Stoner, taken aback by her outburst, for a moment did not speak. Then he said, "You shouldn't concern yourself. These things happen. It will all work out in time. It really isn't important."
And suddenly, after he said the words, it was not important. For an instant he felt the truth of what he said, and for the first time in months he felt lift away from him the weight of a despair whose heaviness he had not fully realized. Nearly giddy, almost laughing, he said again, "It really isn't important."
But an awkwardness had come between them, and they could not speak as freely as they had a few moments before. Soon Stoner got up, thanked her for the coffee, and took his leave. She walked with him to the door and seemed almost curt when she told him good night.
It was dark outside, and a spring chill was in the evening air. He breathed deeply and felt his body tingle in the coolness. Beyond the jagged outline of the apartment houses the town lights glowed upon a thin mist that hung in the air. At the corner a street light pushed feebly against the darkness that closed around it; from the darkness beyond it the sound of laughter broke abruptly into the silence, lingered and died. The smell of smoke from trash burning in back yards was held by the mist; and as he walked slowly through the evening, breathing the fragrance and tasting upon his tongue the sharp night-time air, it seemed to him that the moment he walked in was enough and that he might not need a great deal more.
And so he had his love affair.
The knowledge of his feeling for Katherine Driscoll came upon him slowly. He found himself discovering pretexts for going to her apartment in the afternoons; the title of a book or article would occur to him, he would note it, and deliberately avoid seeing her in the corridors of Jesse Hall so that he might drop by her place in the afternoon to give her the title, have a cup of coffee, and talk. Once he spent half a day in the library pursuing a reference that might reinforce a point that he thought dubious in her second chapter; another time he laboriously transcribed a portion of a little-known Latin manuscript of which the library owned a photostat, and was thus able to spend several afternoons helping her with the translation.
During the afternoons they spent together Katherine Driscoll was courteous, friendly, and reserved; she was quietly grateful for the time and interest he expended upon her work, and she hoped she was not keeping him from more important things. It did not occur to him that she might think of him other than as an interested professor whom she admired and whose aid, though friendly, was little beyond the call of his duty. He thought of himself as a faintly ludicrous figure, one in whom no one could take an interest other than impersonal; and after he admitted to himself his feeling for Katherine Driscoll, he was desperately careful that he not show this feeling in any way that could be easily discerned.
For more than a month he dropped by her apartment two or three times a week, staying no more than two hours at any one time; he was fearful that she would become annoyed at his continued reappearances, so he was careful to come only when he was sure that he could be genuinely helpful to her work. With a kind of grim amusement he realized that he was preparing for his visits to her with the same diligence that he prepared for lectures; and he told himself that this would be enough, that he would be contented only to see her and talk to her for as long as she might endure his presence.
But despite his care and effort the afternoons they spent together became more and more strained. For long moments they found themselves with nothing to say; they sipped their coffee and looked away from each other, they said, "Well . . . ," in tentative and guarded voices, and they found reasons for moving restlessly around the room, away from each other. With a sadness the intensity of which he had not expected, Stoner told himself that his visits were becoming a burden to her and that her courtesy forbade her to let him be aware of that. As he had known he would have to do, he came to his decision; he would withdraw from her, gradually, so that she would not realize he had noticed her restlessness, as if he had given her all the help that he could.
He dropped by her apartment only once the next week, and the following week he did not visit her at all. He had not anticipated the struggle that he would have with himself; in the afternoons, as he sat in his office, he had almost physically to restrain himself from rising from his desk, hurrying outside, and walking to her apartment. Once or twice he saw her at a distance, in the halls, as she was hurrying to or from class; he turned away and walked in another direction, so that they would not have to meet.
After a while a kind of numbness came upon him, and he told himself that it would be all right, that in a few days he would be able to see her in the halls, nod to her and smile, perhaps even detain her for a moment and ask her how her work was going.
Then, one afternoon in the main office, as he was removing some mail from his box, he overheard a young instructor mention to another that Katherine Driscoll was ill, that she hadn't met her classes for the past two days. And the numbness left him; he felt a sharp pain in his chest, and his resolve and the strength of his will went out of him. He walked jerkily to his own office and looked with a kind of desperation at his bookcase, selected a book, and went out. By the time he got to Katherine Driscoll's apartment he was out of breath, so that he had to wait several moments in front of her door. He put a smile on his face that he hoped was casual, fixed it there, and knocked at her door.
She was even paler than usual, and there were dark smudges around her eyes; she wore a plain dark blue dressing gown, and her hair was drawn back severely from her face.
Stoner was aware that he spoke nervously and foolishly, yet he was unable to stop the flow of his words. "Hello," he said brightly, "I heard you were ill, I thought I would drop over to see how you were, I have a book that might be helpful to you, are you all right? I don't want to—" He listened to the sounds tumble from his stiff smile and could not keep his eyes from searching her face.
When at last he was silent she moved back from the door and said quietly, "Come in."
Once inside the little sitting-bedroom, his nervous inanity dropped away. He sat in the chair opposite the bed and felt the beginnings of a familiar ease come over him when Katherine Driscoll sat across from him. For several moments neither of them spoke.
Finally she asked, "Do you want some coffee?"
"You mustn't bother," Stoner said.
"It's no bother." Her voice was brusque and had that undertone of anger that he had heard before. "I'll just heat it up."
She went into the kitchen. Stoner, alone in the little room, stared glumly at the coffee table and told himself that he should not have come. He wondered at the foolishness that drove men to do the things they did.
Katherine Driscoll came back with the coffee pot and two cups; she poured their coffee, and they sat watching the steam rise from the black liquid. She took a cigarette from a crumpled package, lit it, and puffed nervously for a moment. Stoner became aware of the book he had carried with him and that he still clutched in his hands. He put it on the coffee table between them.
"Perhaps you aren't feeling up to it," he said, "but I ran across something that might be helpful to you, and I thought—"
"I haven't seen you in nearly two weeks," she said and stubbed her cigarette out, twisting it fiercely in the ashtray.
He was taken aback; he said distractedly, "I've been rather busy—so many things—"
"It doesn't matter," she said. "Really, it doesn't. I shouldn't have . . ." She rubbed the palm of her hand across her forehead.