“Did you?” She slanted a glance at me. “The explanation seems obvious to me.”

“Aw, flaw, flaw,” I said. “You know I couldn’t like no one better’n you, Amy. I never wanted to marry anyone in my life but you, and that’s the God’s truth. I swear it is. I’d swear it on a stack of Bibles, honey.”

Her eyes were blinking rapidly, like she was blinking back the tears. I got hold of her hand and squeezed it, and I saw her lips tremble.

“Th-then, why, Nick? Why did- y-you—”

“That’s what I been wanting to tell you. It’s a pretty long story, and—looky, honey, why don’t I get off at Clarkton with you, and we can get us a hotel room for a couple hours and—”

It was the wrong thing to say. Right at that time it was the wrong thing.

Amy turned white. She looked at me with ice in her eyes. “So that’s what you think of me!” she said. “That’s all you want—all you ever wanted! Not to marry me, oh, no, I’m not good enough to marry! Just to get me in bed, and—”

“Now, please, honey,” I said. “I—”

“Don’t you dare honey me, Nick Corey!”

“But I wasn’t thinking about that—what you think I was thinking about,” I said. “It was just that it’d take quite a while to explain about me and Myra, and I figured we’d need some place to—”

“Never mind. Just never mind,” she said. “I’m no longer interested in your explanations.”

“Please, Amy. Just let me—”

“But I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Nicholas Corey, and you’d better pass the word along to the proper quarters. If I catch your wife’s brother peeking in my windows, there’s going to be trouble. Real trouble. I won’t put up with it like the other women in Pottsville do. So you tell her that, and a word to the wise is sufficient.”

I told her I hoped she didn’t ever do anything about Lennie. For her own sake, that is. “I got no more use for Lennie than you have, but Myra—”

“Humph!” She tossed her head and stood up as the train slowed down for Clarkton. “You think I’m afraid of that—that—her?”

“Well,” I said, “it might be better if you was. You know how Myra is when she takes out after someone. By the time she gets through gossiping and telling lies, why—”

“Let me out, please.”

She pushed past me and went on up the aisle, her head high, the ostrich plume on her hat dipping and swaying. As the train pulled out, I tried to wave to her where she stood on the platform. But she turned her head quickly, with another swoop of the ostrich plume, and started off up the street.

So that was that, and I told myself that maybe it was just as well. Because how could we ever mean anything to each other the way things stood?

There was Myra, of course, and there was going to be Myra, it looked like, until her or me died of old age. But Myra wasn’t the only drawback.