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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

From the first he had been the only man who had ever understood her; but did he understand her now, or know her feelings at all? She remembered so clearly the first evening he had taken her home from a party, and why. It had been an embarrassing evening, with several silly people spoiling what might have been good talk. She had no social gift in the sense of being able to make conversation about nothing with men and women she didn’t care for or know well. Present had been a woman with a flair for dramatics who at one point in the evening began to entertain them all with palm reading. She took Ethel’s reluctant palm in her own, gazed at it with wide-­eyed amaze, and gasped: “Look at that Mount of Venus! Did you ever see such a Mount of Venus in your life? I ask you!” Acutely embarrassed, Ethel Cameron found herself murmuring: “I’ve been told I have a murderer’s or a suicide’s hand.” The woman gazed at her darkly, held her speech for a dramatic moment, and then replied: “Well, it’s not a murderer’s hand.”—Of them all, John Grandin had been the only one who understood that Ethel had improvised what she had said (just as the palm reader had improvised her remark about the Mount of Venus) in an effort to take part, help out, give the woman something to go on. It had been silly of her to have suggested such a thing, but she had felt called upon to say something. Neither she nor John Grandin was foolish enough to attach any importance to the woman’s reckless interpretation, but they were both incensed by its stupidity. In a few moments they had left the party together; and an hour later (incredible to think of it now, since he had been, till then, such a stranger) they were making love.

That night he had become the single soul in the world whose destiny (oh far more than the children’s) was irrevocably linked with hers.

V

V

Comfortable in his Pullman chair, John Grandin thumbed through Life. There was an article about a typical middle-­western town, chosen, perhaps, because it was the only town in the middlewest which a survey showed to be “typical”; there was a four-­page spread celebrating a new movie; there was a layout illustrating what fashionable women were wearing, these days, while tending their Victory gardens. Picture-­of-­the-­Week was a full-­page photograph of four marines lying face down on a South Pacific beach, the pants and shirts tight with the already swelling bodies. He turned from this quickly to think of other matters.