Inside, Marya tore off the bandages with trembling fingers, grateful to be alone. She washed her numerous wounds with soapy water, mercilessly, gritting her teeth against the pain. She might have thought that pain itself had antiseptic virtues.

She stripped off her shirt and washed hurriedly. Her sweaty chest, her breasts, her underarms. . . . There were dozens of tiny pimples, invisible to the eye but hard as grit beneath her fingertips, scattered on her shoulders and chest. Prickly heat, or the aftermath of panic, nerves. . . . How ugly I am after all, she thought, eyeing that pale reproachful face in the mirror.

She bandaged up her wounds again but her fingers lacked Gregory’s deftness; she was still shaking. While trying to comb her snarled hair she thought suddenly that it was past four o’clock and by now the committee would surely have made its decision . . . by now there was no margin for hope. She and Gregory had gone on their desperate little outing while their lives were being decided for them; they were helpless as children; ah, how contemptible! She remembered a telephone booth just outside the door. She could call the college, demand to speak with the Dean himself, or perhaps with her departmental chairman; he would be far more kindly, sympathetic. Oh yes Marya, yes, I’m afraid I have disappointing news for you. . . .

No, Marya thought, frightened, it would be far more dignified to wait for the letter. Dear Miss Knauer, We regret to inform you. . . . Dear Mr. Hemstock, We regret to inform you. . . . But they can’t possibly dismiss us both, she thought.

She was very tired. She lay down on a vinyl-covered couch and pressed her hands over her eyes. Her fingers were rather cold, her face warm. Every part of her body seemed to be aching. Her right knee, her right ankle, her wrists, her elbow . . . maybe she had fractured a rib or two . . . maybe she had a concussion, a hairline crack in the skull.

“It would solve my problems,” she said aloud, though she knew in fact it would not.

IN THE AIR-CONDITIONED, drafty Buccaneer’s Lounge Gregory was sitting at a window booth, waiting for her. He’d taken off the rakish red headband; he looked subdued, chastened, exhausted. Marya noted how unevenly his face was sunburnt—pale at the forehead, an alarming pink at the end of his nose. He gripped a bottle of beer in one hand and a glass in the other, and when she slid into the booth across from him his smile was rather forced.

“The bleeding seems to have stopped,” Marya said in an undertone.

“Yes. Good. I thought it would.”

“Only one of the cuts is very deep. . . .”

“Yes, that’s good.”

His manner was vague, distracted.