PARTISAN REVIEW
inch of her skin felt roasted and her hands shook so that for a mo–
ment she dared not try to lift her water glass although her mouth
was dry. And later when his salad came, she looked again and he
distinctly winked at her as he tossed the cloves of tomato and the
water cress. It was not a plainspoken wink at
all
and it made her
nervous. She hurried through her meal in order that she might leave
before he did because, besides the ambiguous gambit of
his
eye, she
was inadmissably afraid that
he,
not the old ladies, might enter the
electric car. She grappled hard with her suspicions about him ;and
imperatively pointed out to herself that tllis stately aristocrat lived in
a handsome house and that he had naturally given
his
housekeeper
and his cook the day off and because the air was fine and sharp,
had liked to walk a mile to
his
dinner. She could not help feeling
that it was strange he had not been invited anywhere, for surely a
man of
his
position, whatever it was, would have friends in the
town. Perhaps he despised the sentimental fanfare of holidays. Next
year, after
his
adoption of her was a legal fact, she imagined that
on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter they would dine alone and
afterward would play backgammon. Yet already she was visited with
a nettlesome problem: should she play badly so that he would have
the pleasure of winning or cleverly so that he would praise her? She
rather hoped that he did not have a violin or any whimsical hobbies
like collecting Revolutionary artifacts or going for bird-walks.
Rose did not wait for her dessert and on her way out she
glanced quickly at the coats hung on the pegs in the hall. She rec–
ognized his immediately; it was black with a beaver lining and al–
though it was quite worn, it still was very rich and serviceable. His
derby was there too and a tartan muffler. Fearing the road along
which, at any moment, the electric car might pass, she struck into
the woods and walked home along the pale, thick river. She found
a nickel and a fresh-water mussel shell and she came upon a beached
canoe, withering in the
dry
fall. She passed behind the girls' school
and glanced at the windows of the dormitory with their starched
dimity curtains. The little girls had all gone home to their fathers
for the holiday. She was very lonely here beside the river and she
began to walk fast, counting her footsteps to forestall her melancholy,
but then she slowed down again as she realized that she would be just
as lonely in her room. Until now she had been content witl1 seeing
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