Chapter IV

Ralph Gilmore could not escape from the nightmare. There was no escape anywhere, for his world had become star-crossed with dark patterns of betrayal and outrage that hid the light of the sun and turned the still wet, slippery pavement beneath his feet into a quagmire. He experienced a sinking sensation, a hollowness at the pit of his stomach which forced him to take refuge in his room and even there he could find no peace.

It was impossible to avoid remembering, impossible to keep the tormenting events of the past two weeks from screeching, roaring, clattering back into his mind like an onrushing subway train, its red lights ablaze. A jostling on the platform, a violent shove and he was lying directly in the path of the train, glued to the rails by blind terror. Only--the rush of returning memories was worse than that, much worse. If it had been merely physical, if it had been merely something that could crush and destroy him he might have welcomed it. But there was no escape from a horror of the mind, unless drink or drugs could be used as an anodyne and something deep in his nature prevented him from taking that dangerous road to forgetfulness.

Sleep was out of the question. When he threw himself down and shut his eyes the torment had become worse, the memory pictures more unendurable.

Unendurable, torturing now--like salt on raw wounds--but there had been moments when some of them had seemed very precious, worth dying for, worth ... say it, bring it out into the open ... worth killing for. But wasn't that an insane way of looking at it? The scales never came down completely, or balanced completely on one side or the other. There had to be some joy in the most agonizing of memories. Otherwise a man would never go on, would never wade deeper into a dark morass of guilt and self-torment. Knowing himself to be betrayed, but still going on, putting himself beyond the pale. There had to be a glittering prize shining in the darkness, beckoning, offering moments of respite--offering far more than that. Wild joy, forbidden pleasures, the mind-beguiling beauty of Medusa before her snake-wreathed face turned her victims to stone.

It was a nightmare now, engulfing him, making him want to die. But it hadn't been that way at the start. It had started glowingly, a new way of life opening up, a bright prospect of fulfillment stretching out before him with nothing at all to mar it.

There was nothing depressing or unwelcome about the acclaim of the really important critics, the substantial literary recognition he'd only pretended to despise in moments of immature cynicism. And it was not tormenting even now to go back and dwell on all the financial rewards which were showered on brilliant young novelists who were both serious and widely popular writers--rewards which had been almost within his grasp.

Success had not been a prospect reserved for the future alone--a prospect veiled in uncertainty that might not materialize for months or years, or turn out, in the end, to have been completely illusionary. Success had swept so close that it had taken on an aspect of immediacy. He had felt its invisible pulse-beats all about him, had glimpsed the bright fluttering of its wings. And with it had come an undreamed of happiness, something he'd hardly dared to hope for.

A woman he could worship, and adore and build a shrine around. A woman at the center of his life--not just at the periphery. A woman who did not think him awkward and self-conscious and ridiculously helpless in a practical way. A woman who knew what artists, writers, musicians--all creative people--were really like. A woman who didn't want to mother him, because she knew he had no real need to be mothered, that he had great inner strength and needed only to be understood and accepted for the kind of person he was.

He could not avoid asking himself, even now, just how much finding out the truth about her had changed him. Was he still the same person, thinking the same thoughts, capable of acting toward others in the same way? Or was he a different person entirely, thirty years older than the twenty-five years which made him, in the eyes of the world, still little more than a boy by actual year-count.

He felt incredibly old and drained--a man of seventy couldn't have felt any older. But no man of seventy could have been torn as he was by emotions so deeply rooted in despair. Both explosive violence and its tormenting aftermath of black despair could only be experienced in their full intensity by the young. In old age such emotions could still be destructive to body and mind, but never in quite so terrible a way.

He had a sudden, almost uncontrollable impulse to pick up the typewriter which had helped to betray him and hurl it with violence to the floor. But instead he stood rigid, unmoving, before the room's one small window, with its bleak, brick-wall outlook until time became fluid, backward-sweeping, and the present less real than a certain morning, almost three weeks before, when she had returned the manuscript he'd sent her with words of glowing praise, and a suggestion that he make a few minor changes which did not distress him at all.

"One of those big, brown envelopes, Ralph. Looks like another one of your stories came back. Ralph, you awake? Want me to open it and tell you--like you asked me to do the last time? You said it might bring you luck. It sure sounded silly to me. You can't change what's in a letter after it's been mailed, silly. But I'll open it if you want me to."

