.…

The Doctor was Miss McKittrick’s fiancé—or so she had said. She had begun by being his “special”—he always called her in on special cases. Then they had taken a motor trip together, and another, and the nurses had understood quite well what was going on, and had envied her. He gave her a sealskin coat, and a Pierce-Arrow. It had gone on like this for two years, and then she learned that he was to be married to someone else, and had a nervous breakdown. She threatened him with a breach-of-promise suit, but was persuaded not to proceed with it; instead, she accepted from him Liberty Bonds to the value of $10,000, an action of which Eunice tartly disapproved. She, like the others, had always admired the Doctor, who was considered one of the best surgeons in Boston. And they had all thought him very generous.

Then there had been Miss Orr, Eunice’s queer solitary roommate, who read Keats and Shelley, but who also periodically developed a passion for “smut” books—at which times, for three or four days, she would do nothing but drink gin, and read all night; Eunice once or twice had to take her cases for her. As for Eunice herself, he hadn’t been able, at first, to make out just how seriously she took her profession. She had a small income of her own, it appeared, and she took cases only often enough to keep from being bored, and then, if possible, only by the day; though now and then there had been exceptions. She had once or twice acted as nurse-companion to a rich old bird of sixty-five who took her with him to Hot Springs for a month or two in the winter. She claimed to have known him for a long while. Perhaps she had—for certainly Eunice was the most honest woman he had ever met; but at the time this had made him a little jealous, and a little suspicious. Was it possible—? No, it wasn’t possible. She had liked the old fellow, liked his sister, too, he had paid her well, and it had of course given her a change.

It was against this background, which contained so much that was unfamiliar and titillating to the imagination, that their intimacy had developed. They had agreed that they would not fall in love, nor marry, nor do any such foolish thing—they would merely have a good time, and become very fond of each other. Eunice didn’t want to marry, anyway, and he himself was too poor to marry, and had at the time poor prospects. Perhaps he had understated his prospects?—yes, perhaps he had. Why? It had been a part of his misunderstanding of the whole situation, a failure to assay his feelings for Eunice at their true value. They would have a light and charming affair, if Eunice would permit it to become such, and let it go at that. But would Eunice permit it? He remembered a month of doubt, and indeed almost despair, about this, as the first autumn came on—a period when he had begun to drink rather heavily, feeling that the strain was becoming too great. For a week he had avoided Eunice, not even calling her on the telephone. Then, suddenly, when he paid her a surprise visit one evening, after dining at the Club, she had astonished him by inviting him to come up to her room. She had never before told him that this was allowed; evidently the fact that she had kept him in ignorance of this official permission had simply been a part of her defense. And then, of course—oh, Lord, oh, Lord. What a delirium, what a delirium!

And all, too, in a room which couldn’t be locked! The key had been lost. There was always the chance, the remote chance, that one of the other nurses might suddenly walk in, or Mrs. Burgess—someone to whom she might not have had time to give a warning beforehand. Once, in fact, this had actually happened. Miss McKittrick, who had been out all day, and who had come home late, had charged in while they were on the couch together. It had been very funny—he had sat up abruptly and tried to hide his shoeless feet under the edge of the couch. They had tried in an instant to look very respectable and innocent, but not with much success; they could see that by the gleam in Miss McKittrick’s eye, and the polite but amused smile with which she had then hastily vanished. And oddly enough, Eunice had seemed to be enormously pleased by the episode. Perhaps she felt—yes, perhaps she had then felt an equality, at last, with the others. Not with Miss Orr, who had never had a lover, being too shy, but with the others. Yes, that must have been it. That must have been it. She had known that now Miss McKittrick would tell the others, and that they would all look upon her in a new light. She had now joined the nunnery in earnest.

The first winter had been the nicest. As he looked back on it now, it seemed one long madness of laughter. For some reason, he had been able to amuse Eunice as he had never been able to amuse anyone else. Why was that? The simplest things narrated to her—his habit of forgetting things, his proneness to social blunders, his shyness at the telephone, his ineptitudes in making love, to her and to her predecessors (about whom he was able to be quite frank with her)—all these things she seemed to find endlessly entertaining. Partly, no doubt, because he had from the outset been able to talk so easily to her, so unrestrainedly. She had taken him into a new world, one less conventional than his own, freer, brighter, more honest. He had been able for the first time to shed all sorts of absurd Puritan inhibitions into which he had been born, and to experience an honest delight in complete honesty. The sensual and even the smutty had for the first time taken a place in the world, and an honorable place; and with his discovery of this had come an extraordinary sense of increased unity and power. He had walked on air. He had seemed to be a foot taller. In the presence of his friends, he had felt an integrity and clearness which at once had given him an enormous advantage; they too had felt it without quite knowing why.… But why had he been able to talk so freely and well with Eunice? So much more freely than, for example, with Daisy?

