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. . .”
    What an imbecile he had been!
    His mind was already busy at correcting the mistake, already composing the next casual, affectionate letter that would give her some space to breathe in. He would write it this very evening, carefully, and get it exactly right.
    Don left the office rather early that afternoon, and was home by a few minutes after 5. The clock reminded him that the girl from Scranton would be at Grand Central at 6 o’clock. He should go and meet her, he thought, though he didn’t know why. He certainly wouldn’t speak to her. He wouldn’t even know her if he saw her, of course. Still, the Grand Central Terminal, rather than the girl, pulled at him like a steady, gentle magnet. He began to change his clothes. He put on his best suit, hesitantly fingered the tie rack, and snatched off a solid blue tie. He felt unsteady and weak, rather as if he were evaporating like the cool sweat that kept forming on his forehead.
    He walked downtown toward Forty-second Street.
    He saw two or three young women at the Lexington Avenue entrance of the Terminal who might have been Edith W. Whitcomb. He looked for something initialled that they carried, but they had nothing with initials. Then one of the girls met the person she had been waiting for, and suddenly he was sure Edith was the blonde girl in the black cloth coat and the black beret with the military pin. Yes, there was an anxiety in her wide, round eyes that couldn’t have come from anything else but the anticipation of someone she loved, and anxiously loved. She looked about twenty-two, unmarried, fresh and hopeful—hope, that was the thing about her—and she carried a small suitcase, just the size for a weekend. He hovered near her for a few minutes, and she gave him not the slightest glance. She stood at the right of the big doors and inside them, stretching on tiptoe now and then to see over the rushing, bumping crowds. A glow of light from the doorway showed her rounded, pinkish cheek, the sheen of her hair, the eagerness of her straining eyes. It was already 6:35.
    Of course, it might not be she, he thought. Then he felt suddenly bored, vaguely ashamed of himself, and walked over to Third Avenue to get something to eat, or at least a cup of coffee. He went into a coffee shop. He had bought a newspaper, and he propped it up and tried to read as he waited to be served. But when the waitress came, he realized he did not want anything, and got up with a murmured apology. He’d go back and see if the girl was still there, he thought. He hoped she wasn’t there, because it was a rotten trick he’d played. If she was still there, he really ought to confess to her that it was a trick.
    She was still there. As soon as he saw her, she started walking with her suitcase toward the the information desk. He watched her circle the information desk and come back again, start for the samespot by the doors, then change it for the other side, as if for luck. And the beautiful, flying line of her eyebrow was tensely set now at an angle of tortured waiting, of almost hopeless hope.
    But there is still that shred of hope, he thought to himself, and simple as it was, he felt it the strongest concept, the strongest truth that had ever come to him.
    He walked past her, and now she did glance at him, and looked immediately beyond him. She was staring across Lexington Avenue and into space. Her young, round eyes were brightening with tears, he noticed.
    With his hands in his pockets, he strolled past, looking her straight in the face, and as she glanced irritably at him, he smiled. Her eyes came back to him, full of shock and resentment, and he laughed, a short laugh that simply burst from him. But he might as well have cried, he thought. He just happened to have laughed instead. He knew what the girl was feeling. He knew exactly.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    She started, and looked at him in puzzled surprise.
    “Sorry,” he repeated, and turned away.
    When he looked back,