Then, as the lights finally changed, they cut across to the narrowing street and quickened their pace. “Yes, the dome’s gold again,” Edward had said, and what he meant of course was that the hot war (when the dome was camouflaged dark gray) might be over, but the cold war was on, and was on in the Civil Liberties Union as well as everywhere else: The question as to whether some of the members of the executive committee might be too radical had certainly never occurred to anyone until lately. Grace really dreaded going in, so much so that she stopped at the door, gave Edward a shy look, and said, “You go on ahead. I’ll just pop into the Athenaeum for a moment. I’ll be right there,” she called over her shoulder, already ashamed of herself as she saw Edward standing where she had left him, his head bowed, his hands shoved down into his pockets, lost in that thought of his she could not read.

She found the last issue of the Economist and stood leafing it through nervously, but it was no use. The vision of Edward, outside, haunted her. In some ways she knew him very well; someone who knew him less well would not have been anxious. But Grace recognized the signs of depression in his lapses of attention; she knew by the look in his eyes that he was not sleeping. She knew that much, yet standing here with the thick wall of the Athenaeum between them, she also recognized that she knew nothing. Our real lives are secret, she thought, frightfully secret. No one knows anyone else. Friendship, even love, fails. We are alone. She stood there with the Economist in her hands, while it seemed everything disintegrated round her; the walls flew apart; there was no safety.