Partly, perhaps, because he had felt an intellectual and social superiority; though God knew he attached little importance to either. Just the same, it might have been that. He could relax, with her, as with no one else. She was always receptive, too, glad to see him, eager to be amused; she never reproached him if he absented himself for longer than usual, nor asked him why he hadn’t come sooner, or where he had been; never wrote him, nor called him on the telephone; just waited for him to reappear; and when at last he called Back Bay 21307 was at once just as gayly responsive as ever. “Hello?” “Hello!” “Is that Mrs. Charles the Second?” “Oh no, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number. This is nobody you know.” “Oh yes, it is!” “Well, your voice is familiar—” and then the little laugh, quenched in the little handkerchief, and in fifteen minutes she would be meeting him at the door, and they would climb the shabby carpeted stairs to the third-floor room. And there the pale oak desk, the oil painting of a sunset on a river, the clothes closet in which the gin bottle was kept among hat-boxes on the shelf, the low couch with a Paisley shawl spread over it and an ornamental calendar on the wall just above it, and Miss Orr’s couch just opposite, pushed against the screen by the fireplace, and the toy monkey hung from the gas bracket, and the ugly upholstered chairs—these things were still a surprisingly real part of his life. He had been happy, in that room—happier than he would ever be again. If only he had known enough to know it! But how could he have guessed that merely to sit there with Eunice, listening to Miss McKittrick and Miss Orr talking and laughing slyly in the next room, would at last be remembered as something extraordinarily haunting and lovely? If only now he could recover those voices, or, for that matter, those talks with Eunice! Three years of it, and all he could recall was the look of the room, the chairs, the calendar, the view from the window toward the church at night with lamplight on the snow, the walk from the Club through slush and ice at eight o’clock, the departure punctually at ten-fifteen, when all guests were firmly expelled. Sometimes, in good weather, Eunice had strolled down with him to the river, and they had sat on the Esplanade, watching the lighted trains go over the salt-box bridge like dotted glowworms. At other times, when they had dined out, and when perhaps Miss Orr was ill, and they had been unable to go to the room, they had dawdled over dinner till late, and perhaps got a little tight, and then wandered along Commonwealth Avenue to the Public Gardens. And once, when they were both very tight—but what a scene! What a scene! They had crept up the narrow alley behind Newbury Street and into the little yard behind the house, and there under the ailanthus tree had surrendered to such a delirium as he had never known before or since. The full moon was above them, there were lights in Miss McKittrick’s room, at any moment somebody might look out and see them or hear them. And after that, in Commonwealth Avenue, where the reviewing stands had just been built for the Liberty Parade—he groaned with delight when he thought of it. It had been sheer madness. Not a soul was in sight—it was after midnight. The lamplight came greenly through the leaves on the elm trees, the gaunt reviewing stands screened them on either side.… And then the whispered good-night at the door, and he walked to the Waldorf for his cornflakes and cream and coffee, and so home to the Fenway and to bed.…

