“I want to say this. I couldn’t handle it anymore. As soon as I saw you I knew what would happen. I don’t know why I did it. I pitied him. I even hated him. I did, Joe.”

“Get up. Come on.” Even as he said it he understood the reservation of trust inside him. He wanted to help her, but he could feel a fresh, strong withholding of belief. For the first time since their courtship, he was measuring her. In her own torment she did not feel the change in him. She would as she improved, and then she would be hurt again. The change made him not care. He could not help thinking that he had the right to tend to himself first. The horrible reactions worked onward like the reflections in a house of mirrors, and at the end, like stepping outside again, he still blamed her viciously for having started it all.

This mixed with desire. As he wondered at his thoughts he had to see that he had to try to keep a rein on all the thoughts that could hurt her; he saw again just so quickly that this was what he wanted. He bade her once more to get up. Her face was blotched from the emotion she could not expel. “I want you to lie down for a while,” he said. “I’m not going to bother you. I’m going to call my mother and tell her to keep Steffie until tomorrow evening or maybe the next morning. If she wants to know why, I’ll tell her you’re not feeling well. You stay home from the job, too, needless to say.” She nodded. “Is there anything I ought to know?”

“You say it so innocently,” she whispered.

“I mean, did anybody see you with him, or anybody guess that something was wrong?”

“No. Would that change your mind?”

“Why ask a question like that?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Why do you think I want to know?” he asked.

“So there would be no surprises like that,” she said.

“That’s all,” he said. “That’s all there is to it.”

While she slept he made the call and then called his father at work. He listened carefully for something in their voices. He could not hear it, and felt perverse for having tried. In the bedroom he stripped to his underwear and lay down beside her. Her back was to him. He kissed her neck and her cheek. She smelled like herself. She awakened and rolled to him to kiss him on the mouth. Her body was so hot it seemed feverish. “I love you, Joe.”

“I love you.”