She wanted to be the thing he swung around his head. If he would take her up and destroy her it would make her crazy with happiness. She closed her fingers around his hand and trembled. Her body felt weak. Her arms were as if she no longer directed them. They were being drawn. "I'm so proud of you. You're so different from all of them, Lief. I can't stand them sometimes. They're terrible." He nodded his head with a ponderous air of sagacity. "They make me sick," she went on. "All of them. They're not like people but like something else. Like parts of people." He nodded his head again. She was all right--this girl. She didn't belong with the pack in the room he had left. She wasn't a little slut ... one of those lying, filthy ones. But he was afraid of her. He wanted to keep things like they were. If you let down to a woman she started climbing all over you and asking for this and for that. Anyway it was time to walk back now. There was a lot of work in the shop. He got up at six. They walked out of the park together. The spring night called for endings. The darkness hinted. The day with its houses and noises lingered like an unnatural memory in the shadows. What were people for? The darkness hinted. Doris felt a mist in her blood. So curious, the day. Unreal, empty. Noises that circled, faces that went on forever. People had been moving forever. They kept walking and walking. There was no ending to people. The years passed under their feet like a treadmill and they kept moving on. Now it was quiet. Beside this man she felt there was no more moving on. Her heart filled with impatience. It was hard to breathe. Her arms were heavy, overcrowded. "Oh," she whispered to herself, "I'll die. I'll die." But they continued to walk. The man's silences, his ominous reserves, his sagacious noddings had excited her. She felt angry with him. He had called for her a half dozen times in the last two months. They had met by accident in a book store. A clerk had introduced them. He called and they went for walks. But he said nothing. Once he had told her she was beautiful. Another time he had mentioned, as if it were a casual thing, that she was the sort of girl to whom he would like to make a gift. But of what, he didn't know. Some gift worthy, he said. She had been frightened of him at first. But gradually as she grew accustomed to his strange manners, his bristling silences, she became impatient, angry. He stopped. "I'll go this way," he announced. "Good-night." He stood looking at her for a long minute and then turning, walked away. She watched him but he didn't look back. She walked to the house alone.