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so upset him that he could do nothing that evening. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that she was writing to him, or contemplating writing to him, to end it. He could imagine the exact steps by which she might have come to the decision: after the first brief period of missing him, must have come a realization that she could do without him when she was occupied with her job and her friends in Paris, as he knew she must be. Second, the reality of the circumstances that he was in America and she in Europe might have put her off. But above all, perhaps, the fact that she had discovered she didn’t really love him. This at least must be true, because people simply didn’t neglect for so long to write to people they cared about.
    Abruptly he stood up, staring at the clock, facing it like a thing he fought. 8:17 p.m., September 15th. He bore its whole weight upon his tense body and his clenched hands. Twenty-five days, so many hours, so many minutes, since his first letter. . . . His mind slid from under the weight and fastened on the girl in Scranton. He felt he owed her a reply. He read her letter over again, more carefully, sentimentally lingering over a phrase here and there, as if he cared profoundly about her hopeless and dangling love, almost as if it were his own love. Here was someone who pled with him to tell her a time and place of meeting. Ardent, eager, a captive of herself only, she was a bird poised to fly. Suddenly, he went to the telephone and dictated a telegram:
    Meet me Grand Central Terminal Lexington side Friday 6 p.m. Love, R.
    Friday was the day after tomorrow.
    Thursday there was still no letter, no letter from Rosalind, and now he had not the courage or perhaps the physical energy to imagineanything about her. There was only his love inside him, undiminished, and heavy as a rock. As soon as he got up Friday morning, he thought of the girl in Scranton. She would be getting up this morning and packing her bag, or if she went to work at all, would move in a dreamworld of Dusenberry all the day.
    When he went downstairs, he saw the red and blue border of an airmail envelope in his box, and felt a slow, almost painful shock. He opened the box and dragged the long flimsy envelope out, his hands shaking, dropping his keys at his feet. The letter was only about fifteen typewritten lines.
Don,
Terribly sorry to have waited so long to answer your letter, but it’s been one thing after another here. Only today got settled enough to begin work. Was delayed in Rome first of all, and getting the apartment organized here has been hellish because of strikes of electricians and whatnot.
You are an angel, Don, I know that and I won’t forget it. I won’t forget our days on the Côte either. But darling, I can’t see myself changing my life radically and abruptly either to marry here or anywhere. I can’t possibly get to the States Christmas, things are too busy here, and why should you uproot yourself from New York? Maybe by Christmas, maybe by the time you get this, your feelings will have changed a bit.
But will you write me again? And not let this make you unhappy? And can we see each other again some time? Maybe unexpectedly and wonderfully as it was in Juan-les-Pins?
    Rosalind
    He stuffed the letter into his pocket and plunged out of the door. His thoughts were a chaos, signals of a mortal distress, cries of a silent death, the confused orders of a routed army to rally itself before it was too late, not to give up, not to die.
    One thought came through fairly clearly: he had frightened her. His stupid, unrestrained avowal, his torrent of plans had positively turned her against him. If he had said only half as much, she would have known how much he loved her. But he had been specific. He had said, “Darling, I adore you. Can you come to New York over Christmas? If not, I can fly to Paris. I want to marry you. If you prefer to live in Europe, I’ll arrange to live there, too. I can so easily