He was lying on his back looking up at the ceiling, and she could feel him drawing steadily farther and farther away from her until he seemed to be wholly detached. There began to be something strange and unfamiliar about him, and she was seized with panic, wondering what she was doing here beside him where she so obviously did not belong. His isolation was so complete that it was as though he had entirely finished with her. In despair, and overwhelmed by the one impulsion to cover herself with something beside the sheet which covered both of them, in a single movement she caught up her nightdress which had been thrown across the foot of the bed and slipped it over her shoulders.
"What are you doing that for?"
She was so startled by the sound of his voice that she stopped, transfixed, with her arms over her head. "Because-because you-Oh!" said Erica helplessly. "The damn thing’s got twisted. Help me on with it and don’t ask silly questions".
"Not until you tell me why".
"I feel indecent".
She got her head out at last and their eyes met. They looked at each other in silence until Marc said, "I’m sorry, Eric".
"It’s all right".
"No", he said, shaking his head. Still looking at her he said, "You certainly do get it both ways, don’t you?" and a moment later he suddenly pulled her down beside him and said again with his face against hers, "I’m sorry, darling, I’m an awful fool. I didn’t mean to desert you like that…".
"Particularly with nothing on", she said in a muffled voice. She clung to him until it was really all right again, and then raising her head so that she could look into his eyes she said, "I want to tell you something, Marc. I’m not afraid of other people, nothing they say or do can get inside me where it really hurts if I don’t let it. I’m only afraid of one thing…".
"Yes, go on".
"I’m afraid of being shut out". She sat up, holding his hand tightly in both hers and said, "Please start by assuming that I can understand and not that I can’t. It’s terribly important, I think it’s more important to me than anything else. If you say or even let yourself think that I can’t understand something simply because I’m not Jewish, then you put me in a position where I’m utterly helpless. It’s like…" She stopped and then said, "It’s like tying me to a chair and then blaming me because I can’t get up and walk. I’ve got quite a lot of imagination and I don’t think I’m stupid or insensitive…".
Her grip on his hand tightened still more and she said, "Give me a chance to understand and if I let you down, then-well, then you can shut me out. I guess I’ll have deserved it. It’s not my fault that I’m not Jewish and I can’t do anything about it, but surely…" She stopped again, and with her eyes and her voice full of tears she said, "Surely the fact that I love you so much makes up for it!"
He had not once taken his eyes from her face. He said roughly, "Eric, for God’s sake!" and took her in his arms again.
She said at last, "Darling, you’ve got a grip like a steel trap and you’re hurting me".
He relaxed a little, smoothed back a strand of fair hair which had fallen over her forehead and smiled down at her. He was still somewhat unnerved. "Are you all right?"
Erica nodded. "Are you?"
"Well, almost", said Marc. "You have an awful effect on me, Eric. Whenever you say that you love me, I feel as though I’m being turned inside out, only this time it was worse because of the build-up. Do you know what we need?"
"No, what?"
"Some kind of insulation".
"Why?"
"I mean just to protect ourselves when we’re together so we won’t feel so much".
"I don’t think I want to be insulated", said Erica, after considering it. "Probably it all goes together, so that if…"
"You have the most irritating habit of starting to say something interesting and then stopping in the middle. However, I see what you mean". He kissed her and then asked, "Do you still feel indecent?"
"No".
"All right, take that thing off again then".
He got up and went over to the window. "It’s a marvelous night, Eric", he said, his eyes following the course of the Milky Way through the sky until the stream of stars disappeared over the dark shoulder of the mountain across the lake. The lake itself was full of moonlight and there was a light breeze which had turned the water in the path of the moon to frozen silver.
He came back and stood looking down at her face and her hair spread out on the pillow.
"You belong to a museum", said Erica, for there was such perfection of line and form in the molding of his body that he seemed unreal in the dimly lit room, like a figure out of Greece two thousand years before. "Except for your face", she added. "Your face doesn’t go with the rest of you. One of your ancestors must have got mixed up with a good Austrian peasant…".
Her voice died away in the stillness of the room as he went on standing there, and then suddenly took the top of the sheet with one hand and pulled it down to her feet. "I want to remember the way you look", he said, his voice so low that she could hardly hear it.
She lay motionless under his eyes and then turned over on her face and began to cry again. He dropped down on the bed beside her and put his arm around her and said, his voice shaking, "Don’t, Eric, please, my dearest, please don’t. You can’t cry again now, it’s only Friday".
But it was not because there was so little time left that she was crying, although that was part of it. There was something else which she did not know how to explain, even to herself, except that in this one night she seemed to have lost what little had remained of her detachment; she had taken on his vulnerability without his endurance, and she was crying for herself as well as for Marc.
She put both her arms around him and went on crying until there were no more tears left, and after a while both of them had forgotten how it had started or what it was all about. When the church clock struck five in the village at the other end of the lake, neither of them heard it.
Chapter VIII
"Our Government is really wonderful", remarked Sylvia as the telephone rang on Erica’s desk at half past eleven on Monday morning.
"You take it, Bubbles", said Erica. The train from Ottawa where she had spent Sunday night with Marc had been late arriving in Montreal; the first edition had gone to press ten minutes after she had reached her office and she was still struggling to catch up. "I won’t talk to anybody".
"The Consumer’s Division of the Department of Agriculture", continued Sylvia, although no one seemed to be listening, "has just produced another masterpiece in the form of a cake which takes no butter, no eggs, and no sugar. Now why not just no cake, and be done with it?"
"You might write and ask them", said Erica absently.
"It’s for you, Eric", said Weathersby, adding as Erica was about to protest, "I know, but it’s someone who claims she’s your sister. You’d better investigate".
"Tell her to hold on a minute", said Erica, still typing. "Bubbles…"
"Yeah?"
"Have you got my cigarettes again?"
"What do you mean, ’again’?" he demanded, looking injured.
"Never mind. Hand them over".
"It probably is her sister", Sylvia pointed out to him as he passed her desk bearing Erica’s cigarettes. "At your age, you’ve no reason to be so suspicious. You ought to be in a good school somewhere", she added vaguely, "learning about cricket, instead of learning about life in a newspaper office. Where are those wedding pictures, Bubbles?"
"On Eric’s desk. And I already know all about cricket, I finished school last year. Eric…"