The knocking which had preceded the voice had been loud, insistent. It had continued for ten full seconds, but curiously enough, it was the voice itself which awakened him, even though he could not distinguish the words and their significance was completely lost on him.

He sighed and rolled over on his side, drawing the sheets up more tightly about his naked shoulders. Then, abruptly and almost instantly, he cursed under his breath and threw the sheets back, reviling himself for his lack of self-discipline in succumbing to drowsiness at ten in the morning.

He'd overslept again, which was unusual for him. He was at his best right after breakfast, when the typewriter keys seemed to come to life under his fingers and the beautiful words rushed pell-mell across a virgin sheet of white bond stationery--so fast that the keys sometimes interlocked, and caused an infuriating delay which he could do nothing about.

Orange juice, scrambled eggs and buttered toast, followed by three cups of strong black coffee, could work wonders right after breakfast. By noon he often found himself slowing down just a little. But he increased his writing tempo again right after lunch and continued on briskly, as a rule, until he called it a day at four in the afternoon. He had never been a burner of the midnight oil--the phrase had an old-fashioned but Parisian ring which he somehow liked--not even in college when he'd had to cram a hell of a lot to bluff his way through sessions of trig and calculus which he violently disliked. A writer could be independent, at least, completely himself, choose his own hours of work--

The knocking came again, louder this time, putting an abrupt end to his thoughts.

"Wait a minute!" he called out. "I just got up. For Pete's sake, you little dope, give me a chance to put something on."

"How did you know it was me, Ralph?"

"No one else would make such a racket!" he called back.

"I'm sorry, lover boy. I just thought--"

"Stop it, will you? What kind of a reputation are you trying to pin on me? Please, Nora, show some sense. I've got a busy day ahead of me."

He crossed the room, whipped a pair of gray doeskin slacks from the back of a chair, gathered up his socks from under the bed, kicked off his slippers and sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling on socks and trousers with awkward twistings-about.

When he went to the open door he was also wearing a shirt.

It never ceased to amaze him how closely life paralleled fiction--even the most realistic, hard-boiled kind of fiction, the Hemingway sort of thing. A struggling young writer and the landlady's daughter--brother, it sure could be made to fit. Anywhere, any place, any time, which meant, of course, that the hard-boiled writers were basically incurable romantics who took their cue from the way life always has of duplicating romantic patterns all over the place--every hour of every day and night. Especially every night.

Not that he'd slept with her or wanted to particularly. She was a forlorn, pathetic, over-effusive, well-meaning girl of nineteen, who could not speak grammatically for more than three sentences at a stretch, but whose syntax was colorful enough at times to arouse the interest of most protective males. A man with a Pygmalian complex would have been instantly drawn to her, would have seen tremendous possibilities in her.

"_Darling, I'll make you over completely. You don't realize what tenderness, affection, understanding can do. You're a rare and unusual woman, but you've never had a chance to develop._"

Perhaps he should have felt that way himself. But somehow he couldn't. She just wasn't physically attractive enough. Not bad looking, exactly, and a beauty parlor could have done wonders for her. But he had other things on his mind--at least for the moment.

She stood facing him in the doorway, looking more forlorn than usual, as if she regretted the slightly mocking way she'd called out to him through the door, calling him "silly" and all that--he had been too drowsy to take in the words, but he had an obscure feeling that she'd said something she was now regretting and her first words made him sure of it.

"I guess this story just wasn't liked by one of those stupid editors you're always saying don't know their--it's a word I don't like to use--from a hole in the ground. Do you want me to open it for you?"

"No, I'll open it," he said. He took the large, bulky envelope from her, and started to close the door, half-blocking the aperture with his body, but she squeezed past him into the room.

She crossed the room with a slow, self-conscious undulation of her hips and sat down on the edge of his bed. He felt a sudden stab of compassion for her. She was doing her pathetic best to entice him and he was in no mood to be enticed.

The bulky envelope had given him a jolt. It wasn't the worst jolt he'd ever experienced--he'd sold fifteen stories to the small-circulation quality magazines and two to the slicks, and you had to expect rejections now and then--but he had counted heavily on this particular story going over big.