Withdrawing himself again from the past to his room in the Adams House, he watched the large snowflakes fall heavily and slowly along the soot-blackened walls outside his window. It must be after eight. But the past was too delicious, too powerful for him, and again he plunged into his stream of recollection. What a magic thing was memory, and in a way, how painful! Here one could lie on a winter’s morning, in the Adams House, and relive a Spring long ago; look out of a hotel window, and at the same moment think of a sweetheart who was perhaps—dead. But could she possibly be dead? No. After all, it was now only two years since he had discovered, by the merest accident, where she lived, and that she was married—only two years since he had written her that carefully guarded note, signed Ethel Swift, asking her to meet him; that note to which she had replied only, on a postcard, “No!” Well, she was quite right, quite right. Suppose she had a jealous husband? Suppose her husband had, to begin with, been suspicious of her past? And no doubt he was; Eunice had spoken of him years ago, she had even then, from time to time, gone yachting with him at Gloucester. Tompkins—Thorwald Tompkins. Curious name. Why the Thorwald? Norwegian blood somewhere, probably. And of course Tompkins must have known about himself, just as he had known about Tompkins. He remembered that time, when, calling her by telephone from the Public Library pay-station, he had, by some queer accident, been connected with the Newbury Street telephone while Eunice was talking with Tompkins. It had given him rather a turn, to hear her laughing at another man’s jokes, being natural and amusing with him, treating him as if he were an intimate! And to hear poor Tompkins urging, urging her to meet him that evening to dance, and Eunice evading skillfully, since she more than half expected a visit from him—it had been this that had reassured him, and prevented him from being furiously jealous. How amused Eunice had been when, ten minutes later, he had quoted that whole telephone conversation to her, verbatim! She had thought him a wizard, a necromancer, a fiend. He had teased her about it all evening. And she had been so obviously glad to see him, and not Tompkins.…

What sort of life did she have with Tompkins? Was she happy, he wondered?… But before that, long before that, Daisy had intervened. Ah! Yes. Daisy. Suddenly this new adventure, this new wonder, this new delight, and on a different social plane—it was all so absurd, so false! Merely because she came of a good family, and belonged to Sewing Circles and things, and had been to college, and was totally and blindly innocent—and grasping—good God. And by degrees he had gone to see Eunice less and less often. From every night it had dropped to every other night, from every other night to twice a week, once a week, once in two weeks—it had been shameful, and he had felt terribly ashamed. He had thought it was the best thing to do. What else was there to do? Could he tell her that he had fallen in love with another girl? That he wanted to marry? Hardly. It had been very awkward, and he had begun to feel dishonest. But then he had remembered all that they had said at the beginning, their agreement to make the affair a light and bondless one, their mutual assurance that whatever else they did they would never be so absurd as to fall in love, and had felt a little better about it. Eunice was a good egg. She wouldn’t mind, when he finally told her—of course she wouldn’t. She had never liked his spending money on her—wouldn’t accept presents—made no claims—had even, once, said that if ever anything went wrong, and they had a child, she would simply disappear. Disappear. He would never hear from her again. She knew, she said, what a struggle he was having, and the last thing she wanted to do was to put any sort of extra burden on him. If such a thing were to happen, she would take the entire responsibility herself. She would go quietly away, have the child in some remote part of the country, see that it was properly adopted—or even adopt it herself—and never again communicate with him in any way.…

And when he did, finally, tell her—what a brick she had been! She merely put her handkerchief to her mouth, laughed, and said that she had guessed it for months. He remembered that she had got a little tighter than usual—and she had asked him a great many questions about Daisy. Natural enough. And he had told her everything there was to tell, and with what an enormous sense of relief! The confession had done him good. Was she tall? short? blonde? brunette? younger than herself? intellectual?… He described his first meeting with her, at a tea party, in detail; Eunice was fascinated. She had wanted to know all about the tea—who gave it, where it was, how many people were there, what was served. Was there dancing? Yes, there was dancing. It had been a sort of bazaar, as a matter of fact, with a fortune-telling booth, and he had had his fortune told by a pseudo-gypsy. She told him that he would have ten children and die at thirty-five, in complete bankruptcy. All his ten children would be girls. “A harem of your own,” Eunice had said.

And then she had astonished him, when they were about to rise from the table, by saying that he was not to come home with her. It was finished. She would have dinner with him, if he liked, from time to time, but the rest of it was finished. Once more, then, they had walked along the Esplanade, talking, arguing, sitting on benches, rising to walk on again; but this time, when they arrived at Newbury Street, the door was barred. She was gay, amusing, even frivolous about it, but she was adamant. There was just a moment, when he had tried to push her ahead of him into the hall through the open door, when she showed for a fraction of a second a flash of anger; gone as soon as seen. They had stared at each other, stood, his hand on her blue taffeta wrist, smiled—and then he had come away. Dear Eunice—how perfectly right she had been. So right, and he himself had been so convinced of it, that for months he hadn’t seen her at all; not, in fact, until after he had married, and returned from his honeymoon in Bermuda, and moved to an apartment in Cambridge. Several months passed, and one day, when he was walking with Daisy along Tremont Street, he saw Eunice in the distance. He had felt a curious confusion in himself, a something not right, a loss of balance—what was it? And at once had begun planning to see her again, as soon as Daisy should have gone off to the country for the summer.

