So it came to pass that the venerable and somewhat withered bloom of Steve’s virginity had its petals scattered to a September zephyr. Lora did not stay the night. She slept, but later awoke into darkness and, slipping quietly out of bed and groping her way to the kitchen, saw by her watch that it was half-past two. If she stayed there, she reflected, she would lose all day Sunday, and she simply must get that tan dress fixed and her stockings darned. Ten minutes later, dressed but drowsy, she let herself out quietly without disturbing Steve’s gentle and regular snores. Outside his car was standing at the curb and she felt something should be done about it — wouldn’t it be stolen or confiscated or something? At least she would turn on the lights, she knew that was required, but she couldn’t find the switch and so gave it up and went on home.
But most of her Sunday was lost after all. She slept till noon, then, uncommonly hungry, went out for breakfast; and when she returned found Steve sitting on the stoop waiting for her. He saw her halfway down the block and sprang to his feet and hurried to meet her; his eyes avoided hers, he extended his hand and then drew it back, and finally for greeting awkwardly kissed her cheek. He reproached her for leaving him; they could have had a wonderful breakfast together, he said; what did she mean by going off that way? He had expected to cook breakfast for her and had made special preparations for it.
“You expected?” Lora smiled at him.
He flushed suddenly and violently, then took hold of her arm and looked boldly into her eyes. “I guess you know I did,” he asserted. “Anyway we can go for a ride, a long ride, and have dinner together.” He was squeezing her arm. “Did anyone ever call you Lo? I was thinking this morning, I’d like to call you Lo.”
So the dress and stockings went unmended.
Every evening after that he begged her to go home with him. He wanted her to give up school so they could go to shows and take evening rides and have more time together. “I suppose I seem silly to you,” he would say, “you’re so sensible about it, because you’re experienced of course. I didn’t know how ignorant I was — gosh I was an ass, wasn’t I?” He laughed at the ass he had been. “Going around talking about mistresses — and now I really have one, I keep saying it to myself when I’m alone, I really have a mistress, Lo is my sweet mistress — I love calling you Lo because no one else ever did. One day Father said to me — it was when I was home for Christmas three years ago, I was working up in Canada then — he saw a photograph in my suitcase, just a girl I’d taken to a party somewhere, I’d forgotten I had it even — and he said, Since you say you have no sweetheart I suppose that’s your mistress. I felt myself blushing all over and I was so mad I couldn’t speak. That was the first time, the only time in fact, he ever said anything of that sort to me. I had a notion to tell Mother about it, but I didn’t. Anyway, I remember that night I couldn’t sleep, I kept fancying myself saying, Father permit me to introduce my mistress, and imagining what he would do. I was an awful ass.”
Lora succeeded in preserving her evenings for school, and she spent not more than two or three nights a week in the apartment on Bank Street, but he had his way in another matter. There was no opposing his determination to buy things for her — clothes particularly, but also bracelets, trinkets, flowers, perfumes, bags. The bracelets and earrings were of necessity silver or glass, but were tastefully chosen; he insisted on accompanying her to select dresses and hats; and underwear and nightgowns he bought himself, bringing them to her folded in their boxes, removing them from the rustle of the tissue-paper and holding them up by fragile shoulder-straps for her inspection. On another point he was less successfuclass="underline" his attempts to persuade her to give up both her school and her job and install herself and her belongings in Bank Street. He grew more and more determined about it; it was obviously the thing to do, he said, no man of spirit would want his mistress to work in an office any more than he would his wife, not so much, in fact; but Lora wouldn’t even consider it. She didn’t argue about it; she would let him go on and then smile and merely say, “There’s no hurry; we’ll see.” She was of course awaiting an eventuality the possibility of which seemed, amazingly, never to occur to him; deciding that either he was trusting implicitly to her superior experience or that he did actually believe in storks, she continued patiently to wait.
When in the middle of October it became evident that nature’s routine had suffered no interruption she frowned with puzzled resentment; what sort of cheat was this? Too, she was momentarily alarmed, for her own experience was after all superior to Steve’s only as thick twilight is superior to darkness; but common sense soon told her that the hazards of life are not confined to a dandelion seed fallen upon a stone, and when four more weeks had passed, then five and six, six whole weeks, and the interruption had assuredly occurred, she began to weigh Steve’s proposal seriously. When in the course of the next day or two he renewed it, she replied promptly:
“All right, I will, if you’re sure you want me to.”
“You will!” he cried, blushing with pleasure. “This very evening — well, tomorrow then. Tomorrow?”
“I ought to give them a week’s notice at the office.”
“Nonsense. They’ve got a hundred telephone girls scattered around, what’s the difference. Tomorrow? Please.”
The moving was simple; two trips did it, with a big brown suitcase he bought for her and one of his own. The first morning he kissed her goodbye and departed for the office, leaving her confronted by a whole day to be disposed of by choice instead of necessity, she sat at the oblong table on which they had eaten their first dinner nearly three months before, sipping coffee which didn’t want to go down and feeling doubtful and ill at ease. She had done it, that was all right, but it wasn’t so simple as you might think. She couldn’t expect long to conceal the fact that every morning she was sick, and Steve would naturally want to know what the trouble was and she would have to tell him something. Almost anything would probably serve, with him; and for that matter why shouldn’t she tell him the truth? She didn’t want to, that was all, she didn’t like the idea. Well, she could say, you’re going to be a father; but that sounded ridiculous; there was something outlandish about it. Or she could say, I’m going to have a baby; but why should she? It was none of his business.