“He’ll probably say, ‘You’re perfectly right, Mrs. Henreddy,’ ” she continued her line of thought later. “ ‘I did all I could to persuade your daughter that the step she is about to take is a foolish one, but she’s willful and wayward and she’s too much for me. I’m taking the line of least resistance.’ ”
“But every time he pushed me away from him,” her thought was resentful, “he pulled me to him twice as close.”
That same evening, they heard Mother Grace was ill. The doctor didn’t know whether she had diphtheritic sore throat, or diphtheria or just plain sore throat. At any rate she had to stay in bed for a while and June got leave of absence from the hospital in order to take care of her.
“Suppose,” she kept thinking to herself, “Suppose he gets tired of waiting for me and goes out west. From the way I talked he must have thought that I would be there immediately the next day. Oh, what shall I do?”
She could not blame her mother for being ill. It was the first time she had indulged in the luxury of staying in bed since Glubb was born. She kept saying what a pleasure it was for her to have a “morning toilet” and “evening toilet” and alcohol rub and meals on a tray—those things she had paid for in a hospital. “I think I just got sick because I had a couple of nurses in the family to take care of me,” she declared.
Meanwhile June made tea and toast and became sentimental over the eggnogs which Mother Grace drank, all unsuspicious of the emotions they evoked in her daughter.
It turned out to be an ordinary sore throat, but the doctor told her it was just as well that she had stayed in bed, considering that there were several cases of the disease in the neighborhood and when Mother Grace put on her black silk kimono with embroidered storks (it was a new one) and sat in the library, sewing, June broke the news to her.
“What?” asked her mother, looking up from her work with a very startled face. “What did you say?”
June repeated that she was about to begin to live with someone.
“Live with someone! What do you mean?”
“With a man of course. I’ve fallen in love—terribly in love and he doesn’t want to marry me—he’s not half crazy about me as I am about him, so I’m just going to live with him. You needn’t worry about me. I’m not at all worried. I can take care of myself. You know I’ve always told you that I didn’t think marriage was so important. …”
June tried to keep talking—tried to fill up the gaps which Mother Grace left in what should have been a conversation. What could she say when her mother wouldn’t make any reply or pay any attention. “You don’t mind, do you? I really can’t help it. I’ve had a hell of a time for the last couple of months, knowing that I’d have to tell you this pretty soon.”
“When are you going to start doing this?” her mother asked in a rather faint voice.
“I’d made up my mind to leave the hospital the next day on that very night when the doctor telephoned to the hospital for me. So I had to put it off. Oh, why are you sick at such a time, mother, when it’s so hard for me?”
Mother Grace ignored the obvious selfishness of this appeal and saw beneath it. Again she tried to ask calmly when June wanted to go.
June blushed and paled and then blurted out, “As soon as possible. I’d like to go tonight. I’m sure he’s waiting for me. I should have been there with him a week ago and I haven’t written to him or anything to tell him why I’m not there …
“Can I go tonight?”
“What use is there for me to stop you when I’d only make you miserable? Oh, why ask me what to do? You know you’ll only do just what you think best for yourself and pay no attention to me anyway. It’s after five. Leave me alone to think. I can’t say anything that I know isn’t absolutely futile.”
III
“I’m here,” she told him as he met her at the door of the little apartment on Thirty-fifth Street. He held a half-finished cigarette and an open book in one hand and with the other he closed the door behind her. He greeted her coldly, and resumed his seat in the armchair by the open window. The standing lamp by the side of him lit up a sullenly indifferent face.
June took off her hat and gloves and put them on a table at one end of the room. Then she slipped down on the floor by Dick’s side and put her head against his knee. Her trembling excitement had given way to a languorous feeling of happiness but every now and then a sharp feeling of fear swept over her. She clasped his knees so that he could not get up and he picked up his book again. She did not even take the trouble to see if he turned the pages. She did not care if he continued reading. She was with him again.
Finally he flung the book to the floor. “I thought you said you’d be here a week ago!”
The tenseness of her body relaxed. So he did care that she was late! He had been waiting for her.
“The night you left, the doctor called the nurses’ home and told me my mother was ill—that he thought it was diphtheria and I had to take care of her. It wasn’t diphtheria. After they had taken tests they discovered that. But she was very sick and I had to stay.”
“Why didn’t your sister do it?”
“Mother wanted me, so I had to stay with her. I knew I was going to hurt her enough when I told
