He stepped out of bed, tiptoed to the windows, and raised the shades. There was a real fog in the night air now; he felt it drift in through the screens. He came back and got into bed again. He listened for Ethel but there was no sound. Her breathing was quiet and she did not stir.

This was hardly the kind of first-­night they had been planning for their holiday. Perhaps it was just as well. Without their having realized it till now, their marriage had passed into a new phase. It was well that they think of what it meant—of what they were and what they had—before they made any attempt to reach one another again. With a constantly sinking heart he knew full well that the quarrel had not been a thing of the moment. Almost, the fact that he had not been coming to bed with her had little to do with it. He could only ask himself pointless unanswerable questions: Why did she want him so much? Did she think she was losing him? Or, since a man wants to be wanted, why didn’t this, if nothing else, bring him more often to her bed?

He wondered how many other husbands genuinely loved their wives, yet had grown tired of the marriage duties (how shameful to human dignity that the thing they could hardly wait to get married for had at last become a duty!), enjoyed them physically as much as ever when it occurred to them to seek their beds, yet looked forward to the day when passion would no longer be expected and they would be free to love their wives without reminding themselves—or being reminded by silences or reproach—that weeks had passed and it was “time to do something about it again . . .”

A small flare lit up the dark ceiling. Ethel was lighting a cigarette. The flare went out. He turned his head on the pillow. He could see the tip of her nose each time she took a puff. He watched the tiny pink-­yellow glow fading and fading.

He watched it to the end. He heard her stir on the pillow as she reached for the ash tray and put out the cigarette. He heard her settle back again.

After a moment or two more, he got up, crossed the small space that separated them, and sat down on her bed.

He put his hands on her shoulders. She stiffened.

“Ethel,” he said.

She stirred. He thought she was moving to make room. He got in beside her.

“No,” she said. “No.”

He waited there, neither in the bed nor out. He reached to find her hand. She pulled away.

“No.”

He lay down against her and was still. She did not move. He placed his arm across her body and drew her close to him. Without a sound she released herself from his embrace and got out of bed.