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PARTISAN REVIEW
if imperfect script. The troubling complexity of it all engaged him,
kept him peering into the dark ceiling, until sleep took him with a
suddenness he recognized only the next morning.
VI
He did not call her about the dinner invitation. He felt some–
how he could not. Perhaps because she sensed a strain in their
arrangement, it was late in the next week before they met again, and
then it might have been by accident. At any rate, they found them–
selves in the lobby together, waiting for the elevator, waiting too for
someone to introduce the subject that was on each of their minds .
Finally, he decided to attempt it.
"Have you had any more letters?" He was careful to sound
casual, but he felt his whole being crouched for a response. She had
just gotten home from work and looked wonderful, and less vulner–
able in her elegant suit and dark blue shoes.
"Oh, there are two of them," she said with a shrug. "I got one
Saturday, and then one this morning."
"Well, aren't you somewhat curious about them?" he asked,
smiling. "Or have you found someone else, a new translator? Some–
oTie in the Romance Languages Department?"
"No, no," she said . The elevator opened onto their floor and
they got out. "I thought we could both use a rest. 1 felt things were
getting ... 1 don't know." They were walking down the hall. She
seemed, he thought , to be wearing a perfume, a pleasant, vaguely
familiar scent. Her shoulder-length dark blond hair had lightened in
the summer sun, like that of so many of the television commercial
manikins, but he knew she was not a soulless fabrication.
"Well, I'm still here . Do you want me to take a look at them?"
"That would be nice." For a second she seemed hesitant. Then,
looking directly at him: "I was going to make some tea ."
"Darjeeling?"
"Yes."
"You're on, if 1 read you correctly," he said.
The session, if it could be so called, went smoothly, at least on
the surface. His resentment smoldered, though, and he had
difficulty in keeping the skepticism out of his voice as he read two or
three grandiloquent passages. A note of stridency seemed to have
entered the letters: why had she left him, when was she returning,
