"Marry me?"

"Now I'm going to do this: I'm going up to Canada, to British Columbia. They're giving away land there, practically. Thousands of acres. I have a little money and we're going to get clear of everything except the outdoors, we'll have a farm, I can learn how to work on one again-"

"Lowry, you're crazy-"

"Why am I crazy?"

"I don't know, it's just-I-"

"Why are you afraid?"

Clara pushed away from him and got to her feet. Her teeth had begun to chatter; she felt that the very air about her had turned brittle. "I don't want to hear it," Clara said. She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. "Don't say anything to me. I'm afraid what I might do. How can I change ... ? Once there was a man that looked like you, in a gas station-"

"And?"

"He made me think about you all over again."

Lowry got up. "Honey, everything is beautiful here. This old house is beautiful. Out the window there-those trees-it's all beautiful. We'll have a place just like this in Canada, by ourselves."

"Lowry, no."

"You don't know what you have here, how beautiful it is. You don't understand what it is," he said. "Over there I thought about you all the time, Clara. You were at the center of what I was trying to think about. I remembered how it was by the ocean, and down by the river that day-how nice you were to me- n.o.body was ever as nice to me as you were, Clara. I know that now."

Clara went out into the kitchen and stood at the screen door. She heard Lowry following behind her. Her fingernails picked nervously at the screen, at tiny rust specks or dirt embedded there. Outside, Swan was digging a hole by the fence that cut off the orchard from an old pasture. "Swan?" she called. "What are you doing?"

He looked around. "This here," he said, his small clear voice a surprise to her. He lifted the spade. After a moment, staring at her and at Lowry behind her, he turned away self-consciously.

"Suppose that was your kid, what then?" Clara said.

"It wouldn't matter, I would want him with us even if he wasn't," Lowry said. And that answer, that should have sounded so good to her, somehow didn't; she had wanted something else. "I'm thirty-two," he said. "I had my thirtieth birthday over there and I never thought I'd get that old. Now I'm back here and I could maybe forget about all that, if I could begin everything over."

Clara stared at him. She did not understand.

"You're worried he's going to come?" Lowry said.

"No."

"What are you worried about?"

She pushed past him. "I've got to fix supper," she said.

"Forget about supper."

"You've got to eat, and Swan-"

"Forget about it. Come back here with me."

"Lowry, I can't."

"Come on."

She stared miserably at the floor. Everything was draining out of her, all her strength, all the hatred that had kept Lowry close to her for so long. It struck her that she had fed on this hatred and that it had kept her going, given her life. Now that he was here and standing before her, she could not remember why she had hated him.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she whispered. "Coming back here like this- You-"

"Let me make you quiet," Lowry said.

She looked up at his smile, which was exactly like the smile she remembered.

"That boy is still outside playing," Lowry said. From the bed he was leaning to look out the window. Clara, lying still, watched the long smooth curve of his back. "Any other kid would come bothering you, but he doesn't. How does he know that much?"

"Smart, like his father."

"Why is he so quiet?"

"He isn't quiet. He was afraid of you."

"He shouldn't have been afraid of me."

#x201C;A strange man coming up the lane, walking up the lane like that.... I was afraid of you myself."

"Are you afraid now?"

She wanted to say angrily that she would always be afraid of him, that there was nothing she could do to keep herself from him and that this was terrible, this power he had over her. But she lay still. Her hair was tangled around her damply; she felt soiled, bruised.

"I'm sorry if ... I upset you," Lowry said gently.

He pressed himself against her again, hiding his face against her, and she felt how soft even a man's flesh can be, lying so delicate on top of his bones; and if it had all been blown apart, shot apart, what then? If the bullets that had shot about Lowry in the dark, over there in Europe, across the world in Europe, had hit him instead and stopped dead in his body, what then? He would not have come back to make love to her. Lowry's body, which was all of him that she could see and touch, would be rotted over there in a ditch in a place she would not even know by name, could not even imagine because she would not have the power to do so ... and what then? She caressed his back and her hand came away wet with sweat. That was all she had to go by. She felt how weak they both were, she and Lowry, how the terrible power he had in his body and in his hard muscular legs pa.s.sed over into this weakness that was not at all like the weakness before sleep but was something heavy and close to death, like lying on the bottom of an ocean of sweat, their bodies still trembling from all the violence they had suffered. She felt as if a wound had been viciously opened up in her, secret in her body, and that all her strength had drained away through it and left her helpless again.

"What is Revere going to say when I tell him what we're going to do?"

