About which time Nancy had finished crying—raging at herself all the time, she hated to cry so—and was sitting up straight on the couch looking at the door which Oliver had shut as if by looking it very hard indeed she could make it turn into Oliver.

It couldn't end this way. If it did it just meant that all the last year wasn't real—hadn't any more part in reality than charity theatricals. And they'd both of them been so sure that it was the chief reality that they had ever known.

He wasn't reasonable. She hadn't wanted the darned old job, she'd wanted to marry him, but as long as they hadn't seemed to get very far in the last eight months when he'd been trying to work it—why couldn't she try——

Then 'Oh Nancy, be honest!' to herself. No, that wasn't true. She'd wanted the job, wanted to get it, hadn't thought about Oliver particularly when she'd tried for it except to be a little impatient with him for not using more judgment when he picked out his job. Did that mean that she didn't love him? Oh Lord, it was all so mixed up.

Starting out so clearly at first and everything being so perfect—and then the last four months and both getting tireder and tireder and all the useless little misunderstandings that made you wonder how could you if you really cared. And now this.

For an instant of mere relief from strain Nancy saw herself in Paris, studying as she had always wanted to study, doing some real work, all Paris hers to play with like a big gray stone toy, never having to worry about loving, about being loved, about people you loved. Being free. Like taking off your hot, hot clothes and lying in water when you were too hot and tired even to think of sleeping. Oliver too—she'd leave him free—he'd really work better without her—without having her to take care of and make money for and worry about always——

The mind turned the other way. But what would doing anything be like with Oliver out of it when doing things together had been all that mattered all the last year?

They couldn't decide things like this on a prickly hot August night when both of them were nearly dead with fatigue. It wasn't real. Even after Oliver had shut the door she'd been sure he'd come back, though she hoped he wouldn't just while she was crying; she never had been, she thought viciously, one of those happy people who look like rain-goddesses when they cry.

He must come back. She shut her eyes and told him to as hard as she could. But he didn't.

All very well to be proud and dignified when both of you lived near each other. But Oliver was going back to New York tomorrow—and if he went back while they were still like this—She knew his train—the ten seven.

She tried being proud in a dozen different expressive attitudes for ten minutes or so: Then she suddenly relaxed and went over to the telephone, smiling rather ashamedly at herself.

“Hotel Rosario?”

“Yes.”

“Can I speak to Mr. Oliver Crowe? He is staying there isn't he?”

A pause full of little jingling sounds.

“Yes, he's staying here but he hasn't come in yet this evening. Do you wish to leave a message?”

Nancy hesitates.

“N-no.” That would be just a little too humble.

“Or the name of the party calling?” He will know, of course. Still, had she better say? Then she remembers the need of punishing him just a little. After all—it is hardly fair she should go all the way toward making up when he hasn't even started.

“No—no name. But tell him somebody called, please.”

“Very well.”

And Nancy goes back to wonder if the reason Oliver hasn't gone back to the hotel is that he is returning here in an appropriate suit of sackcloth. She hopes he will come before mother and father get back.

But even while she is hoping it, the large blue policeman is saying something about “'Sturbance of the peace” to the desk-sergeant, and Oliver is going down on the blotter as Donald Richardson.