He had known while he had been speaking that he had not been saying the thing exactly, but that she wanted to change the subject was her admission that he had come close. He said, “I’m not out to destroy you. You’re a fit mother, and she does belong with you. I’d like to see her, but under the circumstances, that’s up to you.”

“You bet it is.”

“Karen, that’s just why I’m leaving. Your attitude right now is just an extension of what it was yesterday. You don’t know how you feel about me anymore. Inevitably, somehow, you get down to hurting me. You wanted to do something good when I met you. What happened to that? You’ve got yourself on a merry-go-round, doing the same things again and again. You’re back where you started from. Instead of that hotel, where the woman hurt you when you became pregnant, it’s a department store. Instead of being all bound up inside, you’re just not making love at all. You’ve done good things—Steffie, the war work, getting your Master’s, teaching—but you’ve also had two affairs with the same emotional cripple, and you’d just as soon have a third—”

“I probably will, when you’re gone.”

“Don’t you see?” he pleaded. “You took a grisly satisfaction in saying that. I don’t know what’s made you like this. The world doesn’t owe you anything. It did once, but you’re even with everybody now. You’re bitter about something—me, maybe it’s marriage, or even life itself. It’s as if you want something that isn’t here. You’re full of hate, for me, your boyfriend, most of all for yourself. As long as you stay this way, you’re going to keep doing the same things again and again. None of them is going to get you the prize, whatever it is you want. Think, Karen. You’ve carried some of these things as far as you could, and they’ve given you no satisfaction. You’re on a merry-go-round, don’t you see? It doesn’t go anywhere, and least of all to where you want.”

“You can leave whenever you want.”

“I haven’t changed my mind.”