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Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

In his bedroom alone, resting before lunch, John Grandin knew why he had let Ethel go without making any real move to stop her, and why he allowed himself to be held helpless here, when common sense if not self-respect should have impelled him to leave the island with his wife. This is what he had unconsciously been waiting for, what he must have known—through some unnameable intuition—was bound to happen. It was almost as if he had been certain all along that Cliff would yet make the impossible statement, the words which no one in the wide world could have anticipated: “Of course I was a lot younger then.” Till then, Grandin had done his best. Now he would resist no longer. With a full knowledge of the danger which lay ahead as well as the improbable pleasure, he was glad at last that he had stayed on.

VIII

VIII

Through the smoky windows of the daycoach, the Cape looked like a wasteland. One could even wonder why so many people chose this barren and isolated strip of land between two waters for their summer homes. But Ethel Grandin regarded the flat sandy wastes, the swampy fields, the stagnant inlets and self-­conscious dwellings of the rich vacationers almost without seeing them at all; the trip up to Boston was a time-­out during which she must get onto herself; it didn’t matter about the landscape, whether interesting or not.

It was flight. She had engaged the one Sconset taxi and caught the boat from Nantucket just after lunch, arriving in Woods Hole in time to connect with the Boston train. She could not even remember the trip across; it had been a period of utter misery, not because she was alone and had left her husband behind, but because, apart from her serious split with him, she did not know what she was fleeing from, still less what she was running toward. The boat had not been crowded; it was not at all like the morning steamer which carried so many vacationers back to the mainland to catch the early train to New York. She had sat in a folding chair on the heaving deck and heard the cries of the sea gulls which followed the boat like lost spirits, listened to the churning wash alongside the prow, paid no attention whatever to her dull or indifferent fellow passengers absorbed in their own inane pleasures and problems, and all but froze in the icy breeze that blew mercilessly along the exposed deck. She could have gone inside, but for some reason she had to be in the open air, chilling though it was.