I wailed: “Oh, Nicholas, surely you remember that she was a singularly cool and aloof woman? Surely, with that in mind, you should have understood?” He was not listening, except to whatever might be echoing in his memory. He had wished to be reassured; and he was now sure; and over his spirit, like a smothering pall, had dropped the dreadful sense of futility. And he said, finally, the most irrelevant thing. “I’m glad your windows are above the trees. Trees are sometimes curious about what’s going on in a room, and malevolent.” The treacherous female instinct for taking care of the male when he is in trouble overcame me, and I hurried to the kitchenette to mix him a drink. But, to a greater extent than he seemed, he must have been aware of his surroundings, for he said at once: “No whiskey! After I’ve told you what now I must tell you, you will see that--that just this minute I can’t stand the thought of whiskey.” Of what it had it in its power to remind him, beyond what he had already told, I could not imagine; and because I did not wish to hear it, and because my pity for him had been short-lived, I said, outrageously, that he could then have gin. This was wasted on him, I am glad to say; without further preamble he swept into it. Eva’s study had suffocated him, that night, and he had gone across to the window and opened it to the fresh air. And the rain had driven in on him, while the branches of the trees in the back garden had whipped at him. He told me that he was thinking how no man would ever possess her. Eva was a being of another plane, and he was looking in at nightmare. He heard her say that she was cold, and replied: “What’s needed in here is something natural. Air is the only natural thing left to you and me.” He stood in the open window for a long time, and it did him good, easing the tension of his nervous rage. She muttered something about being chilled because it had been so very warm in Los Angeles. And, his brain again inflamed by this mention of the geographical location of Hollywood, he came back to the spiritual significance of it and slipped the control for which he had fought. “I’ve always known that Mapes would break us up.” These bitter words he said so quietly that she settled down in her armchair with a sigh of relief. She leaned back and closed her eyes. During the interval of his trip downstairs for drinks, he brooded over that peaceful closing of her eyes: so she trusted him! She wished to have him--the trustworthy man--always in her background. He had so far gone back in his mind that his voice, as he recounted the following incidents of the night, was brutal. He went upstairs with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. He almost took me step by step up the stairway, he so carefully told his tale. She said: “It’s very late, Nick. Don’t you think we might finish this at another time?”