Stoner

In the sitting room he stared at the candles that flickered over the remains of their dinner, in the midst of which rested the bottle of champagne, still more than half full. He poured a little of the wine into a glass and tasted it; it had grown warm and sweetish.

When he returned, Edith was in bed with the covers pulled to her chin, her face turned upward, her eyes closed, a thin frown creasing her forehead. Silently, as if she were asleep, Stoner undressed and got into bed beside her. For several moments he lay with his desire, which had become an impersonal thing, belonging to himself alone. He spoke to Edith, as if to find a haven for what he felt; she did not answer. He put his hand upon her and felt beneath the thin cloth of her nightgown the flesh he had longed for. He moved his hand upon her; she did not stir; her frown deepened. Again he spoke, saying her name to silence; then he moved his body upon her, gentle in his clumsiness. When he touched the softness of her thighs she turned her head sharply away and lifted her arm to cover her eyes. She made no sound.

Afterward he lay beside her and spoke to her in the quietness of his love. Her eyes were open then, and they stared at him out of the shadow; there was no expression on her face. Suddenly she flung the covers from her and crossed swiftly to the bathroom. He saw the light go on and heard her retch loudly and agonizingly. He called to her and went across the room; the door to the bathroom was locked. He called to her again; she did not answer. He went back to the bed and waited for her. After several minutes of silence the light in the bathroom went off and the door opened. Edith came out and walked stiffly to the bed.

"It was the champagne," she said. "I shouldn't have had the second glass."

She pulled the covers over her and turned away from him; in a few moments her breathing was regular and heavy in sleep.

V

They returned to Columbia two days earlier than they had planned; restless and strained by their isolation, it was as if they walked together in a prison. Edith said that they really ought to get back to Columbia so that William could prepare for his classes and so that she could begin to get them settled in their new apartment. Stoner agreed at once--and told himself that things would be better once they were in a place of their own, among people they knew and in surroundings that were familiar. They packed their belongings that afternoon and were on the train to Columbia the same evening.

In the hurried, vague days before their marriage Stoner had found a vacant second-floor apartment in an old barnlike house five blocks from the University. It was dark and bare, with a small bedroom, a tiny kitchen, and a huge living room with high windows; it had at one time been occupied by an artist, a teacher at the University, who had been none too tidy; the dark, wide-planked floors were splotched with brilliant yellows and blues and reds, and the walls were smudged with paint and dirt. Stoner thought the place romantic and commodious, and he judged it to be a good place to start a new life.

Edith moved into the apartment as if it were an enemy to be conquered. Though unused to physical labor, she scraped away most of the paint from the floors and walls and scrubbed at the dirt she imagined secreted everywhere; her hands blistered and her face became strained, with dark hollows beneath the eyes. When Stoner tried to help her she became stubborn, her lips tightened, and she shook her head; he needed the time for his studies, she said; this was her job. When he forced his help upon her, she became almost sullen, thinking herself to be humiliated. Puzzled and helpless, he withdrew his aid and watched as, grimly, Edith continued awkwardly to scrub the gleaming floors and walls, to sew curtains and hang them unevenly from the high windows, to repair and paint and repaint the used furniture they had begun to accumulate. Though inept, she worked with a silent and intense ferocity, so that by the time William got home from the University in the afternoon she was exhausted. She would drag herself to prepare the evening meal, eat a few bites, and then with a murmur vanish into the bedroom to sleep like one drugged until after William had left for his classes the next morning.