“Well,” I said. “Good-night, then.”

“Good-night.” I moved on up the ramp. “Was that your mother singing?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“I never heard a thing like that before.”

Though his words had perished, I now, as I reached the float, apprehended the note of fear in his voice.

I had just passed the great shadow of the Hotel when I heard footsteps somewhere near me. “Where are you?” cried a man’s voice.

“Here!” I called. “Are you lost?”

We approached each other, crying out at intervals, my invisible companion saying he had lost his way. We met then, and I was able to make out the indistinct contours of Nathan Kadish whose voice had been in no way familiar.

“What a hell of a thing,” he said angrily. “I can’t even find my way home.”

“I’ll lead you.” We took hold of one another’s hands and moved forward through the murk, he with his other hand thrust out before him as though he were brushing branches aside.

“I went to see you and your mother told me where you were. Listen, Sonie, I’m sorry.”

We groped in silence. I did not know whether to tell him that the journey in the boat had been a ruse to fool my eccentric mother or to allow him to think that I had buried Ivan so that he would not know we were now technically known as paupers.

Suddenly, when our feet told us we had reached the road, he stopped and seized me. His mouth waspishly raged over my face with kisses while he held me in an embrace so disabling I could not breathe or defend myself. “Isn’t it queer like this in the fog?” he whispered.

“Let me go, Nathan,” I gasped.

“Come back this way. Let’s sit on the Hotel porch.”

We walked far apart, the fog rearing a barrier between us; we found the path leading to the Hotel, fumbled up to the top step, and sat down side by side.

“I suppose you think it’s funny that I picked tonight of all nights to start making love to you. I didn’t do it accidentally. I was waiting for a sign and tonight I got it when your mother said that Henderson was taking you out in his boat.”

“What kind of a sign was that?” I asked him.

“Oh, that you’re deep.”

“But it wasn’t my idea,” I protested, immediately regretting my honesty. “It was Mrs. Henderson’s.”

“Hell,” he brooded. “But you are deep. I couldn’t be in love with a woman who wasn’t. If I could, I would have been in love with your mother for her looks.”

I laughed. “In love with Mamma? Why, she’s middle-aged!”

“She’s thirty-four, as you told me yourself.”

“But, Nathan! You’re nineteen.”