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candlesticks, and held her hands over her face and wept as heartily as Martin had ever seen her.
    “Oh, God, Martin,” she said. “How can you love me? How
can
you? I don’t think you do. I don’t think you could!” She cried on and on, and he didn’t touch her at all he was so surprised. He didn’t even know what she could mean. He felt the beginnings of a vast exasperation that sometimes becomes a chasm between men and women. He was tired; he was angry, and he was helpless in this one instance because of the disparity of their separate male and female histories.
    “Look at me! Just look at me! I woke up in the middle of the night with the most awful feeling. Oh, Martin, I haven’t slept! I felt my whole face change; I felt my skin pulling and sliding. Why didn’t you
tell
me? I thought I was still so pretty! Damn!” and she slapped her hand against the wood-work in teary fury. “I wouldn’t have cared so much if I had known! Why didn’t you tell me? I have circles under my eyes—bags under my eyes—and creases where I smile. I can feel them from the
inside!
My hair doesn’t shine anymore. Oh, God, oh, God, I used to be all shiny the way young girls are. I used to
be
a young girl!”
    David, then just eight, had come to the door of his room and was watching them solemnly, but when his father turned and saw him, he went back inside and closed the door, embarrassed. Dinah was at last simply leaning against the wall, her head back, and her hands hanging limply at her sides. Her face was blotched and puffy, and her pale-blue eyes looked rabbity, underlined as they were just then with flaring red rims.
    Martin was so taken aback that he only stood there and thought how awful she did look at this moment. Maybe she was right; why hadn’t he told her? She wasn’t pretty now; she
was
getting older. But he was thoroughly struck through with sympathy all at once, and he reached out and held her against him, with one hand cupping the back of her head to his shoulder. “I love you, though, Dinah. I just do love you more than anything.”
    She cried and cried. “God! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said.
    That evening she had looked as beautiful to him as always when they went out to dinner. He looked for circles beneath her eyes and didn’t see any; he noticed her soft, blond hair curling gently at the nape of her neck where it was tied with a blue scarf. She was, as usual, charming, enchanting, and unconsciously intimidating to the young couple they were entertaining, Martin had always seen that other men watched his wife, and they did tonight. He had no idea that there was beginning in his wife that subtle reliance on style rather than substance that gives to some women in their thirties and forties a particular grace.
    When they were home she came to bed in a cream-colored, silky gown, very lacy, and he knew that she wanted him to hold her and admire her, and he
did
admire her, so that was exactly what he wanted to do. But it wasn’t the way they always made love; she was rarely ever so vulnerable; she wasn’t often a victim of vanity. That night she was the subject of her own censure; she kept herself under careful control. She lay beside him for a while, and he knew that she was still tense, but he wanted to sleep. He also had the idea that she didn’t want him to realize her need; she wouldn’t want to be approached again. Finally, she slipped away into the bathroom and came back in the tatty, tacky flannel gown. When she caught his glance she smiled at herself. “I sleep better in it,” she said. “Well, it’s so comfortable.”
    Martin didn’t care about that at all. But he thought he might cry, in fact, lying there in the dark, when he remembered that all day he had been able to both pity and love his wife simultaneously. He thought that must augur well for the future.
    But so early on in the summers these reminders of his family life were hard to take; they made him restless in his