It was an unusual story, a powerful story. He'd put virtually everything he had into it. And now--it had been slammed, thrown back in his face, with probably a miserable, printed rejection slip. Editors just didn't give a damn how much they hurt you--or insulted you. Quite famous authors occasionally got printed rejection slips. He knew that, but it didn't make the outrage even slightly more palatable or easy to accept.

He looked at the neat, printed address--Ralph Gilmore, 559 West 38th Street, New York City--and an angry flush mounted to his cheekbones. Not typewritten--_printed_--as if some incredible new machine had been used to add insult to injury.

He tore the envelope open and hesitated for an instant before removing its contents. What if he had been jumping to an unjust conclusion? He had no absolute assurance that the envelope contained a rejection slip. Quite possibly the editor had written him a long and sympathetic letter, expressing sincere regrets.

No ... that would have been worse. A hundred times worse. The manuscript had been returned to him, so obviously it had been rejected. What the hell did he care about how sorry the editor might feel about it?

Nora was staring at him with a look of bewildered concern on her face, as if she didn't quite know what it was all about, but could tell from the way he was glaring at the envelope that he had no intention of tossing it on the typewriter table, crossing to the bed and putting an arm about her waist. Not immediately, anyway, and she'd hoped it might happen this time, that he might turn to her for comfort at least. Three bulky envelopes in a week, and she knew how much rejections upset him. Writers were different from other people and probably most of them were a little crazy.

She'd dreamed about it and hoped for it, but how could she make it happen when he was so strange, so different, from anyone she'd ever known. The men she'd known had made it plain just what they'd expected from her in return for taking her out, making her feel important, a somebody. If she hadn't liked them she wouldn't have given them anything in return--she could be a real little bitch at times, why deny it--but she _had_ liked them, she had, she had! All except that Duncan worm she could have killed and that piece of--

She didn't say the word, even to herself. He didn't like that kind of coarseness, got upset whenever she came right out and said what she knew to be true. Not in a woman anyway. He could use worse language himself, could go way beyond anything you'd hear in a bar unless you were standing close to someone who mistook you for a hustler and was too drunk to tell the difference even when you moved quickly away from him.

She wanted to please him--God help her, she did want to. She couldn't explain it, because there was nothing so wonderful about him, even if he was a writer. But if he really wanted her, if he did or said something to make her sure, she'd go all the way with him. She'd have to be sure, because she had to like a man terribly, to worry about him and think about him and want to buy him things--a new scarf, a necktie, no matter how many neckties he had or how much money he spent on her--and be jealous of him and swear she'd kill any other woman who looked at him twice ... she had to love him that much and that terribly to go to bed with him.

All right, he wasn't the first one. There had been ... four others. But she'd never ... cared for ... anyone quite so much and if he was too blind to see it, or thought the stories he was always writing and getting returned were more important than a woman in bed with him, a woman who knew how to make him forget everything but the warm, clinging sweetness of....

All right, those were his words. Words from one of his crazy manuscripts. She'd copied them down and read them more than once, because they'd excited her. But that didn't mean she didn't feel that way herself. She couldn't use fancy words, maybe, but she knew what it meant to a man to hold a woman close, and pass his hands up and down over the smooth flesh of her shoulders and fondle her breasts.... And she knew what it meant to a woman.

Poetry too. He wrote poetry. "There's nothing in it," he'd said. "A great poet can starve to death, even quicker than an important novelist can. I won't be victimized to that extent. Read these if you want to--I don't give a damn about them. I probably won't write another poem in the next twenty years."

It didn't make much sense to her. If he was so worried about starving to death why couldn't he go out and get a job in a bakery?

She watched him closely as he tore open the envelope, quite sure that he would go into a rage when he read the letter attached to his story. It had happened ten or twelve times before, when she'd brought him his mail--either a letter or a printed slip which he'd tossed at her as if he expected her to become angry too.

What was there to be angry about? If he couldn't write well enough to get his stories taken by the magazines, what was to prevent him from going out and getting a paying job?

She had expected him to be angry, and felt a little let down, disappointed even, when she saw that he was reading the letter with only a slight frown on his face.

The frown vanished before he stopped reading. It changed to a smile and then, quite suddenly, he was laughing, yelling, waltzing around the room like a real gone beat. She got up, a little frightened, and stood staring at him, unable to believe her eyes.

