She stopped, and looked ready to answer, but shook her head and began to walk again. He caught her then, and kissed her hard. Her hair smelled like lilacs but her skin smelled like nothing; there was no close body scent to distinguish her from the cold night air. He let her go, and thought he saw some rising expression on her face, but again it went away. Her lips were smeared. She started walking, as if nothing had happened. He caught her and matched her pace.

She said, without looking at him, “You’re passionate, I guess.”

He felt the arteries in his neck distend in anger. He would walk her home and be done with it. With the streetlamps out, he had to be careful not to trip. He listened to the hollow click of her square heels, the thud of his own.

“You can stay with me if you like,” she said.

He stopped on the pavement, intending that she stop also, but she kept on, and he ran a few steps to keep up with her.

“You mean I can share your bed?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “If you like.”

Red laughed, but he had to think about the proposition, and he frowned to himself, hands stuffed in his pockets. To look at her, she was worth a lot—worth saying what the hell. But it made him sick to think of her blank face afterward on the pillow, her even voice saying, “Are you finished?” It was the girls in his head who’d got him this far: the images from movies, the thought of sweet Vera, the letters from his sister. This girl could poison all that; he couldn’t take the chance.

“Well, I don’t,” he said finally. “I don’t like.”

Irene didn’t seem angry, but said good night on the steps of her rooming house. Red didn’t kiss her again. He walked back alone in the direction from which they had come, and every few steps he stomped his foot and swung one arm to strike at the air. He’d been cruel to her, and yet he was in. There was no play in it, no beauty. He wanted to go back to America, to soft girls on porches, and blouses wet from dancing, and the old fight over who belonged to whom, or if anyone belonged to anyone. Instead he was going to France, and he’d be lucky to get there alive.

He swung his arm at the air again, and stomped, then turned and half ran, half walked back to her rooming house. He knocked, though it was late, and an old woman came to the door.

“I’d like to talk to that girl, Irene,” he said. “I’m shipping out in the morning and it’s very important.”