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her twisted smile of triumph. That was where she was wrong, he thought, but he was silent. He took two steps on the gritty asphalt and turned again, with his head high. Be calm, he told himself. What could anger accomplish? Miriam had used to hate him when he reacted like this, because she loved loud arguments. She would love one even this morning, he thought. She had hated him when he reacted like this, until she had learned that in the long run it hurt him more to react like this. He knew he played into her hands now, yet he felt he could react in no other way.
    “I haven’t even got the job yet, you know. I’ll simply send them a telegram saying I don’t want it.” Beyond the treetops, he noticed again the new reddish building he had seen before Miriam came.
    “And then what?”
    “A lot of things. But you won’t know about them.”
    “Running away?” she taunted. “Cheapest way out.”
    He walked again, and turned. There was Anne. With Anne, he could endure this, endure anything. And in fact, he felt strangely resigned. Because he was with Miriam now, the symbol of the failure of his youth? He bit the tip of his tongue. There was inside him, like a flaw in a jewel, not visible on the surface, a fear and anticipation of failure that he had never been able to mend. At times, failure was a possibility that fascinated him, as at times, in high school and college, when he had allowed himself to fail examinations he might have passed; as when he married Miriam, he thought, against the will of both their families and all their friends. Hadn’t he known it couldn’t succeed? And now he had given up his biggest commission, without a murmur. He would go to Mexico and have a few days with Anne. It would take all his money, but why not? Could he possibly go back to New York and work without having seen Anne first?
    “Is there anything else?” he asked.
    “I’ve said it,” she told him, out of her spaced front teeth.
     

Four
     
    He walked home slowly, approaching Ambrose Street, where he lived, through Travis Street, which was shaded and still. There was a small fruit shop now on the corner of Travis and Delancey Streets, sitting right on somebody’s front lawn like a children’s play store. Out of the great Washatorium building that marred the west end of Ambrose Street, girls and women in white uniforms were pouring, chattering, on their way to an early lunch. He was glad he did not meet anyone on the street he had to speak to. He felt slow and quiet and resigned, and even rather happy. Strange how remote—perhaps how foreign—Miriam seemed five minutes after talking with her, how unimportant, really, everything seemed. Now he felt ashamed of his anxiety on the train.
    “Not bad, Mama,” he said with a smile when he came home.
    His mother had greeted him with an anxious lift of her eyebrows. “I’m glad to hear that.” She pulled a rocker around and sat down to listen. She was a small woman with light brown hair, with a pretty, rather fine straight-nosed profile still, and a physical energy that seemed to twinkle off in sparks now in the silver of her hair. And she was almost always cheerful. It was this fact chiefly that made Guy feel that he and she were quite different, that had estranged him from her somewhat since the time he had suffered from Miriam. Guy liked to nurse his griefs, discover all he could about them, while his mother counseled him to forget. “What did she say? You certainly weren’t gone very long. I thought you might have had lunch with her.”
    “No, Mama.” He sighed and sank down on the brocade sofa. “Everything’s all right, but I’ll probably not take the Palmyra job.”
    “Oh, Guy. Why not? Is she—? Is it true she’s going to have a child?”
    His mother was disappointed, Guy thought, but so mildly disappointed, for what the job really meant. He was glad she didn’t know what the job really meant. “It’s true,” he said, and let his head go back until he felt