She was still lying on her side when he came back into the bedroom. He found clean underwear and socks and put them on, and then put on a gray sports shirt which she had bought for him, and then a pair of striped linen pants. She lay without moving on the bed until he had his shoes on, and then she rolled onto her back and looked at him.

‘What are you getting dressed for?’ she asked, merely with curiosity.

‘I have to have clothes on when I go out, don’t I?’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’ll be right back.’

He walked out of the bedroom and at the head of the stairs slowed down and listened below. He descended with caution and turned in the dining room and went out of the house.

There was a startling moon out. He noticed it only now. A new moon, and the crickets were frightfully loud.

He crossed his own lawn quickly and got to Fred’s porch. There was a light on in Fred’s front bedroom upstairs but the rest of the house was dark. Mounting the brick steps of the porch he moved on the balls of his feet and sat beside the front door on a low rocking chair. He was in complete darkness. Not once did he rock.

Fred had been at the meeting. He knew it. And he had done nothing to help. But he was beyond the confusion of anger. Coldly the talons of his mind sunk into the street before him, into its ferocious silence that now seemed erected against him. There was a thing he had to do and he knew he would do it.

A car turned the corner on the left and Mr Newman followed its approaching lights with his eyes. It stopped before the house and Fred got out, but stood leaning into the rear window, talking. Finally he stood aside and the car drew away, and then he walked up the path and mounted his porch. He leaped a little when from out of the dark Mr Newman said, ‘I want to see you, Fred.’

‘Who’s that?’ Fred said, peering down at Mr Newman in the chair. It was obvious that he merely needed a moment to gather his wits, and wanted to say something that would establish his annoyance in Mr Newman’s mind.

‘It’s me, Fred. Sit down for a minute, will you? Here.’ He pulled over another rocker and Fred came around him and sat on it.

Mr Newman was glad he had planned it to take place in the dark. Both of them would be bolder with their words.

‘I guess you saw what happened tonight,’ Mr Newman began.

Fred bent over and tied his shoelace. He seemed remarkably innocent of guile. ‘I heard what happened, but I wasn’t in the hall at that particular minute.’

‘It happened after the meeting started,’ Newman reminded him.

Fred straightened up and sat forward in his chair as though about to get up and go. ‘Well, they didn’t hurt you, did they?’