Ellen laughed.

“He was hardly ever at home. Got licked I don’t know how many times for trying to find a beaver dam or something. Had us scared stiff more ’n once.”

“Nick’s lucky.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure.”

“He does what he likes, doesn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t call that lucky. Nick’s a sick man, Cathy.”

“Sick?” Cathy was unbelieving.

“You might as well know, it’ll come out sooner or later. He came back from the war—World War II—kind of queer in his head. Saw too much, I guess. Suffered things we’ll never know.”

“Oh.” Cathy watched the nimble fingers fly in and out, in and out with their needle—it was the only sign that Ellen Comstock was tense.

“Like living with a volcano,” she said, and bit off the thread. “Good for him to work up at the Ark. First steady work he’s done. Know why he does it?”

Cathy shook her head.

“I don’t know myself. Maybe he feels sorry for them up there. He’s eaten up by pity, Nick is, the way some people are eaten up by anger or money.”

“But that’s wonderful,” Cathy murmured. “Why do you say it that way?”

“It’s not natural, that’s why.”

“Then,” Cathy said firmly, “we have to make a world where it is natural. Nick’s just way ahead of the rest of us—that’s how it seems to me.”

Ellen gave her an ironic look.

“Nick couldn’t afford pity unless I worked ten hours a day on other people’s sewing.”

“Oh.” Cathy frowned. “I didn’t think of that.”

“No, I expect not.… How’s your grandfather? Last time I was up to clean he seemed perkier. Good for him to have you around.”

“Gramp’s great,” Cathy said with enthusiasm. She was relieved to be able to change the subject. Sometimes when she and Ellen talked, an awful kind of darkness seemed to well up, and Cathy didn’t know how to cope with it. She withered under the bitterness of it, and sensed that somehow she was set outside, would never really know what this life cost. In her poems she called this darkness a membrane that she had to get through to be human.

“I never knew how grand he is before. His being sick has changed things at the Ark.”

“They’re up against something they can’t change and have no choice about. First time, I guess.”