For four days, she’d been waiting for Johnny to leave the house: leave it long enough so she’d _know_ she had ten minutes’ time all alone. It was hard to believe it could have gone that far; but when she thought back, it must have been going on quite a while now. Unless they went somewhere together, days--or weeks?--might go by till Johnny found any reason to go even down the road. They had built the house in the exact center of their own thirty-five acres: no near neighbors to plague them--or to gossip with or play bridge, or borrow lawn-mowers, or any one of the things that might take a man ten minutes’ walk to the next house. The place was provisioned and stocked for every possible need. They marketed once a month--together. On rare occasions, if the heli needed work Johnny did not want to do, he’d fly down to Nyack; usually, she went along, anyhow, and they’d have dinner out, take in a show, spend an evening pub-crawling, something like that. But the house had everything that he wanted; most of all, it had _her_. Up till now, that knowledge by itself had been enough to allow her to overlook, not-notice, or never-mind all the rest. But now, for four days, she had wanted to make one single phone call without him around: and there had never been a time she could be _sure_ he wouldn’t wake up, or pick up an extension from some other room, or--or _some_thing. The whole thing was ridiculous. Most of all, her own feeling about it was all out of proportion. She kept telling herself that. _Just pick up the damn phone and call!_ He was in the shower; how was he going to hear her from there? But, again, she jittered around until, just as she reached for the switch, he came out. _Damn!_ “Hi, babe.” He came over and kissed her. And at the touch, the easy relaxation with which he had entered the room vanished. “What’s the matter, babe?” He sat down and put his arms around her; tilted her face up with one hand under her chin. “Nothing,” she said unconvincingly, and tried to smile a response to him. That was not very convincing either. She saw the small muscles in his jaw tighten up, and start knotting. _Oh, God damn!_ “Probably just--time of month, I guess,” she said. He bought it. He grinned and patted her on the head sympathetically; his face relaxed; he stood up with the confident nonchalance of masculinity, not prey to nervous cyclic emotions, and went into the kitchen. A moment later, he called back: “I’m going out and see what I can do about that door handle.” The door slammed. She saw him cross the back lawn toward the hangar. She watched till he went inside. With her eyes still on the window, she switched on the phone. “May I speak to the doctor?” she asked the pert nurse who answered. Dr. Aaronson looked harassed as usual, but his smile was beatific: “Everything’s fine,” he said. “All down the line. Don’t give it a thought. You ought to come in, say, oh, two-three weeks?”