“Is it wise my being up here with John, alone? No, I’m afraid not but that’s the way it is.” Her voice was hard and her back which was turned to me grew stiff, her movements with the fire shovel angry and abrupt.
“People will use it against both of you. It may hurt him, and all of us.”
She turned suddenly, her face flushed. “I can’t help it, Gene. I swear I can’t. I’ve tried to keep away. I almost flew East with Clarissa but when he asked me to join him here, I did. I couldn’t leave him.”
“Will marriage be a part of the new order?”
“Don’t joke.” She sat down angrily in a noise of skirts crumpling. “Cave must never marry. Besides it’s ... it isn’t like that.”
“Really? I must confess I ...”
“Thought we were having an affair? Well, it’s not true.” The rigidity left her as suddenly as it had possessed her. She grew visibly passive, even helpless, in the worn upholstered chair, her eyes on me, the anger gone and only weakness left. “What can I do?” It was a cry from the heart ... all the more touching because, obviously, she had not intended to tell me this. She’d turned to me because there was no one else to whom she could talk.
“You ... love him?” That word which whenever I spoke it in those days always stuck in my throat like a diminutive sob.
“More, more,” she said distractedly. “But I can’t do anything or be anything. He’s complete. He doesn’t need anyone. He doesn’t want me except as ... a companion, and advisor like you or Paul ... it’s all the same to him.”
“I don’t see that it’s hopeless.”