Very faintly he saw the rigid line of her body, but through her nightdress he perceived her tense, like a protest. He could not see her eyes but he shivered with the feeling that they were very wide open and sightless. The darkness was against her eyes, holding her rigid upon the white sheet in the dark bed. "Laurie!" "I thought you were asleep." He did not know why he lied. She did not answer at once and he stood waiting. "Laurie!" He felt suddenly feverish in his cold clothes. She reached out and touched him. The feel of her hand flowed along his hand and up the veins of his arm. He felt as though her hand had been laid upon his heart. His heart beat quickly. He denied his heart. He was passive. He stood apart from himself. He was unrelated to Winnie, sick and tense in the bed. "Laurie!" she whispered again. She drew him down beside her. "You are sick, Winnie," he said. Sure of himself, he did not resist her. She reached up, groping to cover his mouth. It made her angry when he told her she was sick. She did not want him to build up words between them. She tried to draw him into herself, into the formlessness of contact. "Oh, I can't sleep, Laurie! I want you to love me." "I do love you, Winnie. If I seem not to love you it is because you are sick." "I'm not sick! I won't be sick. You don't love me!" "I do!" "Please love me! I'll die if you don't love me, Laurie!" He resisted her. She drew his hand to her and placed it like a cup over the swell of her breast. He trembled. "Winnie, my darling, we mustn't----" "Laurie, I'll go mad!" "Why, Winnie? I love you, Winnie." But he did not love her. She seemed to him like a sickness. They were both sick with her. "Kiss me again." He kissed her. His palm tingled with the strangeness of her breast. "I can't let you go 'way from me, Laurie!" "I don't want to." She held him. Suddenly she was no longer strange. His hand read the strangeness of her with the relief of familiarity. She burned him with wonder. Winnie felt him yield and was glad, but her triumph congealed in agony. She fell away from him. She was cold. She was still. The throbbing of her body came to her like an echo which she could scarcely hear. She had forgotten the meaning of it. Who was this man? She was afraid. She waited for him to leave her. * * * * * Laurence was tired with the feeling of Winnie that flowed through his body. She was in his veins degrading him with possession. If she should have a child. He would not think of it. He walked over to the couch and climbed upon it. He would not think. Driving his thoughts from him, as he lay down, he felt the flap of the window shade and the respiration of Bobby rattling in his empty mind. He tossed. His body was hot. The sheet he pulled over him made him shiver. Then he grew cold and longed for the heat to cover him up. He felt naked. He wanted to lie drowned in heat, miles thick in darkness.