Sometimes in the night when she could not sleep she would watch the late show or listen to the radio or read textbooks from school which she should have read two years before. And sometimes she would walk, not with direction, but aimlessly, wherever her mood carried her body. She did not walk to be picked up by boys on the street or men in passing cars; she was faithful, she told herself, to what she was; and she was, she told herself, a girl about to be married or about to know when it was that she was going to be married. She walked because she could not sleep.

And walking one night the idea suddenly came to her that a certain airline offered special honeymoon flights to Bermuda for hesitant people who chose to wait until September to get married. It was still late August and there was still time to get married and make the special rates for September honeymooners. She thought that she should tell Charles about this immediately and not stop over for coffee the next morning with the news, when it would not be as fresh and exciting and inspirational. She went to his apartment, content with the idea that more than justified her coming to wake him after twelve, and only a little apprehensive over what she might find there. Charles was a long time coming to the door, arriving at least five minutes after her third knock. She did not want to use her key.

“What do you want?” He had opened the door only a little way and stood behind it in his robe looking out at her, with something in his face quite a long way from sleep. “What do you want?” he said again.

“Let’s have a cup of coffee. I have something good to tell you.”

Charles held the door firm, opened only as much as would allow his face to show. But that was enough to tell her everything.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“It’s late. If I drink coffee I won’t be able to get to sleep and I have to work tomorrow.”

“We can just talk, then. Can’t I come in?”

Charles made his words very precise now. It took a great deal of control because there were hundreds of words in his mouth all trying to say different things about the different feelings that were going through him. “I really wish you wouldn’t,” he said, selectively. “I really wish you would just go home and come back tomorrow morning for the coffee.”

She stood in the hall and understood what was in the house and why his head had to be held against the edge of the door. And she also understood now just why she had come. The special rates for honeymooners was no new thought; her mind had just made it convenient.

“You have company?”

“No. Of course not. No.”

“Can’t I spend the night here?”

“I really wish you wouldn’t.”