He had had to chase her. They had accomplished something and then it had seemed as if she had wanted to kill it. Even striking the bargain, promising not to hold back, she had tried to make it too clear. Where they were now, a sex agreement was a step forward. Strangely, it could make them more humane. He had been willing to take it for what it could lead to, but she had asked if he hated her. In the autumn she had courted disaster; now she wanted more security than it was possible to have.

They made love the next morning. She kissed him awake, warm with powder and perfume. She loved him, she said. He couldn’t respond. Afterward, she wanted to know if he was all right. He said yes. He was certain that she had not pretended. She stayed close to him, affectionate but not happy, and quiet. He knew what was to come and was afraid because he could not deny her for long. She was sick with herself, but without the terror that had followed the previous times. He knew he was seeing the worst part, but he could not control his reaction to it. It was not what she really was, what she had been when he had met her. Thus he felt part of the blame being thrust upon himself, and he struggled to deny it. Yet he could not accept the idea that all this had been in her when they had met. If he had known, he would have married her anyway—he had to accept that fact. There was nothing he had done to help her because he had not known how she could be helped; even now it all came from her and, mostly by choice, he took it. There were words for him, and the way he was letting it go once more, he had no right to protest.

A week later she asked him if he wanted to know the real purpose behind the shopping trips. It was like a kick in the stomach. She could not look into his eyes while she said it. She had been trying to meet men. A man. She had conceived of seeing Palmer again simply because it would be less complicated. She had made a compromise with what she had really wanted.

“I wanted the excitement. I was testing myself—I wanted to see what I was capable of doing. Don’t ask me why. I want you to know what I did, Joe. I’d just go downtown and walk and look at people—men. I’d think about going someplace for a drink. I never talked to anybody, just looked. And thought. Oh, yes. Thought. I don’t have any idea why I did it.