"Keep the change."

"Thanks, sir."

An insane world ... a polite and jovial taxi-cab driver carrying lunatics about the streets.

"Oh, dear, look! Father's sitting up." She was disappointed. "And I wanted to kiss and hug you before we went upstairs."

Dorn unlocked the door of his house. He still had a house and could unlock its door without its meaning anything. To-morrow he would have no house. That was the difference between to-day and to-morrow. The old man would be there. That would make it easier. He shivered. "I'm going to do something then".... This was alarming.

Anna's arms were around him before he could remove his coat. She clung, laughing, kissing. Let her.... "The doomed man ate a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs and seemed in good spirits." Reporters, with a sense of the dramatic, usually wrote it that way. Ham and eggs were a symbol. Should he mull around for extenuating epigrams--a fervid rigmarole on the mysteries and ethics of life? Or strike swift, short?... "Death was instantaneous. The drop fell at 10:08 A.M. sharp." Always sharp. d.a.m.n his reporters!

"Anna ..."

She bloomed at the sound of her name.

"I want to talk, Anna."

"No, let's not talk. I'm so happy.... Aren't you up rather late, father?"

Thank G.o.d she was getting nervous. One can't kill a smile.

"Anna, come to me."

An old phrase of their love-making. He hadn't meant to use it. But phrases that have been used for seven years get so they say themselves.

She moved quickly toward him. His father--smiling beyond her shoulder.

Now for the slaughter....

"Do you love me enough to make me happy, Anna?"

"I would give my life for you."

He was deplorably calm--too calm. His eyes were looking at books on shelves, at chairs, at pictures on the walls, as if everything was of an identical importance.

"I know, but that isn't it."

"What then, Erik?"

He couldn't say it. Particularly with his father smiling--an irritating old man who would never die. Should he fall at her feet and whimper? He couldn't. Her face was his, her eyes his. It wasn't leaving Anna.

Himself, though. Yes, he was confronting himself. Seven years of selves.

All wonderful. Everything he had said and done for seven years lived in Anna. So he must kill seven years of himself with a phrase. No. Yet he was talking on. It soothed him, untightened the agony in him.

"Listen, Anna. I can't tell you, but I must. My words circle away from me. They run away from what I want to tell you. Anna ... I must go away--leave you."

Tears in his eyes, over his face. His voice, warm, blurring with tears.

He choked, paused.

"Erik...."

A white sound. Something bursting.

"If I stay, I'll go mad."

"No ... no ... Erik ..."

Still white sounds, only whiter. Blank sounds, caused by speechlessness.

Sounds of speechlessness.

"I may come back, if you'll take me back sometime...."

A man was always an imbecile. Imbecility is a trademark. But there were no sounds now. His eyes tried to turn away from her. A face had ceased to live and give forth sounds. He remained looking at it. A cold, emptied face, like a picture frame with a picture recently torn out of it.

"Anna, for G.o.d's sake, hate me. Hate me. Loathe me the rest of your life. I've lied and lied to you--nothing but lies.... No, that's not true. But now it is. Think of me as vile when I go away.... Otherwise..."

Tears blubbered out of him.

... "otherwise I'll die thinking of you. Don't look at me that way. Yell at me.... You've known it. I can't help it.... It's something. I can't help it."

Behind this voice he thought: "It's not me alone. Nights of love ...

kisses ... Jimmie ... seven years.... Little things. Oh, G.o.d, little things. We're all leaving her--pulling ourselves out of her."

"Where are you going, my son?"

Could he lie now? Yes, anything that made it easier.

"Nowhere. Anywhere. I must go. Otherwise I'll choke to death. Take care of her. There's money. All hers. I'll write later about it. Anna ...

don't please."

The thing was a botch. Wrong, all wrong. But that didn't matter. His coat and hat mattered more than phrases. Looking for a coat and hat when he should be winding up the scene properly. These were preposterous ba.n.a.lities that distinguished life, unedited, from melodrama. Where was his hat? His hat ... hat ... Life, Fate, Tragedy had mislaid his insufferable hat. Ah ... on the floor.

She was standing staring at him. Would she die on her feet? Quick, before the shriek. It was coming ... a madness that would frighten him forever if he heard it. What a scoundrel he was! Why deny it? But in a few years he would be dead and no longer a scoundrel, and all this so much forgotten dust.

"Write to us, my son. And come back soon."

He closed the door softly behind him and started to walk. But his legs ran. It had been easy ... easy. He stumbled, sprawled upon the iced pavement, bruising his face. He picked himself up unaware that he had stopped running. Night, houses, streets, what matter? In a few years--dust. But he had left in time. That was the important thing.

Another minute and he would have heard her. A terrible unheard sound.

He had left it behind. He had left her unfinished. Why was he running?

Oh, yes--Anna.

He paused and held his eyes from staring back at his house. His eyes would pull him back to the door. Little things--oh, the little things made hurts. He must turn a corner. Light does not travel around corners.

Gone. The house was gone with all its little things. One jerk and he had ripped away....

He walked slowly. A coldness suddenly fell into him. Rachel. He had forgotten about Rachel. Never a thought for Rachel. Disloyal. Where was she--the mirror of stars? Nowhere. He didn't love her. Was he insane? He loved Anna, not Rachel. He must go back. The thing was lopsided--pretense. He'd been pretending he was in love with Rachel.

Love ... schoolboy business. Mirror of stars! Something scribbled on a valentine. That was love. Rachel. No.... There was another face. Cold, emptied--a circle of deaths. Anna's face. But he must remember Rachel because he was going to Rachel--remember something about her. Say her name over and over. But that wasn't Rachel. That was a word like ...

like pocketbook. Something about her....

Ah! yes. Her coat lying in the snow. He sighed with a determined effort at sadness ... her little coat in the snow!