Her face was pale and drawn; her smile was as abstract as the mystery on
the lips of the Mona Lisa. She laid a hand on the suitcase.

"We had our first quarrel over it, remember? We went to Puerto Rico for
that week and I wanted to use mine but you said, 'Goddamn it, if you're
ashamed of my suitcase you're ashamed of me, so the hell with it.'"

"I remember."

He sat down beside her, lit a cigarette, and then dropped it on the
floor and stepped on it. They both looked straight ahead.

"Take me with you, Frank."

"That's impossible."

"I know, but take me with you."

"There will be no money. I'll live in a stuffy room somewhere."

"What difference does that make? Take me."

"You have your job. You're on the way up. It would be unthinkable."

"I don't have any job. I quit. I was halfway through a piece of
copy--very important copy--and I got up and walked into Mr. Frankel's
office. I said, 'Mr. Frankel, it's been very nice working for you. I
appreciate all you've done but I'm leaving now. The pencils are all
sharpened on my desk and the next girl can have the new leather-bound
address book in the lower right hand drawer that I bought but never
used! That was a silly thing to say, wasn't it?"

"I suppose so."

"And the way I phrased it. I actually said I'd bought the lower right
hand drawer and hadn't used it--take me with you, Frank."

"Rhoda, I was so wrong in--"

"_I_ was wrong, Frank. I was trying to mold you into my way of life. I
wanted you, but only as a part of my own eager little world. I had money
so I furnished my apartment. I put this here and that there, and hung a
toothbrush over the sink as necessarily functional, and then I decided I
needed a man in the same way and so I picked you.

"But I found out that the man in the bed was the most important part of
it and without him there wasn't anything. Without him I didn't want any
of the other. Now ... I want to be a wife. A wife is a person who goes
where her husband goes and lives where he lives and shares what he has.
You don't barter and trade--this for that--give up this part to get
that. You give up everything and yet it isn't like that at all because
you're really getting everything."

He took out another cigarette.

"Oh, Frank, it's all mixed up and I'm going to cry, I think."

"It's not mixed up at all," he said quietly. He turned to look at her,
half frowning, half smiling. "Now why in the hell couldn't you have
given me a little