She could not speak. Death. I may be pregnant. A sharp, small fear bit her breast with its teeth. Because she was hurt inside she despised his ignorance. She wanted to poison his calm with her fear, but the triumph of injury was sweet to her. She held it close. "You'll be glad now." She was trembling. "Glad of what, dear girl?" "That I'm gone." "Winnie, please? Not tonight." He gazed straight at her. His smiling patience was too bitter. Her pride could not forgive him. Tears of shame and hate rose to her eyes. "You don't love me any more. I know that." He would not look at her. Turning over the leaves of the book, his small hand shook. Its whiteness and delicacy irritated her. "Oh, Laurie, I can't go away angry!" She put her hand on his sleeve. The roughness and realness of his sleeve hurt her hand. She did not want it. Without looking up, he reached an arm around her. "Have you talked to the doctor, Winnie?" He could not look at her. "Yes," she whispered, lying. When she lied she blamed him more. "Are you sure you're all right, Winnie?" He forced out the words very deliberately. They were like stones to his lips. She hesitated an instant. Then she said, "Yes. Kiss me. Oh, Laurie, it's so awful I--it's so awful I----" He put the book down and faced her in her embrace. She thought he seemed calm and satisfied as though the doctor had become proxy for his conscience. Winnie's eyes, fiercely soft, stared into his and made him feel furtive and depressed. He kissed her to keep from looking at her. When their mouths were together his cruelty made her strong. She forgave him. He was a dark thing close to her, smothering her with his breath. His clothed body dissolved in her immediate recognition of his flesh, and she had a sickish sensation as of life stirring in her. Shamelessly kind and unmoved, he had believed this impossible thing. She moved away from him in spite of herself and with a pang she felt how his hand dropped away in relief that she did not want it. She would not go away. "You don't love me!" "Please don't let us torture each other, Winnie. You are going away to get well." "Suppose I should die, Laurence." "But you won't die." Again he drew her uncomfortably to him. His head throbbed. He tried to give her what she wanted. Her shuddering lips moved over his face and he drooped helplessly under them like a beast in the rain. He tried to love her. She hated him so that she could not bear to have him go away from her. Death. She tried to keep that word in her. It was a child she had conceived to which she refused birth. She wanted to carry death dead in her. "If anything terrible happens--if I have to be operated on!" Her words stumbled. "But nothing will happen. You're nervous, Winnie. You're all nervous and sick. This stay in the country will make you over." "And you'll be glad to see me well again?" She leaned back from him, searching his set, kind face with her tearful eyes.