"He's got a wife."

"But he loves me," Clara whispered. "He wants to marry me."

"The h.e.l.l with him."

"He loves me."

"I don't give a d.a.m.n about another man's love."

"He loves Swan too...."

"Well, I don't give a d.a.m.n about that either."

"What if you get tired and leave me again?"

"That won't happen."

"How do you know?"

"I know."

They fell back into silence. Clara listened to his breath, felt his breath against her. She said dreamily, "But you ... Lowry, with you everything is just what comes into your head. It comes out of somewhere like in a dream and you want it and then you get it, then that's over.... People or places to go to or things to do. The world is just spread out as far as you can see or feel it. I could fall out of that world, get pushed over the edge or something. Then what?"

"Clara, don't talk crazy like that."

"And the kid too. He might get forgotten. You're in such a rush...."

"No."

"I'm not just a kid now, Lowry. I'm afraid what you'll do to me this time."

"I always took care of you, sweetheart."

"Oh, Christ-"

"You just wanted more from me than I wanted to give."

Clara sat up. She did not want to look at him. It was as if they were criminals together, weak and suspicious together, not happy with each other the way she'd been with that man from the gas station-who had made her feel Lowry inside her without having to really be Lowry. The air was warm and sultry. This bedroom, which Clara had always loved, now seemed to her someone else's room. It was not just Lowry who did not belong in it, but Clara herself.

She let him embrace her again. Her mind stumbled backward to other embraces of his, and back all the way to that night in Florida years ago, when he had taken a washcloth and cleaned her up to suit him, to make her good enough for him. Or was she wrong about that, was she judging him wrong ... ? She remembered that Lowry and she remembered herself, as if she had been outside her body all along and watching. He was the same man and she wanted him just as violently; making love with him cost her everything, every agonized straining to give life to that kernel of love he would always keep inside her. She would never be free of him. But she knew what she was going to say just the same.

"No. I guess I'm not going with you," she said.

"What?"

"I'm not going."

He touched his forehead with his fingertips-a strange gesture. He was stunned. Clara closed her eyes to get rid of that sight. She felt sick.

"You're not coming with me?" he said.

Clara got out of bed and put her housecoat on. It was made of pink cotton, rather wrinkled and not too clean. She went to the window and stared out. Lowry had not moved. After a while she looked over her shoulder at him, narrowing her eyes against anything she might see that she would not want to see. Lowry was tapping at his teeth with his fingers, watching her.

"You changed your mind?" he said.

"I never really thought any other way."

She let her head droop. Her hair moved about her face languidly, lazily. She knew she must have the look of a woman in a picture who had everything decided for her, who had never had to think, whose long complicated life had been simplified by some artist when he chose one instant out of it to paint: after that, the h.e.l.l with her.

"You want to spend your life waiting here for another woman to die?"

"If I have to."

"Does your kid know about that?"

"I don't know what he knows. He's just a baby."

"Maybe he knows more than you think."

"Maybe."

"And what about Revere, what if somebody told him I was with you?"

"Are you going to tell him?"

"Suppose I did?"

"If you want to, go ahead."

"Suppose I told him about before, too. Four years ago."

"Go on and tell him."

"Don't you care if I do?"

Clara looked down. "You won't tell him, Lowry."

"Why not?"

"Because you won't tell him. You won't do that."

They were both silent. She raised her eyes to his, narrowed.

"Why won't I?" he said.

"Because you know I love you. Why would you want to hurt me?"

"If you love me, why the h.e.l.l-"

"I'm not like I was!" she said. "I'm different now-I'm a mother, I'm grown up- I had all this time to think about things-"

"Clara-"

"There's all these things you think about that I can't understand," she said. She spoke softly and quietly, trying to keep her voice still. "You always go past me. That was why you wanted another woman, and you'd want one again-"

"If that's it-"

"No, that's not it. I'd go with you anyway. I'd take that chance if it were a few years ago-what the h.e.l.l would I care? But it's different now."

"Clara, you could do so much for me if you would." "I can't do anything for you."

He was breathing hard. "It wasn't just being shot that hurt me, it was other things," he said. The way his mouth twisted showed how he hated to say this. "I had some trouble for a while. I was in a hospital over here, in Washington. They had to keep me quiet-try to keep me quiet-"

"My G.o.d," Clara whispered.

"I don't want to go back to it, I mean I don't want to think about it," Lowry said harshly. "Up in Canada we could start over again, and the kid too, a kid is so young he doesn't know anything-and we could have other kids-"