"It's accepted," he shouted, "Believe it or not, it's accepted and it's going to be published. A female editor who knows strong writing when she sees it--who isn't scared off by the kind of candor that goes a little beyond Faulkner but is too genuine to ignore. And to think that I used to say unkind things about female editors!"

"You mean--the story's sold and you're going to get paid for it?" she asked, a stunned incredulity in her eyes.

"Of course it will be paid for," he said. "It's one of the biggest magazine groups in the country. Their check is as good as a signed order from the Secretary of the Treasury, for sixteen hundred dollars from the United States mint."

"Gee--that's wonderful."

"Wonderful isn't the word for it. I don't give a damn about the dough. What's the matter with you anyway ... haven't I tried to explain? Oh, sure, the dough means a little something to me. I wouldn't be human if it didn't. But the important thing is the story is going to be published. It's the best thing I've ever done--tremendous writing, really tremendous writing. I'm not being egoistical, I have very high standards. I know precisely what literary distinction is and when I've achieved it--quite by accident perhaps, once in a blue moon--but I've written enough and torn up enough manuscripts and suffered enough to know. This is a great story. It will knock the critics' eyes out."

"I guess I don't--"

"Don't apologize, don't say a word. It's a little too much for me at the moment, too. Did I ever tell you that you're beautiful?"

"No," she said. "You've never told me that. And I don't think I am."

"But you are. How would you like to have dinner with me tonight? We'll celebrate. We'll really kick over the traces."

"Ralph, I don't know. You've never asked me before. How come you've never asked me before?"

The "how come" grated on him, but he did his best not to look aggrieved.

"It's because I've been too busy--and too worried," he said. "You don't know what a writer goes through--eight, ten, twelve hours a day. The creative agony does something to you--makes you feel either detached, way off in the clouds somewhere or so nervously keyed up that you can't take down-to-earth realities in your stride. You forget things, make a fool of yourself, miss priceless opportunities. Like ... telling you how beautiful you are and how much it would mean to me if you'd say yes ... yes ... yes. You will have dinner with me."

Her surrender was complete, because it had already been decided upon. But it was the kind of surrender he hadn't expected, hadn't really wanted at all. It was physical and immediate and it appalled him, brought with it a commitment he hadn't planned on, an involvement he might have welcomed in a moment of desperation, when the sex hunger was a gnawing ache in him and loneliness was a gnawing ache, and a woman--any woman--would have been better than the gross mental images no sex-starved man can avoid conjuring up at times. But he wasn't desperate now, he'd been thrown a lifeline, and all the east was gold, bathed in the bright rays of an unexpected sunrise.

"Say what you just said again," she said. "Tell me I'm beautiful, even if we both know it's a lie. Say anything you want ... so long as you really need me, and we're not kidding each other about that part of it. Tell me I'm just a crazy kid, bitten by some kind of bug and I won't mind at all. Say I'm well-stacked even if I'm not beautiful, as if you were talking to someone about a girl you didn't respect too much. I won't care if you really need me, and do respect me, deep down...."

She was in his arms before he could say a word in reply, was straining against him, running her fingers through his hair, opening her lips and almost forcing him to kiss her with the kind of ardor it would have been impossible for him to wholly avoid. He suddenly realized that all she was wearing was a skirt and blouse, that both garments were so thin he could feel the texture of her skin through the cloth.

He could feel more than just the texture of her skin. Every movement of her body, every impassioned ripple of her flesh, increased the intimacy of her embrace and made him lose his head completely.

It was over almost before it had begun and although it had been sudden and maddening, tempting them both to abandon all restraint, he had found the strength to gently but firmly grasp her by the wrists and prevent her complete surrender. He felt cheated, tortured for an instant and then a wave of relief swept over him, because what had almost happened would have been a very serious commitment and he was not the kind of man who could take complete physical intimacy lightly.

Casual love-making was impossible for him. It never failed to stir him to the depths, to awaken impulses of loyalty and devotion, to place him under an obligation. He was perhaps different from the general run of males, but if he had gone out on the street and picked up some pathetic little prostitute and gone home with her the relationship would not have been entirely sordid and physical.

