"Don't be absurd." He joked uncomfortably.
But she would not look at him.
He walked out on tiptoe as though he thought her asleep.
When she knew he was gone she began to cry, and, keeping her eyes closed, moved her head from side to side and struck into the pillows with her fist.
Laurence did not go home to dinner, but remained working at the laboratory until after midnight. As he walked home the city streets, washed thinly with light, were yet thronged. His mind was sharply intent on itself. It was like the keel of a ship, parting the swarming life before it.
But as he drew nearer the place where Winnie was his heart strained. He felt suffocated. There were women standing in doorways. Their shadows wove the darkness together and drew it tight about his heart. He hated his work but the doing of it gave him relief, for it could not enter him.
The glow from a street lamp fell on his own house—purple-red walls that held Winnie. The big gilt figures on the transom above the door glistened on the glass that gave back a blank reflection of the light. He put in his latch key. The door, swinging away from him, seemed drawn inward with the pull of the darkness.
It shut ponderously behind him. He hesitated a moment, resisting some unknown inevitability. It was very still in the dark.
Only the stairs were half revealed by the pallor of the light that came in high up from the street.