“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.”

“Why?” He shot up to a sitting position. “You wouldn’t have faith in me then, would you?”

“It isn’t that, David.” I reached out my hand and put it on his arm; he didn’t move away. “It isn’t that. I’d want you alive, no matter what. But it isn’t that I wouldn’t have faith in you. You may be doing those things, but the reason I’d have faith in you is that I don’t think you are. And if what you say did happen, I guess, after I’d been hurt, I’d think you had a good reason. Maybe I’d hate you, too. But then I’d say to myself that maybe you had to do it because of something I didn’t know about or couldn’t help you with or maybe even because you’d found something with her that you couldn’t find with me. I guess I’d still have faith that you did the best thing as you saw it.”

He didn’t say anything to that.

“Well then, what if I did something like that and then found out I was wrong and felt guilty about it, and felt I’d betrayed you and, most of all, myself? Who could get me to have faith in MYSELF again?” He stopped. “Could you do it? Could you say anything to me that would make any difference in how I felt about myself?”

“I don’t know, David. I’d try. I’d accept the fact that you’d done it and try to make you accept it.” I could see him better now, sitting up in bed, his body leaning slightly forward, his fists clenched.

“What if I hadn’t done something that perhaps I should have done? Suppose I was a coward when I should have, when I could have been brave? Because, Camille, that’s what I am. I’m a coward when I don’t have to be. And that’s even worse than being a coward when you have to be, when you can’t be anything else.”

I wanted so much for him to tell me. “What about?”