After lunch John Grandin took off his shirt and slacks and lay down on the bed for a nap. Ethel had been getting ready to go for a walk through the back lanes of Sconset but at the last minute, to his increasing apprehension, she changed her mind. She sat in the wicker chair, lighted a cigarette, and said:

“I think we’ve had quite enough unpleasantness for the time being and I honestly believe you feel as badly about it as I do. So let’s try and drop it. Incidentally, I wish you’d get that light fixed.”

“I’ll speak about it, this very day.”

“But I thought you’d like to know something,” she went on. “When we leave here I planned, as you know, to get the boys in Maine and come back to New York for the rest of the summer. That was so you wouldn’t be alone.”

“Well?”

“But now I think”—she looked away from him—“I’m not coming back.”

He sat up. For some reason he felt foolish in his shorts and undershirt; it almost seemed indelicate, as if a strange woman were in the room. “What do you mean?” he said.

“What do you think I meant?”

“For God’s sake stop parroting me! What do you mean, I asked.”

She flushed. Then she lifted up her head, looked him squarely in the eye, exhaled a faint cloud of gray-­blue smoke, and said: “I mean, of course, I’m going to stay at Mama’s.”

“For how long, please?”

“What difference does it make to you?”

“I asked how long! I have a right to expect an answer.”

She took a drag on her cigarette. “It depends.”

“On what? That’s no answer.”

“On a lot of things. I think I’ll stay with the family until I—until I know.”

“I see,” he said. “Do you think you’ll ‘know’ by the time the boys’ school opens?”

“They could go to school in Maine, if it came to that.”

“Oh no they couldn’t. That’s one thing I insist on!”

“Well,” she said, “I need a few weeks to think it over.”

The conversation had an almost farcical quality, a nervous wordy banter, but at least it didn’t lead them into those dangerous bypaths (bound to come eventually) of insult and outrage which shattered them both—which, however fundamental they might be, were yet filled with hazard. Another session or two like the one they had been through the other night would have carried them past the breaking point, not only the breaking point of their marriage but of their native individualities and self-respect. Each realized this and strove to maintain the brittle equilibrium; for the only deviation possible from the present norm of strain could be nothing but the passion of love-­making or the passion of the blow.

“Just what are you going to think over?” he said.

“I don’t know. . . .”