PARTISAN REVIEW
.235
fear. She nearly fainted. In this faint she felt her husband's body, loving
her, working its love upon her, and she shut her eyes harder to keep
out the certainty of
his
love - somethnes he failed
~t
loving her, some–
times he succeeded, it had nothing to ·do with her or her pity or her
ten years of love for him, it had nothing .to do with a woman at all.
It
was a private act accomplished by a man, a husband or a lover, in
.communion with his own soul, .his manhood.
Her husband was forty-two years old now, growing slowly into
middle age, getting heavier, softer. Her lover was about the same age,
narrower in the shoulders, with a full, solid chest, yet lean, nervous.
She thought, in her paralysis, of men and how they love freely and
eagerly so long as their ,bodies are capable of love, love for a woman:
and then, as love fades in their bodies, it fades from their souls and
they become immune and immortal and ready to die.
.
Her husband was a little rough with her, as if impatient with him–
self. "I love you," he said fiercely, angrily. And then, ashamed, he
said, "Did I hurt you. . • ?"
.
"You didn't hurt me," she said.
Her voice
was
too shrill for their embrace.
While he was in the bathroom she went to her closet and took
out that drawing of the summer before. There she was, on the beach
at Nantucket, a lady with a pet dog, her eyes large and defined, the
dog in her lap hardly more than a few snarls, a few coarse soft lines
of charcoal . . . her dress
smeared,
her arms oddly limp . . . her hands
not well drawn at
all. . . .
She tried to think: did she love the man
who had drawn this? did he love her? The fever in her husband's body
had touched her and driven her temPerature up, and now ·she stared
at the drawing with a kind of lust, fearful of seeing an ugly soul in that
woman's face, fearful of seeing the face suddenly through her lover's
eyes. She breathed quickly and harshly, staring at the drawing.
And so, the next day, she went to him at his hotel. She wept,
pressing against
him,
demanding of
him,.
"What do you want? Why
!lI'e you here? Why don't you let me alone?" He told her that he
~~t~d
nothing. He expected
no~hing.
He would not cause trouble.
"I want to
talk
about last August," he said.
"We are both married permanently," she said.
She was hypnotized by his gesturing hands, ·.his nervousness, his
obvious agitation. He kept saying, "I understand. I understand that.
I am making no
claims
upon you."
They became lovers again.
He called room service for something to drink and they .sat side
