She studied me--gravely for the most part. Once, she showed a dimple.
But her voice was placid. "You could be annoyed at me."
"What for?"
"Don't be obvious!"
"Last night? Annoyed? I was tired. In a talky mood. It was my guest's
own idea to come down. I said sure--and after she'd been there
awhile--I changed my mind."
"That's what Gwen thought." She ate a little of her fruit salad. Maybe
her hand shook. Certainly not much. She drew a straight, easy breath.
"I imagined I could learn something from her."
"Did you?"
She looked at me with frank, gray eyes. She smiled into herself. "You
know I did."
"What?"
"Isn't it strange how much we attach to trifles--love and sex trifles?
Set up a whole lifetime for happiness--but fix it so that one little
act for a handful of minutes will ruin the whole thing."
"That."
She flicked her head to put back her hair. "It's mad! To imagine such
things are so important! To imagine whole lives and people and families
can be ruined by anything--so little!"
I gave her the red schoolhouse riposte. "Knocking a person on the head
is a little thing that hardly takes even one minute. But it's murder.
Slipping a hundred G's out of the cash cage takes only a sec--but it's
robbery--"
"And kissing you in a cab the other night," she answered, "took only
a couple of blocks and I don't love you in the least. We touched. A
moment or two. It was fun. We'll never do it again. Or, say--we do. Is
that like murder and robbery? Should it ruin lives?"
"Not to my way of thinking. I don't feel wrecked."
"Neither do I," she said softly. "Neither do I! On the contrary! You
have to find out that how you feel is terribly important--terribly. But
what you do--unless you make it important--that's such a tiny thing!"
She smiled. "When you think that just forty-eight hours ago--I was
sitting here shuddering over Rol--"
"It occurred to me."
"It seems--" she sought for the proper words--"sort of--caddish.
Unchivalrous. And hideously unsympathetic."
"Aren't you pushing yourself?"
"What do you mean?"
"You could have a reaction."
"I'm having one."
My lunch came.
"I mean," I said, "a reaction to this reaction."