He sat now on the edge of the bed as if turned to stone, watching her get up with shining eyes and a deep flush on her face, cross the room to the door and go out, closing the door very softly behind her. He'd known what she was thinking. Next time it will be completely wonderful and he won't feel awkward and embarrassed afterwards and not know what to say.

She'd be thinking that, but it wouldn't be the truth. He had no intention of letting it happen again, of going even as far as he had before he'd found the strength to save himself from absolute disaster.

A moment or two before, with the returned manuscript still unopened in his hand, he'd had a momentary impulse to let himself go and accept the consequences, even if they would have been as binding in his scale of values as a marriage ceremony. He could never have walked out and left her--unless love died and they both agreed that the relationship had deteriorated and ceased to be important.

But all that was changed now. He'd opened the envelope and the letter had changed the world for him and if she hadn't thrown her arms around him and kissed him so passionately when he'd merely asked her for a dinner date in a moment of unreasoning exaltation....

It had been a physical response solely, the kind of response which any normal male with the blood warm in his veins would have been unable to exercise complete and instant control over, no matter how great his strength of will. It had been instinctive, the touching off of sex's trigger-mechanism in his brain, the automatic arousal which yielding softness, sweetness, femininity in all of its rapturous abandonment made inevitable in the male.

There was no reason for him to reproach himself or feel guilty about it. If for a moment he'd abandoned all restraint, carried her to the bed, and seared her lips with kisses which she had welcomed, demanded, insisted upon--had not the tightening of her arms, the almost convulsive straining of her body against him proved that she had been equally aroused?--if for a moment he'd become almost savagely primitive in his love-making, was that something which called for sackcloth and ashes and the covering of his head, as if he were a grieving widow instead of the completely normal, robustly endowed man he knew himself to be?

Hardly. Since she had been so completely eager and willing the cynical and unjust could brand his restraint as amusing if they wished and regard him as something of a fool. But he had his own standards and preferred to maintain them. An old maxim came almost unbidden into his mind. "They say what they say--let them say."

For a moment the exaltation he'd felt on reading the letter had been scattered to the winds, like dust particles in a rising gale or dust in a city apartment blown in all directions by a draft from an open window, or swept under the bed by an untidy housekeeper. And it had been the most precious kind of dust--a fine sprinkling of gold, each particle brightly shining.

There was no one with a broom who could sweep it into view again, but it was coming back now by itself, creeping slowly back, and he could feel the splendor of it beginning to suffuse him. In a moment, if he just remained quietly seated on the edge of the bed, he could gather up all of the shining particles, and go out and put through a phone call from the drugstore on the corner.

She'd suggested he phone her as soon as he received the letter. Returning a manuscript for minor revisions when it was practically bought and paid for was unusual. But he had a feeling that he had sent the story to a very unusual editor. A woman who did things in her own, independent way, ignoring what was customary and established and rule-of-thumb, but with no sacrifice of efficiency.

Most editors would have kept the manuscript in the office, written him a letter of acceptance, and asked him to call and discuss the changes which would have to be made in it. But she'd sent it right back, assuming, no doubt, that the acceptance would so gratify and stimulate him that he'd sit down immediately and make the most important change while he was keyed up and at his best creatively.

It had probably seemed to her a gamble worth taking. All it had cost the firm was a dollar in postage and there could be no substitute for that kind of emotional stimulation, especially when there were a few pages that the author had perhaps grown cold on, or lost interest in.

It was a strong indication that she understood writers, knew precisely how their minds worked. Most writers, anyway. It wasn't her fault that she had gone slightly astray in his case. Every writer was unique--no two individuals in any creative field were ever exactly alike. For a moment he _had_ been stimulated enough to sit down, and make the most important change without even going out to buy a fresh pack of cigarettes and take a brisk, six-minute walk around the block.

It was just that--he felt too damned good right at the moment to sit down and concentrate. All of the golden dust had been gathered up now and it set up a shining--both inside his mind and outside--so that the whole room seemed filled with a glow that outshone the noonday sun.

Fifteen minutes later he stood in a drugstore phone booth so oppressively over-heated that it would have bothered him, if he had been about to phone a friend who never knew when to hang up. But now he was scarcely aware of the heat and it gave him no concern. Few editors had time to waste in inconsequential talk, and he had no intention of making a bad impression on her by baring the innermost secrets of his life.

