"I’ll find us some dance music ... I’ll turn on the radio ... dance with me, Orv." Then, she blurted: "Orv, are you really in love with her?" "I helped get her out of London ... Uncle Victor helped me get her out ... we couldn’t leave her to those blitzes. Do you love ... do you really love anyone, Lena? Do any of us really love, any more? Hasn’t life become rotted?" "What are you saying?" she asked, evasively. "Nothing ... nothing..." He put down his glass and got up and went to the piano; he had not touched a piano for over a year and he had no notion of touching this one; he wanted to be near it, thinking, for the moment, as he stood by it, of his mother, missing her. In Ithaca their piano had become impotent, had given way to the radio. Unsatisfactory--like altering one’s name. He rubbed his face with both hands. (Landel had said ... Zinc had said.) Without seeing Lena, he walked about the room, hesitated by the Chopin bust, lingered in front of the fireplaces; then, rubbing his hands together roughly, shrugging his shoulders, he said, "Good night." From the stairway, he called: "See you tomorrow." That wasn’t his voice, Lena told herself. She listened to his steps, going up: two, four, five, eight: life was that way now: automation: death. The click of his bedroom door was the click of Amélie’s door: with cold hands she fondled her cat, speculating about tomorrow, the uncertain tomorrows, if there were to be many of them? Softening the radio music, she remained on her knees, fingering dials, longing for Orville. Orville switched on his bed lamp, and the rack of guns, the fishing tackle, the mounted bass over his bed appeared with a kind of jabbing abruptness. Jean had laughed at his trophy--his Nonette prize. He wished he had her in his room, had her sexiness. Copies of _Le Matin_ and _Combat_ lay on the bed table and he rustled through them, sitting on the side of the bed, seeing Lena’s body catwise. What changes. What irony. Something like double laughter ran through his brain. He began undressing. He called himself a fool. A Rousseau thought came to mind: "The innocent plans of the good hardly ever find fulfillment." Was that how it went? Innocence in E? In Ithaca, life had been innocent enough. Back there, there were thoughts of office plans, gas station blueprints, residential plans. At Cornell, he had a few things pretty well figured out. Not pat, yet ... well ... that new system for track was a good system, based on a series of camera studies of runners: position of the hands while running, the length of the stride: careful correlation had to be established: the same sort of studies for the crew, each oarsman photo fixed, the angles of his oar ... He dropped his socks on the carpet. When I was a freshman I used to wear a copper medallion with Rousseau’s face stamped on it.