And this had happened the day before Prohibition went into effect. As soon as he had seen Daisy off on her train for Burlington, he had called up Eunice. “Hello?” “Hello!” “Is this Mrs. Charles the Second?” “No, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number. This is nobody you know.” “Oh yes, it is!” “Well, I admit your voice is familiar!…” And then the little laugh, perfectly unchanged, with which he could visualize the handkerchief, and an agreement to meet for dinner at the Avery—with the proviso that she would have to return home immediately after dinner.

But in this, unfortunately or fortunately, Eunice had left out of account the fact that it was the night before Prohibition. For that matter, so had he. It was only when he stopped at the Raleigh for a Lone Tree cocktail, on his way to the Avery, that he had first realized that it would be a wild night. It had been almost impossible to get into the bar. Everybody was already drunk, fighting drunk. Tin horns were being blown in the streets as if for a holiday. It would be no sort of occasion for Eunice to be knocking around by herself, and he regretted that he hadn’t arranged to call for her in Newbury Street. There was nothing to be done about it, now, however, so he went quickly to the Avery, and Eunice turned up unharmed, but excited. This had been rather a good thing—it diverted attention from what might otherwise have been a rather embarrassing meeting. As it was, the public fever communicated itself to them, and they drank twice as much as usual, and both of them became quite recklessly cheerful. They were glad to see each other; frankly and delightedly so. And Eunice was wonderful—simply wonderful. She wanted to know, without the slightest hesitation, whether the honeymoon had been a success. Had it been a success? Well, it had been a moderate success, a moderate success. But these voyages to Bermuda!—he could remember just how he had said that, shaking his head. And Eunice had at once been hugely amused, and everything had begun to go as if there had never been an interruption. They had drunk each other’s healths in champagne, and then more champagne, while the band played, saying “For the last time!” “For the last time!” and looking at each other—ah—with as deep an affection as ever. Strange! Why hadn’t he seen that at the time? Anyway, he hadn’t. But what he had, at the time, seen, was that Eunice was in a state in which she was easily persuadable. If he put her into a taxi and took her to Cambridge, to his own apartment, without telling her where he was going—

And this, after the coffee and the Benedictines, he did. They both swayed a little as they crossed the floor, pushing through streams of late arrivals who also themselves swayed, and delicious it had been to feel once more the small delightful warmth of Eunice, now so strange and remote, after this long interval become so unfamiliar, moving against his arm and side. She too had felt this, and when they were seated in the taxi, and the taxi had turned, snarling with increasing speed, toward Scollay Square and Cambridge, they had again once more fallen into each other’s arms, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, which it was. As they crossed the salt-box bridge, at which they had so often looked at night from a bench on the Esplanade, a momentary misgiving had crossed his mind—was it right to take Eunice to his wife’s apartment? Was it right? But this had passed like a cloud, and in no time at all they were there. They climbed the stairs, opened the door, turned on the lights—got out the gin and the ice and the glasses—and then, of course, he had had to show Eunice round the apartment.

That had been very singular—very singular. What a queer, dark, unhappy delight, holding her glass in her hand, she had taken in seeing the home of her supplanter! Every nook and cranny. The clothes, the linen, the china, the rugs, the furniture, the photographs of Daisy which stood on the dressing table—the broom with which he had killed the mouse in the bathtub, the stove under which the fire had broken out—she had to see it all. She seemed unable to see enough. Was there anything else? Nothing more? Nothing more at all? And then, after a while, the delirium in the dark room, the divine delirium—the profound simple happiness at being together again, after all these months, and in spite of the shadow of Daisy—or perhaps even more because of it. Would there ever again be such an hour in his life?

