"Come on inside. Tell me about your day."
He followed her into the sitting-room. The autoknit stood to one side; she had been making socks, it seemed. The video blared some hideous popular song:
"If I could hold you in my arms, Baby!
and cuddle up and—"
Harker jerked a thumb toward the screen. "Is this the sort of junk you've been watching?"
Lois smiled faintly. "It's a good tranquilizer. I just let the sound bellow out and numb my mind."
He thumbed the off-switch set in the table before the couch, and the singing died away, the image shrank to a spot of tri-colored light and then to nothing at all. His hand sought hers.
He found himself wishing she would get up on her back legs and yowl, just once. It would be good for both of them. But she was so wonderfully patient! She had said nothing, or little, when he had stubbornly defied the national committee and gone ahead with the reform program that could only have ended his political career, and did. She had barely objected when he told her of his new affiliation with the Beller people, and she had said nothing in these past ten days, when the pressure of conflicting cross-currents had kept him bottled up within himself, unloving, cold.
He tried to say something affectionate, something to repay her for the suffering he had caused, the lonely evenings, the tense breakfasts.
But she spoke first. "They still haven't found Senator Thurman, Jim. I heard the nine-thirty newscast. Isn't it terrible, an old man like that disappearing?"