212
PARTISAN REVIEW
She heard the elevator coming up and knew it would stop at her
floor. Her bell rang and she went toward the door.
As
she did so, a
quick sense of activity
consum~d
her. She half realized, in
this
mo–
ment between the ringing of the bell and the opening of the door,
that there would be no bond between the
girl
who had awakened in
the horrible torpor and the one who would appear before the visitor.
There was a giggle, a childish, young sound, rising u'p in her throat.
And she stood before him. Before she spoke she had the notion she
was going to
talk
in a language never before heard, and, in a voice of
deep sincerity, say new words. When she did speak, she heard only
her old self-assured roughness and daring. (She was twenty-one, a
waitress, a grammar school graduate,
a.
delinquent.)
His mouth was
rather crooked when he smiled. She noted immediately that his uni–
form was pressed to knife sharpness. This
~imple
fact, along with the
newness of her dress, expressed the religiosity of the moment. He put
his arm on her shoulder and it felt very heavy. His hair was not well
combed and
his
eyes retained the memory of last night's whiskey. For
a moment she thought of turning away from him and rejecting the
union, but she could not do so. She was powerless to divert the direc–
tion of her life.
His steps trailed hers through the hall, back to her room. Her
coat and hat and gloves lay on the bed. He began to laugh, though
there was apparently nothing to set this laughter in motion. She
laughed also. When he helped her with her coat, he started, in a re–
flex way, to embrace her, but he did not actually do so. But they
could not stand there, merely looking hopeless y at each other and so
he began to talk. Though
his
body was hard, his voice was surpris–
ingly soft. It was the betrayer of
his
humanity, rather nervous, lacking
in self-confidence, muted by doubts and remorse. Listening to him,
her hands began to shake and it took her a long time to put on her
hat. When at last she was ready to leave, she had the sense of being
paralyzed and was amazed at the way her muscles moved with ease
despite the restricted and stiff feeling.
Before leaving, they looked ca<;ually around the room. There was
nothing there to stop them. Soon he had closed the door and they
were in the dark hall waiting for the elevator. When they were actual–
ly on the street, both of them felt unprepared for the sunlight. Their
eyes blinked and the
girl
was painfully conscious of the thickness of
her stockings and the tightness of the blue dress. There was a frown
of concentration and anxiety on the boy's face. Even his body seemed
strangely stunted. The
girl
wondered what he was thinking. She was
ignorant of everything about him. Yet she was compelled by the