Possibly not. And yet, there had been something wrong with it. In spite of the sharp edge given to their delight by the fact that they were using Daisy’s apartment and that Eunice was secretly and wickedly, as it were, usurping Daisy’s place, a delight of which they had both been acutely conscious at the time, and in spite too of the feeling of revelry which it was impossible not to share with the public frenzy—for the streets were full of yodeling men and women—nevertheless, as they lay together, the queer shadow had come between them. Was it, after all, simply Daisy? Or was it simply that time had somehow sundered them? For suddenly he had begun, after the first raptures were over, to feel detached, remote, alone with himself; his gestures, even his voice, had gradually become more and more self-conscious; the impulse to make love to her seemed to have come to an end. He had lain there and stared at the dark ceiling, awkwardly and almost ashamedly aware of his hand that rested on her shoulder—afraid to caress her, lest the caress seem forced and false, and equally afraid to remove his hand, lest Eunice perceive the change. But she had perceived it, he knew now—as quickly as he had; she too had become strained and strange. A silence had fallen, during which they listened to the sound of running feet outside, drunken shouts, the noise of someone falling heavily, a caterwaul of falsetto laughter. And then by tacit consent they had begun to talk of—not themselves, not of this odd change, which would have been the wise and brave thing to do, but of any trifle, any straw of topic at which they could clutch, as if desperate to conceal their calamity. He remembered, at this point, suddenly realizing that he wanted her to go. He wanted to be alone. If she would go quickly, and if also perhaps she could show, ever so slightly and faintly, but courageously, that she was hurt, why then something might even yet be salvaged. He would be touched, his conscience would be moved, and through this circuit his feeling for her would be renewed. He wanted her to go, moreover, by herself—to have to accompany her all the way to Boston, at this hour, on such a night, with the prospect of a long and hideous return journey, would, he felt sure, be the final destruction of the delicately balanced thing. If, on the other hand, she were to offer to go alone, then again his feeling might be renewed, and he would perhaps actually want to go with her.…

But she had made no such suggestion; no doubt she was a little frightened; she had seen the situation—partially at any rate—and simply hadn’t known how to deal with it. So they had lain together, increasingly silent, increasingly conscious of the dark turmoil of doubt and apathy which had arisen between them, until he had at last himself told her that it was very late. Extraordinary, extraordinary ending to what had promised to be so joyful a night! There was really no reason why she shouldn’t stay with him till morning. But he wanted desperately to be alone. And so they had risen and turned on the lights; and Eunice had rearranged her hair, using Daisy’s mirror; and he had said, a little lamely, that as he was fearfully tired he hoped she wouldn’t mind if he merely saw her to the Square, and there put her on a Massachusetts Avenue car.… Good Lord! It had been scandalous. And on that, of all nights! Harvard Square was a bedlam. And the last car, the owl-car, when it appeared, was packed with the dregs of humanity, all drunk, all singing. And into this horrible crowd he had permitted Eunice to go alone. And the only woman in the car.…

He groaned as he thought of it; he could never think of it without closing his eyes. Astonishing that a mere internal necessity should have compelled him to do such a thing! And not very flattering. And yet, there it was, one of those freaks of psychology. He had had to do it, just as afterwards he had had to wait nearly two years before he felt again a genuine impulse to see her. It hadn’t been that his feeling for her had really changed—not at all. If anything, his feeling for her had been steadily and surely deepening all these years, and was perhaps deeper now than it had ever been. No, it was some subtle pang of conscience, some shadow of Daisy, some vague distaste for duplicity, which had dictated the whole fiasco, and brought to an end the loveliest relationship with a human being which he had ever known. And when, finally, he had tried to get hold of her once more—but again with a misgiving that the same fiasco would recur—it was to learn from Miss McKittrick that Eunice was married. Miss McKittrick had been distinctly hostile and hadn’t in the least tried to conceal it. What was it, precisely, that she had said? He couldn’t remember; but certainly she had conveyed to him, unmistakably, that he had made Eunice very unhappy, and had practically driven her into marriage with a man about whom she cared nothing at all. Miss McKittrick had remained standing during the brief interview, making it plain that she didn’t want to talk with him. And so he had left the door of the Newbury Street house for the last time. He had walked almost automatically to the Waldorf, for a bowl of cornflakes and cream, as if somehow for the completion of a ritual, and as he sat there and stared at the ugly mosaic floor he had begun to know his misery, his misery which had never left him, and which perhaps would never leave him. He must see her—he must see her. He must, somehow, explain the whole horrible thing to her! But it was impossible.… And when, later still, he had written to her, she had merely said, “No!”

Well, it was time to get up, time for breakfast, and still snowing, and time for work. And later in the day—well, he would walk through Newbury Street; and look up at the three windows which had once belonged to Eunice.