"They make me sick," she went on. "All of them. They're not like people but like something else. Like parts of people."
He nodded his head again. She was all right—this girl. She didn't belong with the pack in the room he had left. She wasn't a little slut ... one of those lying, filthy ones. But he was afraid of her. He wanted to keep things like they were. If you let down to a woman she started climbing all over you and asking for this and for that. Anyway it was time to walk back now. There was a lot of work in the shop. He got up at six.
They walked out of the park together. The spring night called for endings. The darkness hinted. The day with its houses and noises lingered like an unnatural memory in the shadows. What were people for? The darkness hinted. Doris felt a mist in her blood. So curious, the day. Unreal, empty. Noises that circled, faces that went on forever. People had been moving forever. They kept walking and walking. There was no ending to people. The years passed under their feet like a treadmill and they kept moving on.
Now it was quiet. Beside this man she felt there was no more moving on. Her heart filled with impatience. It was hard to breathe. Her arms were heavy, overcrowded. "Oh," she whispered to herself, "I'll die. I'll die."
But they continued to walk. The man's silences, his ominous reserves, his sagacious noddings had excited her. She felt angry with him. He had called for her a half dozen times in the last two months. They had met by accident in a book store. A clerk had introduced them. He called and they went for walks. But he said nothing. Once he had told her she was beautiful. Another time he had mentioned, as if it were a casual thing, that she was the sort of girl to whom he would like to make a gift. But of what, he didn't know. Some gift worthy, he said. She had been frightened of him at first. But gradually as she grew accustomed to his strange manners, his bristling silences, she became impatient, angry.
He stopped.
"I'll go this way," he announced. "Good-night."
He stood looking at her for a long minute and then turning, walked away. She watched him but he didn't look back. She walked to the house alone.
Her thoughts now were clear. He was a man who didn't want her but was looking for something of which she was a part. He never tried to touch her. He never said, "I love you," to her. But he did love. She knew that. He called it by other names and misunderstood himself. And he might go on that way till he died, misunderstanding himself. To be near her thrilled him. She remembered how he became taut, immobile, sitting on the bench. His arms quivered. Yet he never tried to embrace her.
She thought about this as she walked to her home. Would he ever embrace her? She knew about his silences. She could even feel how he suffered inside because something was urging him that had no direction. It was this life in him that lured her. It stirred her senses.