Then there was the sound of someone’s yawn from the bedroom; a sound, it seemed to Margot, that was deliberate and domestic and possessive at the same time. It was a bored sound and it made her go all tight inside when he, in some play at slyness, shifted his eyes momentarily from her face to the direction of the sound.

And now something went out of her, away, distant, ghostlike in its passage from her as she stood there. But Charles did not see it go and for a moment she felt sorry for him, almost as sorry for him as she was feeling for herself.

“I just came by to tell you,” she began. Then she made her voice louder. “I just came by to say that you’re right. There’s no sense in playing marriage. If we’re not going to do it we might as well stop playing house.”

Charles just looked at her.

“I just wanted to tell you,” she went on, “there wasn’t much left in me. But what there was, you could have had.”

“What are you trying to say?” Charles was afraid now of losing the peg that was solely responsible for holding his new self together. He was afraid of looking at the bird just after it had been crushed. And he was afraid that Karen, in the bedroom, would hear the sound of fear in his voice and not think him a man from whom she could learn things.

“What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Why don’t you just go on home. We can talk tomorrow.”

“No.”

“We could have breakfast. I don’t really have to go to work if I don’t want to.”

“No.”

“Anyway,” he said very rapidly, “we’ll talk about it later.”

“Sure.”

He stood, embarrassed, expectant, waiting for her to look away or turn away so that he could feel justified in closing the door. She looked at him, in a way very much like pity, for an entire minute and he saw that something very important had gone out of the way she looked. It made him uneasy.

Then she turned her back, walked a few steps, and heard the door close and the lock turn and the chain push into place behind her. And she stood there, in the hall outside his door, waiting for the inevitable voices, just to give him every benefit. And when they came, it was as she had perceived they would be: his voice beginning, low and nervous and very fast, talking, soothing, perhaps apologizing. Then a second voice, which did not say very much, but which brought on a hurried response, unintelligible to her in the hall, just after its every few words. Margot pulled the last loose part of herself together and walked heavily down the hall, the sound of her shoes like a steady drumbeat on the floor, and out into the night.