"What, darling?"

"I promise not to do anything to make you feel bad."

A shadow flickered across Erika's face and was gone. "Don't make promises. If you break them, it makes you feel worse."

"All right then. But I feel so sure this time—"

"No."

"All right. It wasn't so bad in the other place though, was it?”

"Well, I met you there."

It was too sentimental to say, but Kate felt that even the bad times had been good. To be cared for when she was ill, to be forgiven when she made trouble, to hear Erika's quick light step at the end of a panicky afternoon; to be taken into Erika's arms-, these made up for Mrs. Brownlee and the Osgood boy.

Erika walked around looking at the windows, estimating curtain sizes, taking long steps to see how big the rug would have to be if they ever had money for a rug. This place was unfurnished, a thing to make them stop and think. "We can buy things at Goodwill for almost nothing," Erika said thoughtfully. "A bed and some chairs. Why didn't I bring a tape measure?"

"Erik, I couldn't stand it if anything happened to you. If you went away or liked somebody else better."

"You'd stand it all right."

Fear laid a cold finger on Kate's heart. "Promise me you won't love anybody else."

Erika said smiling, "When you talk like that I know it's time for dinner."

Kate looked stricken. "Oh God, the dishes are all packed. I was being so efficient."

"We'll go out."

"We can't afford it."

"I wish you'd stop worrying."

"But it's my fault!"

"Sure, everything is your fault including the atom bomb." Erika rubbed a cheek against hers. "Come on. Next week we'll eat beans."

"All right. Tomorrow I'll get a job."

They turned off the lights and locked the apartment door, pocketing their identical keys with great formality. "Sometimes people give each other rings," Erika said. "We'll have to get along with matching keys."

"We're together," Kate said dreamily. They walked down the street, past shops locked for the night, window-shopping, stopping to choose the things they would buy when they had money. A chiffon housecoat for Kate, with a billowy skirt and wide collar, "because I like you femme." A necklace of pierced ivory and a bracelet set with lumps of jade. Books in soft leather, picked out in red and gold, in the window of an antique shop. For Erika, riding breeches of soft wool and a leather vestee, and fine English boots. "Everything but the horse," she said. "Look for a pet shop, darling, maybe we'll find one with a horse in the window."

"You and your horses! I'd sooner have a puppy."

"We'll get a goldfish. He won't bark and he won't have to be taken out in the middle of the night."

They stopped in front of a drugstore. Kate said, "Let's eat here. The coffee is good."

"No, there's a little place in the next block where I go sometimes. They have a hi-fi."