“We can talk about it at dinner.” He released her. She sat up straight and put her hands to her hair. “You look all right,” he told her, starting the engine. At the sudden sound, the dog barked again. Clem swung the car round in the middle of the street, and they returned the way they had come.

Now he is driving too fast, Nettie observed. She took a mirror out of her purse. She did not look back at the square receding gardens and white houses. We disturbed their Sunday evening, she thought, and upset their dog. When she lifted her head, they had already reached the main road. “My eyes are all red,” she said.

“If you want to wash your face, we could go home first.”

“We may never get there if you drive like this.”

“Are you frightened?”

“No, but I suppose I don’t want you to get killed,” she said.

He smiled and slowed down. But when she next looked at him, his face was very serious—very sad, she realized with a little shock, Clem’s sadness seeming far more incongruous, far less bearable, than her own. “What are you thinking?” she asked him.

“I was thinking,” he replied, “if I died, how bad it would be for you. No one would understand that you were the person most to be comforted.”

The telephone bell, which had been ringing in her sleep, woke her at last. When she lifted the receiver, it continued to vibrate indignantly in her grasp, like a baby that has been left crying in the dark. She opened her eyes. The room was scarcely light, the first sun thinly outlining the drawn blinds. She tried to think who she was—she could have been any one of a dozen people.

“Hullo,” she murmured, pressing the receiver insecurely against her ear and lingering over the word.

“Nettie,” said Clem.

“What’s wrong?” she asked at once.

Disconcerted by this abrupt understanding, he hesitated. “I’m going up to the house,” he said.

“But this is Wednesday.”

“I’m not going to the office. I’m going up to the house. May telephoned me late last night.”

Nettie raised herself on her elbow. Her hand, holding the telephone, shook from the awkward position. “She knows, do you mean?”

“From something she said, I think so.” For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“It’s serious, isn’t it?” said Nettie, trying to compel her own responses. They were silent again, and then she said unhelpfully: “My dear.”

“I’ll call you from the country,” he said. “After I’ve talked to May.”

“What will you say to her?” Her words sounded in her own ears flat and forced. I have not realized it yet, she told herself remotely, as one who after an accident watches his own blood flow and feels no pain.

“I will have to see how it is,” he said.

“Do you want me to come?”

“I think not.”

“Call me as soon as you can.”

“Yes. Of course.”