"Teas?" she said, "or literary afternoons?"
"They're fine women. Cathy, don't laugh. I hoped you would like it."
"Like it?" She flung out her hands, sensitive, empty palms upwards. "I've just been there! I know what it is like. But I know"—she was sober again—"why, there's nothing for me to do but say yes, is there? I can't say that Buxton offers me no opportunity, except to be a monkey woman, can I?"
"What?"
"Nothing." She doubled a fist against her mouth, and stared at him.
"You've been so sweet these last days." Charles reached for her hand, held it between both of his. "Things were ghastly mixed up, and then we seemed straight again, you and I. You know everything's been wrong since you first took that damned office job. I can't stand it! Our yapping at each other. I hoped you would want to throw it over. I do care about your being happy. Cathy, if you believe, honestly, that it's more important that you should stay here, I'll try to see it that way."
Her hand was reluctant, cold, in the warm, steady pressure of his.
"I can't believe it, alone." The labyrinth shut her in, black, enclosing. "You'd have to believe it, yourself. And you don't."
"It's different, considering the children, too, as well as you and me. What you do, in an office, takes you away from me. What I do, Cathy, that is yours, too, isn't it?"