“Well, if you won’t, I’ll have to be forward.” She closed up the distance. “There! Isn’t that happier?”
“Yes. But what’s the good? We’re in the middle of streets and nearly there now.”
“I was tired,” she said appealingly. “I thought you’d understand.”
It was impossible to resist her. Perhaps she had been tired. Perhaps she had done with him what she would have dared to do with no other man; and what he had mistaken for indifference and distrust had been a reliance on his chivalry.
“I do understand.”
“I wonder.”
Ahead, across the misty greenness of the Park, the troglodyte dwellings of the West Side barricaded the horizon. In some of the windows lights were springing up. It was as though lonely people flashed unnoticed signals to the cold hearts beating in the heavens.
“Desire, why do we try to hurt each other?”
“Do we? I wasn’t trying. I was thinking of something that Fluffy told Horace. She said that men never married the women who said ‘Yes.’ It’s the women who say ‘No’ sweetly that men marry.”
“So you were saying ‘No’ sweetly by keeping quiet.”