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the same thing and that she wasn’t telling the truth. “Just whenever they ask him to bring some fish.”
    I began to understand a little about her then—a little, and, as I found out later, I hadn’t even begun. Loneliness was driving her mad. She wanted to talk to me or to somebody, but she was afraid to. She didn’t know, if she started something like that, whether it would get out of control. But, as I say, I didn’t know half of it then.
    “Look,” I said, “I come up here fishing quite often. Would you like me to bring you some magazines? I’d be glad to do it.”
    She shook her head and smiled a little. It was the first time I had ever seen her smile, and it made her look even younger and prettier. I felt again that powerful desire I had this afternoon to pick her up in my arms. “No,” she said. “Thank you. But he brings me things to read from the store. It was nice of you to offer, though.”
    ‘It wasn’t as nice as you think it was,” I said, leaning forward a little. “It was partly because I wanted an excuse to come and see you again.”
    “You know you can’t do that, don’t you?” she asked quietly.
    “No,” I said.
    “You can’t. Is it because I stopped here? Did that give you the idea—”
    “Nothing gave me any idea. I wanted to see you again.”
    She stared at the ground. “Don’t say that!”
    “Why not?”
    “I’ll have to leave if you’re going to talk like that.”
    “All right. I won’t say it. But there’s no way you can stop me from thinking it.”
    “You can’t. I shouldn’t have come here. It’s crazy.”
    “Of course it’s crazy,” I said. “Does that change it?”
    She put down the coffee cup, still looking at the ground, and made that same desperate gesture, that utterly hopeless quick movement of the hand across the side of her head and down her neck, that she had made the other day—only now it wasn’t through her hair, because she still had on the rubber cap.
    “Don’t come back,” she said, staring.
    “Why not?”
    “You can’t.”
    “You don’t want me to?”
    “No.”
    “Are you sure?” I asked.
    “Are you enjoying this?” she asked. Her face was white and she had forgotten to smoke the cigarette. It burned slowly up toward her fingers, the long gray ash precariously clinging.
    I wanted to reach out and put my hands on her arms, to take hold of her, but her eyes held me away. I could see the battle going on behind them.
    “You came down here to tell me to stay away, didn’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “But I hadn’t said anything then. Before you came tonight.”
    “Do you think I’m blind?” she said harshly. “Don’t you think I could see, there at the house?”
    “Yes,” I said. “And you weren’t the only one who could see. There were two of us there.”
    “Stop it!” she lashed at me.
    I threw the cigarette in the fire. “Tell me,” I said I quietly. “Where is he?”
    “He’s at the house.”
    “He knows you’re here, doesn’t he?”
    “No.”
    “How could he help knowing it?”
    The face was as white and still as smoke. “Because he’s drunk. He’s passed out.”
    “You can’t go back—”
    “Why not? I’m used to it.”
    I leaned forward and took her wrist in my hand and lifted the cigarette from her fingers. “You’re going to burn yourself,” I said, and threw it in the fire. She pulled back on the arm and I could feel my fingers shaking as they tightened. She hit me with the other hand, across the mouth, and stood up with her face held together only by an effort of will, and I could hear the dry sound of the crying in her throat. “Listen,” I said. “Doris—” She jerked away from me and ran through the darkness toward the edge of the lake. Before I could get there I heard the splash as she went in, and when I got down to the edge of the water she was gone. I could hear her swimming away in the darkness.

Five
    There was no use trying to sleep. I built up the fire enough to see by,