He soon found that even these absences preyed on Laura Lou. She did not reproach him; she simply pined when he was not there. When he got back he had to tell her everything that had happened to him, describe the people he had met, repeat everything that everyone had said or done; and in doing so he measured again her mental limits, and saw that the things which counted for him would never count for her. She smiled them away as oddities, like a wise little wife humouring a cranky husband; and her smile almost made him feel that endearments were enough for a soul to live on. Almost, not quite. From his childhood there had been in him an irreducible core of selfness (he found no other word for it), a hidden cave in which he hoarded his secretest treasures as a child hoards stony dead starfish and dull shells of which he has once seen the sea glitter, though he can make no one else believe in it. Even Laura Lou's ignorance, even Laura Lou's embraces, could not cheapen that treasure.

He had been coming and going in this way for about three weeks when one evening, on his return from town, not finding his wife below stairs, he ran up to her. She lay on the bed, asleep, in the attitude of trustful composure which had moved him on their first wedded morning. Near the bed he saw a crumpled paper on the floor. Laura Lou's sleep was so sound that he picked up the paper and smoothed it out under the lamp without waking her. It was a letter, bearing the address of a drummer's hotel at Seattle, and it began: "Well, in a few more days now, little sweet, I'll be back home again, and I guess we'll have some good times round about Christmas, if Bunty Hayes is the man I take him for. Say, honey, how long do they let you off that school for the holidays …  ?"

Vance read no further. He stood motionless, looking at his wife. She had not told Bunty Hayes; Mrs. Tracy had not told him. Vance saw that both women had been afraid, and pity and wrath struggled in him, the wrath mostly for Mrs. Tracy, the pity—well, yes, the pity for Bunty Hayes. The women hadn't treated him squarely… . Vance let the letter fall where he had found it… .

The next day—his last at the office before Christmas—he handed in his article on Eric Rauch's Voodoo. He wasn't satisfied with it; he knew it wasn't good. And he hated it because it was part of what he was expected to do for The Hour in return for the salary he had to have.