She sat quietly and waited for him. He came over, seeming glad to see her, and slouched into a chair. “I wondered if I’d find you here,” he said.
“I wondered if you’d come!” she said. She was astonished to find in herself no emotion except that of being glad that he had come—simply that.
“Last night,” he said, “I wanted to come to see you. And I was afraid to, I guess. Because of things I didn’t want to tell you about—that I thought you wouldn’t understand.”
The table, that place dedicated to the telling of impossible truths, still had for them its old magic. “Last night,” she said, smiling ruefully, “I set the alarm clock to go off at midnight.... If you didn’t come by then, I was going to forget you.”
“And I didn’t come,” he said.
“No.... I waited till the clock went off. I said that if you came before that I would forgive you everything—anything.”
“How could I come?” he asked. “Before one can be forgiven, one must be ashamed. And I wasn’t ashamed. I’m not now.”
“Why should you be?” she asked.
“But you don’t know,” he said. “Or do you? Have you seen Phyllis?”
“Phyllis? No!”