She snapped the locks. He embraced her as she stood up, the old pocketbook in her hand. She sighed as though life itself were draining out of her, the terrible life of nerves and embarrassment and repudiation. They stood, swaying slightly, for a time. Then he picked up the suitcase and took it to the door.

“Wait here. I’ll go get Mrs. Oliver.”

Driving to the place of the woman he called Theda, he grew almost gay. Eva was not mentioned. He told her about the plant where he worked, the Southerners who were flocking west to get those lucrative jobs, wages they’d never dreamed were possible; they came from as far as Mississippi. He thought he could get her a job there too. They had a training program—how would she like to learn to operate a drill press? Besides, the company had not really swung into serious action yet, even though they were hiring people by the hundreds. The main thing was, the United States was bound to get into the war at some point. It was the first time in American history there’d been compulsory military service during a time of peace. Money, money. There was going to be a lot of money made; there always was in a war.

Was Theda a Communist? she asked. “You mustn’t ask that about anyone,” he said. He suggested again that he try to get her into the plant. She didn’t want to go on painting sleeping Mexicans on pitchers. Besides, she ought to make some money herself.

“It doesn’t seem possible that I could, ever. I go in the other direction, never a dollar ahead of anything.”

“You know what? You sound proud of that. I know how it is. One turns one’s subjugation into an act of will, in the head anyhow…But what it really means, it means you’re on the handout line and unless you wish to become a rich man’s dolly”—he turned to smile at her—“unless you want that, you’re going to have to make it another way.”

“I’m not proud of it. It makes me sick.”

“What makes you sick is pretending you mean to be that way —indifferent to money. Tell the truth.”

She didn’t deny it.

“If you come to the plant, I can see you. We can eat our lunch together. There’s a bench I know of. We’ll bring our lunches and sit and talk.” This rather domestic detail both attracted and wounded her.

“Can’t I come to see you at your place? Oh, I think there’s something Eva’s said, something you’re not telling me!”