On Mama Turpin's porch Dorn's thoughts rambled in silence. Rachel had said nothing. He looked at her and grew confused before the straightness of her eyes, as if she knew the tawdry little plot moving through his mind. Then an irritation ... why didn't she plead? Did she think it was nothing to give up his plans? Was it anything? No. He endeavored to evade his own questioning, but his thoughts mocked him with answers.... "I'm playing a game with her. I want her to feel sorry and grateful for my not going and to feel that I've made a sacrifice for her. Because I could cherish it against her ... later. Have something I could pretend to be sad about. It would give me an excuse to scold her.... Merely by looking at her I could remind her that she is indebted to me for a sacrifice. Make-believe sacrifice gives one the unconsciousness of virtue without any of its discomforts. I'm irritated because she refuses to play her part in the farce and so makes me seem cheap. She knows I'm lying but she can't figure out how or what about. So she looks at me and says to herself, 'Erik has changed. He's different.' She means that I've become an actor and able to offer her cheap things. But she doesn't know that in words."
As he sat thinking, an understanding of himself played beneath his thoughts. He was irritated with her. The passport business was something he could hang his irritation on. It offered an opportunity to make the petulant, indefinable aversion he sometimes felt toward her into a noble, self-laudatory emotion.
He stood up abruptly. Make amends by being truthful and putting an end to the theatrics.... "Listen, Rachel, it's foolish for us to take this seriously. I don't give a damn about going, and I never did. It would bore me. It means nothing to me, and it's no sacrifice or even inconvenience. Please, I mean it. Put it out of your head."
He leaned over and took her hands.
"I love you...."
Despite himself there was a note of sacrifice. He frowned. His "I love you" had startled him. He had said it as one pats a woman reassuringly on the shoulder. More, as one turns the other cheek in a forgiving Christian spirit. He was not an actor. He had become naturally cheap.
Rachel smiled wanly at him and kissed his hands. He noticed that she looked thin about the face and that her eyes seemed ill with too much weeping. He wondered when it was she wept. When she was alone, of course. For a moment the thought of her flung across the bed and weeping stirred him sensually. Then ... what made her cry so much? Good God, what did she want of him? He was giving up.... Again he frowned. "I've become a cad," he thought. "I can't think honestly any more. Thoughts act themselves in my head. I've gotten to thinking lies and thinking them naturally without trying to lie...."
"I'm going for a walk," he announced, and went off toward the shore where the fishing-boats were drifting in becalmed.
Mama Turpin came out on the porch. Rachel smiled at the old woman.
"It's peaceful here, Mama Turpin."