"I thought you wouldn't come," he answered. He did not understand her:
she gave no sign of pleading or withdrawal: he was sure she had no fear,
and another certainty was born in him.

"I can trust you," he said with a sigh of peace.

"Yes."

"I thought you wouldn't come," he said again.

"But I'm here, you see."

His voice rose. "I'd have got in."

"It would have been quite easy."

"Weren't you afraid?" he asked, and he found a memory of Miriam in her
laughter. "No, I wasn't afraid."

"But you're going to marry me."

"That was the bargain."

Her passivity angered him. This dignity of submission put him in the
wrong. She seemed to be waiting patiently and without anxiety for her
release. Why should he give it? How could he give it? Would he deny God
in God's own presence?

He turned to look at her, and as they stood side by side, a foot of
earth between them, he could almost hear her breathing. Her
smoothly-banded hair and the clear line of brow and nose and chin mocked
him with their calm. He spoke loudly, but his voice dropped as the star
to which he likened her might shoot across the heavens and disappear.

"You make me think--of stars," he said.

Again she looked upward, and her tilted face was like a waning moon.
"There are no stars tonight. I must go in."

"But--tomorrow?" he said.

"Tomorrow?"

"I shall see you tomorrow?"

The repetition of the word gave her its meaning. She took the letter
from her belt and held it out to him.

"No, no," he said.

"Won't you have it posted for me?"

"I--I thought it was for me," he stammered. "Yes, I'll have it posted."

"Will it go early?" she asked earnestly.

"I'll take it down tonight."

"Oh, there's no need of that."

"I'd like to do it," and touching his forehead with a childish gesture,
he added, "I couldn't sleep."

"It's morning already," Helen said.

He looked eastward. "Hours of darkness yet."

"And you'll go down the road and back, before it's light. You needn't,
George."

"I want to think of you," he answered simply, turning the letter in his
hands.

She moved to the door and stood against it. "George--" she said. She had
an impulse to tell him that his bargain was useless to him because she
was a woman no longer. She had been changed from living flesh and blood
to something more impalpable than air. She had promised to marry him,
and she remained indifferent because, being no woman, she could not
suffer a woman's pain; becaus