That would come later ... if at all. He had a feeling that it would come eventually, because a woman who understood writers as she seemed to do would be unlikely to find that kind of conversation boring.

* * * * *

Everything was happening so fast it took his breath away. The miracle had increased in brightness and now he was sitting in a taxi on his way to Cafe Seventy in the East Sixties.

His phone call had been switched to her office very quickly and her voice had been decisive and a little sharp on the wire. But the instant he'd told her who he was no woman's voice could have taken on more graciousness and charm.

Informal, too. Delightfully ... no, _intimate_ wasn't too presumptuous a word. There had been an unmistakable undercurrent of intimacy in her voice, as if she'd known him for a long time and they shared a secret ... a very precious kind of secret she preferred not to talk about within the four walls of a cold, briskly efficient magazine office.

It had meant, of course, that she was suggesting that they have lunch together, but before he could think of just the right words she herself had done the inviting. She had picked the cafe and the time--"About two ... I'm afraid it has to be a little late...."--and now, in about five more minutes, he would be there.

It was a very warm day and the air felt almost solid enough to cut with a knife. But the high humidity didn't bother him, because a breeze fragrant with springtime scents was blowing through the cab, even though the driver and no one on the streets--no one anywhere except himself--seemed to be aware of it.

When the cab drew into the curb in front of the cafe he added a tip to the fare that dispelled most of the driver's gloom. He got out, walked into the cafe as if he'd just decided while taking a stroll that the place looked all right, and so why should he stop to examine the three-dollar-minimum luncheon menu pasted to the window? He had an almost irrepressible impulse to tip the uniformed doorman too, just for the hell of it.

He saw and recognized her quickly enough, because she'd told him what kind of hat she'd be wearing and there was only one woman in the place that went with the kind of voice he'd heard on the phone.

It came as a distinct shock to him to discover that she wasn't alone. There was a man seated opposite her at the small table she'd chosen--or he had chosen for her--in a softly-lit recess on the left side of the cafe, about half-way to the back.

He disliked the man straight off, without precisely knowing why. He was about forty-five, with slightly graying hair cut rather short, a bland, almost mild-mannered way of smiling and nodding as he talked, and features which were distinctly on the handsome side. He was wearing a tropical worsted suit of expensive weave--the kind of suit you couldn't purchase readymade anywhere for less than a hundred dollars and you knew it was custom-tailored. Three hundred dollars would probably have been a more likely estimate of what the suit had set the man back. He wore a small red carnation in his buttonhole which the July heat had not yet succeeded in wilting.

Ralph became aware suddenly that she had raised her eyes and recognized him. But before he could respond with a nod and smile and draw closer to the table all of the blandness went out of her companion's face. His face hardened and an angry glint came into his eyes. He arose from the table, so angrily and abruptly that he overturned the chair he'd been sitting in.

What he did then was totally outrageous, unheard of. He leaned across the table and slapped Helen Lathrup on the right cheek, putting such force into the blow that the _smack_ was audible to everyone in the cafe.

There was complete silence for an instant; no one moved or spoke. Helen Lathrup sat rigid, an ugly redness suffusing the right side of her face from temple to throat.

Then a woman gasped and a man muttered: "Why doesn't somebody kill the bastard?"

It was exactly what Ralph felt like doing and he made no attempt to control the impulse.

Helen Lathrup's escort had straightened on delivering the blow and was just starting to swing about when Ralph reached him, caught hold of his right arm, making the turn complete, and sent his fist crashing into the man's face.

It was a nose-breaking kind of blow, aimed directly at the bastard's--he was certainly that!--nose and mouth and not at his jaw. Ralph didn't just want to drop him to the floor. He wanted to send him to the hospital.

He thought he heard a cartilage crunch and splinter, but he couldn't be sure.

The man made no attempt to fight back, to defend himself in any way. However much he may have wanted to do so, he was clearly incapable of it.

The blow had stunned him. He swayed for the barest instant, back and forth like a marionette on a wire that had gone suddenly slack, and then his knees gave way, and he crashed to the floor and rolled over on his face.

Ralph stood very still for an instant staring down at him, almost equally stunned but feeling a hot surge of triumph pulsing upward through his chest, rising to his brain, half-intoxicating him.

