When she wanted to hear what had happened to him since they had parted he found it even harder to tell his story than to piece hers together. While she talked he could spin about her a silken cocoon of revery, made out of her soft drawl, the throb of her hand, the fruitlike curve of her cheeks and eyelids; but when he tried to withdraw his attention from her long enough to put his words in order he lost himself in a blur… . Really, he said, nothing much had happened to him, nothing that he specially remembered. He'd been a reporter in the principal Euphoria newspaper, and hated it; and he had taken a post-graduate course in philosophy and literature at the state college; but the lecturers somehow didn't get hold of him. Reading in a library was what suited him, he guessed. (Her lashes were planted like the double row of microscopic hummingbird feathers in a South American embroidery he'd seen somewhere… .) But Euphoria was over and done with; he'd got a job in New York … a job on a swell magazine, a literary review they called it, but they published short stories too, they'd already published one of his, and wanted as many more as he could write … and the editor, Lewis Tarrant, had written to him to come to New York… .

"Lewis Tarrant! But he's the one Miss Halo married!" Laura Lou exclaimed.

"Did she?" Vance absently rejoined. All his attention was on her hands now; he was separating the fingers one by one, lifting them up and watching them drop back, as though he were playing on some fairy instrument. He hardly noticed the mention of Halo Spear.

"Why, didn't you know? They were married the year you went away, I guess. I know it was ever so long ago."

"Does it seem to you ever so long since I went away?"

"Oh, Vance, I've told you you mustn't … or I'll have to go… ."