They sat in the nearly empty movie house watching Ida Lupino with her tough, pretty, small-dog’s face. Annie was hardly conscious of the story. Walter’s hand was on her knee. The ring continued to disturb her and, furtively, she slid it back and forth along her finger.

Walter bought them lamb chops and a bottle of wine and two large potatoes.

They had an early supper; she cooked while Walter read a newspaper he’d picked up before they’d come home. She looked down greedily at the frying chops. There were two for each of them, unprecedented luxury…

“God!” exclaimed Walter.

“What?”

“This girl. A girl on the society page. She’s marvelous looking!”

Annie went to the bed where Walter was lying, the paper held up over his head. She reached for it. He snatched it away. She jumped up on the bed and grabbed it, then looked rapidly through the pages. There was no society girl, only a small photograph of Merle Oberon on the movie page. He was laughing insinuatingly.

“Why did you say there was a girl?”

“Hunh?”

“Walter?”

“You’re such an easy mark, Annie. It’s so easy to get a rise out of you.”

She sat in the chair and looked at him wordlessly. Whatever he was thinking, his expression didn’t, immediately, change. It held the mocking interest of someone watching the predictable but comic antics of a fool.

“I am not a fool,” she said as lightly as she could.

“No,” he agreed. “But you are foolish.”

She wanted to cry out that she was young! In the same way, she had once defended herself against her father’s charge that she was “pleasure mad” because she’d wanted to go to see two movies in one afternoon. “I’m only a child!” she had said to Tony. Recalling that now, she smiled ruefully. It was as though youth was a form of epilepsy which one was obligated to explain, even in the throes of its convulsions.

Why had Walter married her? What did he really want with her? An uncanny question presented itself to her: Who was it that Walter had married?

He didn’t look mocking now. He looked reflective and gloomy. He sighed suddenly. He looked so melancholy that his face seemed softer. She would have liked to ask him about his thought, but she was afraid…