Seeing Eric when she was with Charles was the hardest part. He would always be alone, and looked always sad. And she would know that, had it not been for the hard, careful thing that was growing inside her, she would not have slighted him or refused to smile the many times they met by chance at a party or a lecture or in the street, when she had done just that. He and Charles always spoke and were extremely polite to each other, and she did not think it fair that they should be so resigned and without any indications of rivalry. But they were always friendly, and though they said very little, she knew that they respected each other; although that respect was uncomfortable and maintained, she liked to think, for her benefit. That irritated her. But what irritated her most was Eric’s never offering congratulations to them, as if he did not know they were to be married. She wanted him to say something, to call her aside and plead with her not to do it, to offer threats against the marriage, against Charles. But, in the streets or at parties or wherever the three of them met, he only waved or made polite small talk, his eyes only suggesting to her own what she knew, what she expected, what she found herself wanting him to say.

Now she became obsessed with the idea of marriage. She pounded at it in bedtime talks with him; she repeated the announcement to her friends, his friends, to all the people he respected, that their ceremony was imminent and just a matter of months away. On three occasions she took him to her home in Cleveland to meet her family, and they liked him. They seemed to like him more after each visit. And she reminded him of this, constantly, persistently, encouragingly, along with promptings that he should set a date as soon as possible. She found herself driven to having a date, set and certain, waiting for her to meet it, waiting for it to meet her, and save her from something hard and cold and lonely, something around which she could not form words. It was something beyond love now, or something below it, or something that had nothing at all to do with love. She did not know.

“I don’t care about you having other girls,” she told him one hot August evening in his bedroom. “It really doesn’t matter to me if you have all the girls you think you need until we get married. I really don’t mind at all. Just tell me when.”

“We’ll do it one day,” he had told her, thinking about a new girl he had met, a friend of Margot’s, who had made certain intimations that, if given the opportunity, she would be very nice to him. “We’ll do it one day, soon too.”

“September? October? When?”