"But tearing along Broadway to get to a theater! Besides it sounds horribly overpowering. Doesn't the thing ever sink?"
"Never."
Between the acts Gregory drew a Gloucester boat and Jean insisted that she was going to pin it up in her room where she could see it on waking and get the conceit knocked out of her for the day.
But in the mornings when she woke, warm under the blankets, with the sharp air pricking her face, she liked to lie looking at it until she could hear the whistling of the wind through the rigging and feel the heave of the sea under the keel. Standing in the prow, she and Gregory went out to sea, leaving behind the echoes of a waking world, the banging of doors, the rattle of the elevator, the running of bath water from the apartment across the light-well, the whir of coffee-grinders, gearing the world to working strength for another day. Her own power to slip away on these trips with Gregory amused Jean and she wondered if Martha felt the same physical sense of cutting loose, and going out into space, when she left her body crouching in the last pew and went up to talk to God.
Christmas and New Year passed and February came in a black rage of cold, that exhilarated or depressed to the breaking point. It depressed Gregory and he came to the office one morning of black cold, late in February, convinced of the uselessness of all things. Nothing mattered, neither happiness nor pain. If one did manage to seize a little happiness, it was only an interlude. What was the good of a few moments of exhilaration and the sense of personal power, when it went before you could make it really yours?
Gregory threw the mail about on his desk and lit his pipe. He felt old. He tore open the envelopes and sorted the contents and knew that he was going to go on doing this for the rest of his life. Margaret had been exasperatingly cheerful this morning, and as Gregory recalled the gentle sweetness of her voice as she had said, when she kissed him good-by: "There is all the success and prosperity we want right now, dear," he tore open the last envelope so violently that the letter within was torn in half. The incident loosened the tension and Gregory laughed at his own childishness as he laid the pieces together and read them.
He read them once. Then he read them again. He looked round at the walls, the floor, the water-cooler in the corner, and read it again. He got up and opened the window. The freezing air rushed in and, after a moment, the world adjusted itself. Things stopped spinning and came out of the blur, but still the impression persisted that it was a joke. Gregory brought the two pieces of the torn letter to the open window and read them for the fourth time.
He had won the Chicago contest. He had covered paper with lines and figures and sent it a thousand miles away, long ago, before the leaves turned. He had never let himself really hope and, for days together, had forgotten all about it. Even Jean had not mentioned it for weeks. The thought of Jean steadied him. Jean had always said: "You will win." She had never doubted, or, if she had, had hidden it under a seeming faith that had been a comfort, even if he had not always shared it.
Gregory reached for the telephone. How should he tell her? Should he read the letter itself, or keep her guessing? To be kept guessing made Jean angry and he did it sometimes to tease her. Gregory stood with his hand on the receiver, composing a beginning. But he would have to get to the point some time and he could hear Jean's: "Oh, Gregory!" Then they would go out somewhere and tramp for miles in the pitiless cold, because it would be absurd even to try to go through the day's grind. Gregory took the receiver from the hook.
Slowly he hung it up again. He went back and sat down at his desk. After a few moments he got up mechanically and closed the window.