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her own hands and got herself and Benjamin invited to a party at the home of a girl friend of hers in New York on Thanksgiving Eve, lulling her parents’ suspicions with the excuse that she wanted to stay over in the city to see the Macy parade, that Benjamin and she finally found themselves in a room together, with the door locked behind them. The New York friend’s parents had gone to Atlantic City for the holiday, the friend was older than Pat and delighted to be in on the intrigue, the party was small and ended early, and the first embarrassed virginal fumbling changed quickly into joy.
    Locked in the strange room that was theirs for eight hours of an autumn night, with the noises of the city drowsy and far away outside the closed and curtained windows, with the silken touch of Pat’s body against his own, listening to her trustful breathing as she slept in his arms, Benjamin was sure that he could never love anyone else again in his whole life and that somehow, sometime, they would marry and spend their lives together.
    They did not get up for the parade. Neither of them, as they returned that evening by train to New Jersey, trying consciously to give an appearance of unchanged innocence, regretted having missed it.
    After that, having fallen onto one solution, they discovered others—a professor and his wife who wanted to get away from school for the weekend and were happy to leave their house and their small children in Benjamin’s care while they were gone; a clerk at the drugstore in which Benjamin worked who liked Benjamin and was willing to lend him the key to his room occasionally; other parties, now imaginary, in New York, which freed Pat from her parents’ supervision on Saturday night, when she would meet Benjamin at the Pennsylvania Hotel, where he now brazenly registered them as man and wife, using, as a joke, the name and address of the teacher of freshman English in whose class they sat demurely three hours a week, smiling secretly at each other as the teacher, an earnest, humorless young man, read students’ themes aloud for criticism.
    Pat’s parents were mild and pleasant people who indulged their daughter and liked Benjamin, and if once in a while Benjamin had a twinge of conscience at the deception he was practicing on those hospitable and warmhearted people, he assuaged it by the knowledge that his love for their daughter was eternal and that in the end marriage would put everything aright.
    Poor, overworked, shabbily dressed, uncertain of his future, at a desperate time in his country’s history, Benjamin was as happy as older generations told him a tall, strong, good-looking young American should be. Only once that term were there any sharp words between Pat and himself. It was after one of the afternoons in the room of the drugstore clerk. By now, all traces of shyness, all fear of each other and fear of the obliterating intensity of their feeling had disappeared; they trusted each other absolutely, and it was inconceivable to either of them that they might ever possibly lie to each other or that he could ever conceal anything from her or she from him. They walked hand in hand along the bare, quiet, evening streets to the apartment building where Pat lived, and with no one there to watch or interfere, they kissed good night, the odor of love on their lips, the memory of the afternoon a cocoon enfolding and protecting them against the winter, real and symbolic, around them. Benjamin had read the phrase “weeping for joy” many times, always disbelieving it, but at that moment he could have wept for joy.
    He kissed Pat lingeringly, then held her in his arms for a last few seconds, his cheek against hers. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I wish I could tell you how grateful I am—”
    Pat pulled away with an angry little wrenching movement. “Don’t ever say anything like that to me again,” she said.
    “What is it?” he asked, puzzled. “What’s the matter?”
    “You make it sound