But she did not have to hear what the hesitating old voice was telling her. She hardly listened. She knew, had known, it now seemed, forever, had waited for this call all her life, and now it was here she felt absolutely calm. She heard herself saying that she would find out about planes and wire within the hour, that she would be there by late that night, “for it is morning there, isn’t it?” she heard herself say. And then the voice stopped talking. It was all over. She put the receiver back and heard it click. She sat there, waiting to feel.

“What is it, darling? Pretty late to call up, it seems to me.” Henry stood there in his pajama pants, rubbing himself red with a rough towel, drops of water standing in his rather heavy gray eyebrows, and she looked at him without a word, seeing all this, knowing that he was over there and that she loved him, registering the sudden focusing of his glance, the surgeon’s clear look that could meet emergency with reason. He was at her side, his arm around her. He was holding her tight against his naked side. She could feel his heart beating against her. “What is it?”

“Safety,” she said, “you’re my safety.”

“What’s happened, Bel?” He said it sharply this time. It was a command, and she had to obey it, break the film somehow, get through again.

“Edward,” she said.

“What in hell makes him call up at this time of night?” She could feel him resisting, feel the tension in the ribs, for Edward, her brother, had been this, the disturber of the peace always.

“No,” she explained speaking quite slowly and distinctly, “it was not Edward. He threw himself under an elevated train. He’s dead now.”

Henry held her tightly against him as if to keep her from falling, as if she were falling down, down, and he were holding her back by sheer force of will. And she talked against this because she knew she had to fall, had to feel, there was no way of staying suspended any longer. “A professor called. He sounded very old. He had an Italian name. He said he had to tell me now because”—here she hesitated—“because it will be in the papers.”

“Yes, of course,” Henry said. “You had to know.”