“But it has been like that from the beginning,” he pointed out, genuinely puzzled. His eyes were still on the road. “You knew that. I never promised you anything.”

She was ashamed of him for this remark. She had not intended to charge him with obligations. It also occurred to her that an obligation was not the less incurred for being unacknowledged. She took her hand from his knee (he shifted his leg slightly, as though liberated from an uncomfortable pressure), and moved back against the door.

He glanced at her. “You aren’t pleased?”

“Why should I be pleased? You’re not trying to please me.”

“I don’t like to see you so upset.”

“Why shouldn’t I be upset? You want it every way. When shall I be upset if not now?”

“But, Nettie, what can I say? I am married, I do have two children. May is forty-three—she can’t be asked to begin her life over again.”

“I know, I know.” The Kleenex had shed some flecks of white on her eyelashes. “I don’t expect—I know we can’t be married.” (Though we might as well be, with this deplorable conversation, she thought.) “It isn’t that.”

“What in God’s name is it, then?”

“I just want you to understand.”

“Well of course I understand,” he said crossly. “How could I help it?”

She had not thought of understanding as an involuntary acquisition. “I meant—to be kind.”

“Damn it, I am kind,” he responded, raising his voice. After a moment he said, less harshly: “Aren’t I?”

“Not really, no.” Sensing a passing relaxation of his annoyance, she struggled for words, as if speaking on a long-distance call with only moments to reach him. Giving this up, she turned her face toward the window and wiped her eyes again, this time with the back of her hand. I do cry rather a lot, she conceded.

The Sunday-evening traffic was heavy, and the road not wide, and they moved along slowly. From a car that had drawn level with them, a little girl was watching Nettie curiously. Clem drove for a while in silence. Eventually, he turned his head once more and said: “Look, pull yourself together. We can talk about it at dinner.”

Nettie clasped her hands in her lap. “I want to go straight home,” she told him, as she might have said: “I am going to die.” “To my place.”

Clem watched the traffic again, frowning. He allowed it to move past him, to the great disappointment of the child in the neighboring car, who was swept ahead and disappeared, still gazing at them, around a bend in the road. At the next intersection, he put his arm out to signal and turned the car off the main road.

“What are you doing?” Nettie asked, as aloof as curiosity would allow.