“If I think that you’re going to turn around and tell her, I’ll stop. I won’t be able to do it. I don’t dislike her; I don’t know what I feel. I can’t think about you telling. It does something to me.”

“Then don’t think about it.”

“I won’t hear from her, will I? She won’t bother me?”

“She’s had your name and address for years. If she had wanted to bother you, she would have done it long ago.”

“I didn’t know she was that close. It’s frightening.”

“Again, Betty, that’s what you want to think. She’s a small dark-haired girl no one looks at twice. I like her but Murray wouldn’t. After this, she’ll want to be left alone.”

She shook her head. “I can’t argue. I’m really not a person who can put up a good fight.”

“I haven’t tricked you, have I? Do you feel that you’re being used?”

“I don’t know.”

“I meant what I said about Murray not liking her. She would put him to sleep.”

She smiled. “There are times when I come close to doing it myself.” She stopped and sipped her tea. It was cool and she wrinkled her nose. She sat quietly, looking at the corner of the table. As he began to wonder why he was waiting, she said, as softly as he had heard her so far, “I need you to get me started.”

“All right. Let’s go back. After MacIver went out west, he never communicated with you again?”

“Except for the checks, yes.”

“How long after his return did you send him your final letter?”

She had to work it out. “Three months.”

“When had you met Murray?”

“Two weeks before.”

“How did you reconcile what you felt for MacIver and the fact that you had become another man’s lover?”

She winced. “It wasn’t that way. There was nothing to reconcile. I told you the letter was a distortion. Murray and I had been together once. When I wrote the letter I still barely knew him. He was the first man who was nice to me, as Colin had said. We went out three times the first week, and on the third date, he—stayed. All right? He was the first—I said that. Colin had been the first. There had been only the one time when I wrote that letter. It wasn’t for several weeks that I could try it again. I went all to pieces—I was very confused and sick.

“I want to clarify that, my attitude toward sex. Colin and I were lovers before we were married. I thought it was a natural, beautiful thing.” Suddenly she looked pale. He gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. She took the cigarette from her lips and sat still. “This is what she wants to know, isn’t it?”

“Norma wants to know him.”

She searched Leland’s eyes. “You’re pressing for everything you can get.”