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directly at him, had hit at the base of the building on the corner where they had usually met. The building and those near it had tumbled into the street. A bus stood half engulfed by the torrent of stone. The street was hazy with cement dust held in lazy suspension. Near the crest of the wave of stone by the bus protruded, horribly and ludicrously, a pair of naked, unmarked legs.
    The dead lay smashed, and the wounded lay bleating. Now he could hear the other sounds of the city, the constant daytime roar. And he heard sirens, close by and coming closer. He saw flames begin in what was left standing of the big building.
    He moved slowly and felt he was in a dream. This was the dramatic ending. This was inevitable, and it had been the result of his refusal to say last night what he should have said, and what she did not expect him to say. He knew the other portions of the script. It might be the ludicrous beret he would find.
    There were so many dearnesses, now gone. From the small of her back to cleft of buttocks, the patch of palest down. A time of staring at a distance of inches at one gray eye until in semi-hypnosis, the whole world became one great gray eye, pupil like oiled and polished obsidian, and tiny flecks of tan and green pigmentation very near the pupil. Wide separation of breasts, so that in nakedness there was a heroic flavor to her stance, a reminiscence of the Greeks. Color of nipples—neither pink nor coral nor orange nor brown—but a special tawny shade of their own, without name. The one crooked tooth, this one here on the bottom, turned so that in one kiss too harsh it had made a cut on the underside of her lip. Tiny star-shaped scar on the knuckle of the little finger of her left hand, souvenir of a boy in Long Melford, a buck-toothed boy with what she had termed “a lewd and carroty smile.”
    He knew how she lifted her head when you reached to light her cigarette, how, after putting a shilling in the geyser for the privilege of sitting in the great stone tub in four inches of tepid water, she would come in and scrub with marvelous energies and sigh and say, “Oh, you have such a lovely, lovely back, my dearest.”
    “Leave some hide on it.”
    How she held a teacup in both hands, and rather than looking coy or consciously childlike, it had suited her. How she felt sternly disapproving of her own toes. “They’re rather nasty, actually. Poor bent, pinched little things, always crouching in the ends of boots.”
    How once she had come up behind him and, catching him entirely by surprise, had locked her arms around him, around his middle and lifted him completely off the floor, all hundred and seventy pounds, holding him for poised moments after his whoop of surprise, then dropping him back on his feet. He turned and she, flushed with exertion, tapped herself on the chest and said, “Observe, you have a husky peasant wench, suited for heavy duty.”
    How she became grouchy and miserable with a cold, assorry for herself as a wet cat. How she had read aloud to him as he lay stretched on the floor, her voice rising and the words coming faster as she came to the exciting parts.
    And she had known him as well as he had known her. All hopes, fears, desires, irritations, affectations. She had known him physically. He had felt ashamed of the burn scars, felt uncomfortable about the shiny redness and the puckered places. She had noticed his rather clumsy efforts to keep them out of sight. Finally she had made him tell her precisely how he had gotten them. He told her in all detail and tried to explain to her just how he had changed during the weeks in hospital. From the look of her eyes, tears had been close when she told him to stretch out on the bed, face down. The light was strong enough. She had run her finger-tips lightly, caressingly, over the tight hairless reddened skin, and said, “And you thought this would put me off. This! Actually, Craig, you are sometimes such a fool.”
    Now he walked,