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“I had a sudden pain. But it’s nothing. It’s passing now,” he said while she leaned anxiously across the table.

“Bill, dear, I worry so about you with your heart. Are you sure you’re taking the best care of yourself? And, honey, you’re still smoking. I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I guess you’re right,” he said, squashing his butt.

The waitress set their order before them. He tried to shutter the sense of fear out of his mind, but it lingered after the lapsing of that sharp, sudden thrust of pain. His heart beat with labored and disturbing rapidity. He felt weak, and a sweat had broken upon his brow. He wiped his forehead perfunctorily with a fresh handkerchief.

“Bill, you must be careful. Promise me that you’ll be very careful. If you die now... Gee, I don’t know what I’d do. Honest, I don’t,” she said, and he could see how profoundly worried she was.

She loved him, she was crazy about him, he told himself. He was her man. He had a premonition of his own death, seeing himself stretched out in a casket, with her beside it, looking at his corpse, lonely, sobbing, red-eyed, hysterical with suffering from her loss of him. God, that couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t. He had to live for her, and for himself. This was even greater proof than last night that she loved him. He was beginning to see some of the things that love was. This was one.

“Bill, darling, you know, don’t you, after last night, how much I love you?”

“Yes, Kid,” he said, emotion cracking through his husky voice.

The heart pain had almost completely ebbed out, but he was still faint. He felt the same as he would have if he had just come through some danger, and the sense of danger hung in his mind like some after-image. He was more afraid than when he had been knifed with the brief and sudden pain.

“Yes, dear, you know, after you left last night, I felt funny and I cried,” she said.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he said in a restrained tone, like a father talking to a child.

“I couldn’t help it. I cried because I was afraid. And just now, I was afraid, too, that you wouldn’t care for me any more. You’d think I was easy and without self-respect, and wasn’t, well... good.”

His expression became a combination of curiosity, lack of understanding, sympathy, tenderness. He realized, in a fresh perception, how much she cared for him, and could only express himself to her by quickly squeezing her hand. Her knees touched his under the table, remained firm against them. He wanted her again like last night, and he knew that he cared for her, a great deal. He wanted her. Last night had been only the first, and ahead of them there were many more times. And he wanted her.

“Because, dear, if you did feel that way toward me, I don’t know what I’d do,” she said.

He smiled reassuringly and tried to get at how he did exactly feel toward her, without showing that he was thinking seriously. He wondered, also, how many girls did let a guy go the limit before marriage, when they were really nuts about a guy? He began to doubt how much he thought of her, because after all she had let him. Did other decent girls, like his sisters, do that before marriage? Most who did, well, he didn’t know? Was she an exception? He looked at her, felt her knees rubbing against his, and all he knew was that he wanted her. She’d gone the limit because she cared for him, couldn’t resist him. But then Lucy hadn’t. Still, maybe she had with other guys. Come to think of it, that night in the cab after the dance she had not acted just like an innocent broad. Broodingly, against his will, he looked at Catherine and wished she was Lucy. He smiled hurriedly and genially, so that she wouldn’t worry or think he didn’t like her. Because after hurting her that way last night, he couldn’t let himself do anything to hurt her feelings.

“Bill, dear, now tell me frankly,” she said, and he could see struggle and a determination to be brave mirrored in her face. “Tell me, after last night do you still want to marry me?”

“Yes, Kid, you know I do.”

“When?”

“Whenever we can arrange it, just like you said. You said we shouldn