After the Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

completion, they lay watching the rain slanting across the gray window.
    “How it rained the day we met,” Hy murmured.
    His neck was soft to her lips. She wanted to lie like this, never to move, to be here for all time, to be one with him forever. A tremulous swell of emotion filled her breast; a gladness and a tenderness that she had never known before. She felt her heart's strong rhythm.
    In the hall, loud voices rang and a door was rudely slammed.
    “What a dump this is,” Gerald complained.
    “I don't mind it. We're both here. Isn't that enough?”
    “No. We deserve better.”
    A vague sadness was thickening her throat with thelump that precedes tears. From somewhere came the memory of a saying:
After coitus, man is sad
. Why should that be? Is it fear that the rapture will never come again? The sensation that we have when we hear immortal music? Is it the feel of a June day, flawless and once gone, gone forever? Or the fear that he does not love her as she loves him? She clung so tightly to him that he felt her wet eyelids on his shoulder.
    “I don't know….”
    “I was only teasing before, when I pretended not to believe in love at first sight,” he said.
    “Tell me what you love about me.”
    “I love your grave charm, your spirit, your talent, your voice, your hot blood, everything. Hyacinth, darling, you worry too much.”
    She said unexpectedly, even surprising herself, “We must be completely honest with each other, you know.”
    “Well, aren't we? I don't understand.”
    “Sometimes I've hesitated to say—some things are not easy to say…. My parents would like to know you better…. We are seeing so much of each other.”
    In the semidarkness on the bed, his smile was invisible, but she heard it in his voice. And she sat up, turned on the light, and looked at him anxiously.
    “You're not angry?”
    “No, no, of course not. They're only behaving like parents. Parents of daughters.”
    “Dad thinks it's great that you're going to be a doctor. As a chemist, a scientist, he appreciates doctors. And he really likes you besides.”
    “I know he does. And I know your mother doesn't.”
    Hyacinth felt the prickle of heat in her cheeks. “Oh, she—actually, we haven't discussed you. To begin with, she's not as talkative as Dad is, so she and I—I don't mean that she and I don't get along, but what I'm trying to say is that she can be very positive, and I'm rather stubborn. I know I am, so I sometimes avoid getting into discussions—”
    She had digressed from the subject. She was inexcusably clumsy, and she stopped just as Gerald put his hand up to stop her.
    “What you are trying to tell me, very tactfully, is that I should not be hurt when I don't get a hearty welcome from her. I understand. But I've known almost from the very first that she does not approve of me.”
    “I had no idea. I never thought—”
    “You said we should be honest with each other, didn't you?”
    “Yes, but—what happened? What did she say?”
    “She didn't say anything. She has an expressive face, and I read people rather well. A doctor should.”
    “I'm sorry. Oh darling, I'm sorry! She just doesn't know you, that's all it is. She'll be the first to admit she's wrong. She's very fair that way.”
    “If you'll tell me what she objects to, I can try to change it.”
    How could she tell him what Francine had really said? Not able to look him in the face, she made a halfhearted attempt. “She thinks you will not stay with me, that I should not depend upon you.”
    “But of course that's crazy. I shall simply have to disprove her.”
    “You're sure you aren't angry?”
    “I'm sure.”
    The whole business, this ugly suspicion, was a humiliation for both of them. She had been reckless to bring the subject up at all. And now, from head to foot, her body burned with the shame of it.
    “Don't look so miserable, Hy. Come here and see yourself.”
    In the bathroom before the full-length mirror, they stood naked