"Jean, do you suppose we'd better make it some other day? Sunday is the best, but I wouldn't like Gregory to be really hurt."
"Nonsense, Mary. Of course Sunday is the best day. No. Let's leave it that way."
But she too left earlier than usual.
As Gregory Allen walked slowly uptown in the hot night, he was aware that something decisive had happened. Some thread, carried over from the moments alone with Jean before dinner had snapped, when Jean said:
"You couldn't come on Sunday."
All through these summer weeks, he had felt alone with Jean. But the conditions of his life, his home, his wife, his child, his obligations, which had entered not at all into his consciousness, must have been present to her all the time. She did not think of him as a separate human unit, in the way he thought of her. He was married. He had obligations. He conformed to the conventional social usage. Married men went home over the week-ends. Therefore it was impossible for him to be present at the dinner. Jean had not for a moment seriously considered the possibility of his doing it. And he would have, gladly. He would have broken the habit of years. He would have stayed the two stifling days in town. He would have done this thing if Jean had not said:
"You won't be here."
Why would he have done it? Why did he want so much to go?
Again and again Gregory cut through the tangle of false explanations and reached this point. But beyond it he would not go.