“No. I’m clearing the field. I don’t want a divorce; I don’t want to scatter my life around. And Thomas…there has been something wrong all along…my expectations…and you see, the political thing is fundamental because, in a way, Eva is part of the decision I made years ago, about the party. Eva is really good, you know. She is, really, a religious—oh, not the tormented skeptical sort, the simpler kind of nun. The party is the way she understands life. She’s running scared now. She loves me, in the way she knows how to love, all patience and fear. She used to order me around a good deal. I didn’t mind. I think I thought it was funny because I knew, or thought I knew, that my will was stronger in the end. But she’s stopped that. I remember the day, almost the hour when she stopped telling me to take out the garbage or see to Thomas’s supper or straighten out the lapels of my jacket. I can hardly stand that—the way she bites her tongue. I’m sick with pity, for myself, for Eva, for you.”

“Me?”

“You.”

Theda stood in the middle of her room, a cigarette drooping from her mouth, a gun in one hand.

“Were you expecting someone?” Max asked.

“I just found it in an old suitcase,” Theda said. “One of the Brigade people brought it to me several years ago. Simon got it in France. I can’t get over it.”

“Stop pointing it at us. This is Annie.”

Theda nodded as she aimed the gun into the fireplace. “It’s not loaded,” she said, and pulled the trigger. There was a loud report.

“I will never make that claim again,” Theda said. “Simon was always telling me I thought I knew everything. I’ve made coffee. You can take your suitcase in there, Annie. Then come back. Be sure to come back right away.”

He stayed an hour, then left them at the table near the window, Theda chain smoking, one long brown arm resting on the table, Annie sitting up straight on the other side, watching Theda with grave admiring eyes. Max saw the pure intelligence, the observational force in the girl’s face; and something unawakened, entirely untouched that faintly repelled him—she was, in an essential way, without self. What does the sentry do? On guard all night, alone in the dark—the relief never comes—he cannot sleep—relief was promised, but he has forgotten the password, only the urgency of the duty, not to sleep.

———

Now, another world. Theda knew movie people, ballet people, bums, painters, Negroes.