He was kneeling on the floor at the bastard's side, turning him over, looking with satisfaction at the thin trickle of blood that was running from his mouth, when he felt the tugging.

Helen Lathrup was bending over also, close to Ralph, her breath hot on his face, her fingers biting into his arm, as if she knew that only pain could bring him quickly to his senses.

"We must leave," she breathed. "We _must_. Do you hear what I'm saying? I'm known here--they won't try to stop us. And he won't lodge a complaint. I'm sure of that. _John Darby wouldn't dare--_"

He raised his eyes and saw that she was deathly pale, that even the redness, where the vicious ugly bastard had slapped her, was starting to recede. He could see that it had left a slight welt, and all of his fury returned again for an instant, so that he could scarcely breathe.

She was trembling now and there was a pleading urgency in her eyes. "Hurry, before they feel they'd better send for the police, if only to protect themselves. We don't know how badly he's been hurt and it will take them a minute to find out. They won't try to stop us, I tell you, if we go right now."

In one way, it was like a nightmare that had come upon him in broad daylight, been thrust upon him unexpectedly when he had thought himself fully awake. And in another way, it was an intoxicating kind of trance, filled with sound and fury, but a trance from which he had no desire to escape.

Sitting in a cab at her side, with the sound and the fury behind him, it seemed suddenly that he was in another dimension of time and space, where nothing but miracles could take place. The fact that she was trembling still, her very agitation, seemed to make her more desirable, for it awoke in him protective instincts along with a feeling of adoration.

He had never thought that any woman could be quite so beautiful. He had never dared to hope that he would find himself so intimately involved with a famous editor who was also the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

For he _had_ become intimately involved with her. He had fought another man in a very primitive way as her champion and defender, and it was impossible not to think of that as intimacy. It had brought him as close to her, if only for a moment, as a lover's embrace would have done.

Was not that kind of violence one pathway to intimacy? A murderer was intimate with his victim in a quite terrible way, even when physical love-making was completely absent. This was not that kind of intimacy. But in defending her and trying his best in a moment of savage rage to injure the man who had struck her, hadn't he come close to her in much the same primitively intimate way? The only difference was--he hadn't come close to her with the intention of doing her harm. But the same savage currents had flowed for an instant between them, bringing them very close.

She was sitting so close to him that he could feel the warmth and yielding softness of her body through her thin summer clothes--a softness that was also a firmness, a roundness--and his temples began to pound, and a trip-hammer started up in his loins.

He glanced at her quickly and saw that her eyes were shining in a very strange way. A wild kind of excitement seemed to be stirring in her.

It should have given him warning, should have given him pause. It should have at least flashed across his mind that a woman can become wildly excited in the most primitive of all ways--by just the sight of two men fighting over her, willing and eager to kill for her. And even if one of the two had just struck her brutally and no longer desired her, just the fight alone....

But he did not realize that for many days.

For a fortnight they were together constantly, and his admiration for her had become like a singing flame, his every instinct had whispered that he had found the one perfect woman at last, and that nothing could mar for him the perfection of her body when she came, slender and white and trembling a little, into his arms.

It had not taken him long to discover that wherever Helen Lathrup went--people whispered that she went everywhere, but never in his presence had one of those whispers been heard--she stood out, was the center of all eyes. In a crowd, at concerts and recitals, in smoke-filled Beatnik-patronized expresso restaurants in the Village, on the exclusive, walled-off beaches of fashionable summer resorts there was and could be only one Helen Lathrup.

And when the blow finally came and she refused even to speak to him on the phone, when he surrendered all of his masculine pride and allowed himself to become defenseless and completely at her mercy, he had not at first completely despaired, or turned against her like some sick and humiliated dog backed into a corner and forced to bite at last.

He had gone on begging for her favors, for one more dinner date, one more hour alone with her, one last opportunity, however brief, to prove to her that their quarrels had been needless, and he would find a way to please her still.

He had gone on pleading even when he could no longer deceive himself about her. Tormenting him gave her pleasure and she was not only the most beautiful but the cruelest woman he had ever known.

It was only when she attacked him where he was most vulnerable ... in his work ... it was only when she sneered at the novel she had once praised and returned it to him with blue-pencilings that made him no longer want to go on living ... it was only then that he decided that he could endure no more, and that only her death would set him free.