“I wish I were one,” the answer shot back fiercely. “I wouldn’t feel so absolutely alone.”

“But, Edward, it’s a loneliness of your own choosing, surely. You know we love you and honor you and want you always to be our friend. It’s not our fault,” Julia said, helplessly.

“It’s nobody’s fault, I expect. We’re locked up in separate jails.”

But Damon had been thinking and now he made another attempt at reason. “Listen,” he said gravely, “we can’t fight and win without making some compromises with things as they are. The Communist Party by being a kind of secret society has put itself outside the democratic procedures, Edward. You have to admit that.”

Edward lifted his head. “Maybe. But I can’t see that putting ourselves outside democratic procedures is any way to fight it.”

“Of course. I couldn’t agree with you more. We do feel the same way, Edward, that’s what you won’t admit. It’s as if you were deliberately cutting yourself off—why must you?” In some way Damon had come through to a place where he could talk, where, Julia thought with gratitude, perhaps after all, they might reach safety. If only Edward …

But he sat there, with his head on his hands, belligerent, uncompromising, almost as if he could no longer listen to anything anyone might say.

“I’m cut off,” he said then, half to himself. “I can’t find my way back to you, Damon. It’s no use.”

If the silence that preceded this exchange had seemed to Julia to have the seeds of danger in it, the silence which now lay between and all around them had become danger itself. If it were not broken, broken soon, she thought—now, she thought—Come back to us, Edward, she said, but the words made no sound.

“It’s like a nightmare,” Damon said suddenly, getting up and going to the window to stand with his back to the room, rumpling his hair in exasperation.

“I’m sorry.” Edward got up, lifted himself up with difficulty. “I’d better go now.”

“But where will you go?” Julia faced him at the door as if to bar his passage. “Going away won’t help.” He would go to those bars in Scollay Square, she supposed, carrying his word solidarity like a banner which no one could see, drink with the sailors who called him Professor and treated him like a harmless drunk, walk the streets half the night, and then not sleep. “We can’t let you go like this, Edward. It’s not possible.” She stood in the doorway, thinking, If I could touch him, take his hand, make the simplest human gesture. Why couldn’t she? What was it in Edward that made such gestures impossible? These thoughts flashed through her mind as they stood there, waiting for some miracle which would alter the moment, save.