His voice rose. "I'd have got in."
"It would have been quite easy."
"Weren't you afraid?" he asked, and he found a memory of Miriam in her laughter. "No, I wasn't afraid."
"But you're going to marry me."
"That was the bargain."
Her passivity angered him. This dignity of submission put him in the wrong. She seemed to be waiting patiently and without anxiety for her release. Why should he give it? How could he give it? Would he deny God in God's own presence?
He turned to look at her, and as they stood side by side, a foot of earth between them, he could almost hear her breathing. Her smoothly-banded hair and the clear line of brow and nose and chin mocked him with their calm. He spoke loudly, but his voice dropped as the star to which he likened her might shoot across the heavens and disappear.
"You make me think—of stars," he said.
Again she looked upward, and her tilted face was like a waning moon. "There are no stars tonight. I must go in."
"But—tomorrow?" he said.