with eyes incredibly large, and very close and still. “I haven’t been in the dark since then. But you can turn the light out now.”
I went across the room and turned it off.
Twenty
There was no way to tell what time it was because she was asleep with her head on my arm and I couldn’t move it to see the watch. Light was growing, though, beyond the drawn slats of the Venetian blinds, and I could make out objects inside the room. I lay very still for a long time, not wanting to disturb her, and thought about the two of us and the things we would do now that we were free at last. When there was more light I turned again and looked at her. She slept as quietly as a child, lying on her right side with her face against my arm and the hair very dark across the pillow. The strap of the nightgown had slipped off her left shoulder and the breast was exposed, rounded and very smooth, rising gently with her breathing. I smiled, thinking of the confusion in her face when she awoke and discovered it. I didn’t want to disturb her sleep, but still it was somehow lonely being awake without her. Even being this near and seeing and touching her wasn’t the same without the eyes open and looking at me. I leaned my head down and kissed her and she stirred. The eyes came open, and just for an instant I saw in them the awful awareness and the terror that I had feared. Then she saw me and it went away and she smiled. It will gradually disappear with time, I thought. For a while there will be these moments just at waking or just at dropping off to sleep when the mind has no defense at all and she is alone, but they will go away.
“You are very beautiful when you’re asleep,” I said.
“It’s the first time I’ve slept since—”
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
“You didn’t mind, did you, Jack? I wanted to stay awake, but after a while I just seemed to melt and run together. I guess it was because you were here where I could touch you and I wasn’t afraid any more.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I slept too.”
She looked down at the gown slipping off her breast and quickly pulled it up, the confusion very becoming on her face, and would have drawn up the sheet but it had fallen to the floor.
“You haven’t noticed my gown,” she said reprovingly, to cover her embarrassment.
“I’m afraid not. You’ll have to admit, though, that it has competition.”
She smiled, and then her face sobered and she looked across at me with her eyes full of an almost childlike earnestness. “I—I bought it with some of the money you gave me, Jack. It didn’t cost very much; it was the cheapest one they had. I can do without something else. But it’s just that I wanted one so badly.”
I could feel the tight constriction in my throat. It isn’t even a wedding ring she’s talking about, I thought, just a cheap, lousy nightgown she probably bought in a ten-cent store, bought looking back on being made love to in the leaves under a tree in broad daylight and looking forward to sleeping naked beside a man like a common prostitute. The only shred of respectability or common decency she would even ask me for was this sleazy, peach-colored misfit of a bargain-basement nightgown, and she was even anxious that I wouldn’t think she had wasted too much money in buying that. For some unaccountable reason I was growing angry, and at the same time humiliated and ashamed thinking of this pathetic attempt to clothe herself in at least some scraps of dignity.
“What else did you buy?” I asked.
“Just some—underclothes.”
“And I suppose you got them at the dime store, too? The best they had?”
“Well, not exactly in a dime store, but they didn’t cost very much.” She looked at me uncertainly. “I know we don’t have very much to spend. Remember, you told me.
I had forgotten that. And now that I was suddenly reminded of it I felt even more ashamed and angry. Then I remembered I hadn’t even told her of the three thousand dollars we had.
“Do you know what we’re going to do today?” I asked.
“Get on the bus?”
“No,” I said. “Well take the bus tomorrow night, after we’ve got a little better organized. I think we’re