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do that,” she whispered. “I know I do; I can’t help it. It’s — nice to have someone around who can see through it. Larry never did. Even after he began to hate me, I could still—”
    This was getting them nowhere, either, and he had no strength to waste on it. “He came here that night?”
    “Yes, of course,” she said, and glanced at Young. “I am beating all around the bush, aren’t I, honey? It’s — it’s so hard to — If I could only see your face! I — I can’t tell at all what you’re thinking of me.”
    “Never mind my face,” Young said, but his voice was gentler than it had been. Unlikely as it seemed, he had forgotten the bandages. You had to admit, he thought, it was tough on a girl to have to make her confession, not only to a stranger, but to a stranger hidden behind an expressionless mask of surgical gauze. “Carry on,” he said.
    She hesitated. “I was glad to see him,” she whispered, averting her eyes. “Honest. I was so — solonely. When you’ve been married, even if it doesn’t work... I thought he must have come back to — to try to make it up between us, somehow; and I was glad, you understand! What did I care about his silly politics, anyway; and maybe I’d even been wrong about them. I — I wanted him to tell me I’d been wrong, that I’d made a terrible mistake, that I’d done him a terrible injustice, but that he was willing to forgive me. I — I dropped the gun on the table by the stairs and ran across the room to him, hoping he’d take me in his arms and — and kiss me—”
    “Hold it,” Young said, “Let’s go back. You had a gun?”
    She licked her lips. “I’m telling this all wrong, aren’t I? Yes, I had a little gun. Larry himself had given it to me after we were married. This is kind of an isolated place, and when he was commuting to Washington he sometimes didn’t get home till late. Sometimes he’d stay over all night.”
    Young said, “Okay, you had a gun. Now, what made you take it with you when you went downstairs to greet your husband?” It was becoming hard for him to concentrate, but instinct warned him that he had to get this all now. She was ready to talk about it now; she might never be again.
    “Why, I didn’t know it was Larry!” she said, surprised. “I was scared to death. I thought — All I knew was that somebody was in the house. Downstairs. Ijust lay in bed and shivered, hoping they’d go away and not come up, but they didn’t go away. There were all kinds of crashing and rattling. I couldn’t imagine what was going on. At last I couldn’t stand it any longer. I got the gun and slipped down the stairs... He was drunk,” she breathed. “That’s what he was doing, getting drunk and falling over the furniture. He — he laughed at me. He said — people were getting wise to the way the world was going and everybody was trying to jump on the nice, Red bandwagon; but that lots of people were going to find that there wasn’t room, and if I thought he was going to take me with him—”
    “He was going somewhere?” Young interrupted.
    Elizabeth Wilson nodded. “That’s what he said. I didn’t understand it, exactly; but somebody was coming for him in a few days. If he hadn’t been drunk, he wouldn’t have talked so much, I guess; and if I hadn’t — hadn’t acted so glad to see him —” She shivered a little at some memory. “He even relented a little. He said that if... if I was a good girl and kept him hidden here without letting anybody know, and co-operated, he’d see what could be done about letting me come along.”
    “Did he say where he was going?”
    “Not exactly, but it was out of the country—”
    “Did he say how long he was going to have to wait?”
    “Several days, at least. He didn’t seem quite sure of that himself.” Her hands were tightly clasped together in her lap now. “Then he began to boast,” she whispered. “He said I didn’t know he was in the Navy, did I? He said