What had he wanted of her all those years, when the children were babies and he had come to sit in the living room at any odd time of day, just to sit there, smoking and talking, and watching her, making her slightly uncomfortable? At one time, she supposed, she had been on the point of falling in love with him, with the warmth of his understanding, with something young and very pure that flowed out from him, so guarded, so shy. It crossed her mind like a pang that she had never taken him in her arms, never hugged him hard, not passionately, but just for love, that all such contact could not take place because of something in him. The loneliness of it welled up inside her and suddenly she put her head down on her hands and began to cry.

“Julia, what is it? Don’t, for God’s sake.” She knew he couldn’t bear her tears. It made Damon wild with irritation when she cried.

“It’s—the s-sep-separateness, it’s the l-loneliness—” not just Edward, all of us, she thought, human beings.

“I’ve got to work,” said her husband, making his escape.

XI

XI

Isabel was ashamed at her own relief. Ever since the funeral she had been buoyed up like an actress who has got through a first night safely after the agonies of nerves and who has come through the fiery furnace of the critics comparatively unscathed. Now she could turn her heart toward home—she would take a plane the next morning. She would no longer have to wear the mask of their grief, nor listen to their interpretations of her brother’s life and death, but only to find her own. She was free. In fact she was borne up now by a kind of excitement as she made her way through the narrow cliffs of downtown Boston, busy, grimy, but giving her a sense of security, of a world she could understand. Here Cambridge, the University, were as she wished them to be, unreal, noble no doubt, oh yes, touching, even important in their way, but here she felt, looking up at the serried windows of lawyers’ offices and firms of all kinds, here, the business of the world got done. This was real in a way she could better understand, which did not frighten her.