David came home very late. I was already undressed, in bed reading, when he came in and closed the door behind him. He smiled at me, then saw the letter on the dresser; he knew who it was from as well as I did. He looked down at me for a long time. Then he went to the dresser, opened it, neatly at one end, rather than across the top, sat down on the edge of the bed and read it. It seemed to take him hours. I sat and watched him as he read one page after another, putting each page at the back. When he was done, he sat and stared at the floor, holding it between his knees. Then he folded it and slid it back in the envelope and said, “Well, that’s the last one. He’s promised. Perhaps I’ll have some peace now.”

For a second I felt very warm and good inside because I was listening to his words, and not the way he’d said them.

I watched him, saying nothing as he undressed. I put out the light and we lay awake not touching each other for a long time. I knew he was awake because he was on his back; he can’t fall asleep on his back. Finally he sighed and although I knew he might think I was prying, I said, “David, isn’t there anything at all I can do? Anything at all?”

He was quiet for a long time, then sighed again. “You have a great deal of faith in me, don’t you.”

“Yes, David.”

“How did you ever come to have faith in me?” He didn’t ask that like he felt I shouldn’t have faith in him; it was rather like he wanted a factual answer. He always wanted me to put some feeling I had into words, and I always found it hard to do, but I tried.

“I don’t know. I just did. You never did anything to me that ever made me not want to. I liked you and then I loved you, and I always had faith you would never hurt me on purpose.”

“But suppose I did something to hurt you? Suppose I went out of here one morning, supposedly looking for a job, and that night you read in the paper that David Willson and some married woman, both naked and in bed, had been shot to death by the woman’s husband? Suppose this article said I’d been seeing this woman for two or three years? Would you still have faith in me; would you still love me then?”

While he was talking a sick feeling traveled up my spine. But then I realized he was only giving me a for-instance, that nothing like that was really going on, that he was trying to find out something else altogether. “David, don’t say things like that.”