She rushed back to him headlong. “What would we do? I couldn’t take time to eat, or go dancing, or anything like that.”

He laughed shortly in surprise. “Who the hell said anything like that?”

“Well, then . . .” She was confused.

“I’ll drive out somewhere close to the house, a lonesome spot, we’ll sit in the car for a while.”

She couldn’t help coloring a little. “I’m not supposed to do anything like that.”

“Like that? Or like this?” He threw away the cigarette, put both hands against her waist, backed her against the wall. He kissed her. “We’ll leave a little early, give us plenty of leeway.” He put up a hand and touched her throat with his fingers, lazily.

The idea he suggested, parking near the house in the car, the thought of the warm and dark interior and she and Skip enclosed in its privacy, filled Karen with a rush of almost dizzying sensations. A melting weakness poured through her. She nearly tottered, there against the wall with Skip’s fingers touching her throat.

Then Skip muttered, “I’ve got to pick up a friend in metal class.”

She was looking at him as if dazzled. “You mean someone’s coming with us?” It didn’t fit into the mental picture she had created; her thoughts whirled in confusion. But suddenly Skip moved off, taking her with him into the building. “Tell old man Pryde you’ve got a headache. I’ll just walk out as if getting a drink of water or something. Meet you outside that door in thirty minutes.”

She stumbled to her place, began mechanically working on the machine, meanwhile trying to sort sense from what Skip had told her. Under the emotional uproar she was aware of something else, a kind of dread at what she might be willing to do for Skip.

During the years of growing up which she had spent in the Havermann house, certain taboos had been instilled, not by anything as direct as spoken advice, since Mrs. Havermann never mentioned such things, nor lovingly by example, because temptation had no truck with that household, but rather by punctilious omission. Mrs. Havermann no longer lived in a world where people worried about anything more compelling than running out of sugar. Passion was a pale flare on the horizon of memory, growing dimmer year by year. The things she recalled from her marriage were the turmoil of its social obligations and the tantrums of her husband over his mislaundered shirts. And in some way of which both women were unconscious Mrs. Havermann had imposed her withdrawal upon the young girl.

Now Karen sat before a typewriter, the bulwarks trembling, and tried to force herself to be clear-headed, tried to keep from drowning in the emotional tide.