He waited. Something was happening. She was staring past him, frowning a little. “I know what I wanted to tell you,” she said quietly. “It’s impossible. His death was a great shock to me. I said that I thought he killed himself because of what he had done while he was alive. It was one of those intuitive statements. I didn’t have control of the facts in a way that I could communicate them to you. I still don’t, although I came here wanting to believe that I was going to get control. Don’t misunderstand. I do think that he killed himself.” Her chest heaved.

“I didn’t come down here simply to tell you things, no matter what I thought. You see the way I’ve done myself up. The best clothes I have. What he called me still stings. I’ve been afraid that you believed it, or rather, that it was true. The whole thing is confused in my mind and I can sort it out, but I don’t know if I can say it. I wanted to get you interested. I wanted you to see me in a favorable light.” She regarded him carefully, waiting for an answer. He could not say that he had even a hint of an understanding.

“Do you want me to tell you what I think of you? Is that it?”

“No, I’m afraid of that. I want to think that you’re enjoying my company—that if I wanted, if I tried for it, I could have you make a pass at me.”

“We’re not like that, Betty, either of us.”

“I know. It’s one of the reasons why I said impossible. It was a game I was playing. Maybe I was trying to think that you could absolve me of the responsibility for what Colin did to himself. What it really amounts to is that I want to be assured that I’m what I think I am.”

“Tell me what you think you are.”

She sat back. “You’re taking me in hand, like a father. Do people like you and your wife pity people like me? I’m serious.”

“You don’t know anything about us, Betty. You wouldn’t ask that if you knew us.”

“You both do so well,” she said.

“That’s the way you want to see it. Let’s go back to what you think you are.”

“I’m thirty years old, working on my second marriage, but I still feel like I’m just starting out. I don’t have any children and I do want them. I feel like I’ve just finished college, that somewhere between last June and this November the whole world went right by me. I’ve wasted years, but I don’t feel them. I wanted to get married and love a man and have a nice home, but I’m still trying to get started on it.”

“All right, suppose I had made a pass at you?”