George went to the place, rang and Linda opened the door. “Come in, George,” she said sweetly. “Mother telephoned me you were coming. I am so glad to see you before I get married and explain. I decided when I came back and met this boy again. This is the best way. I was just wasting my time, wasn’t I?” She listened to his protests quietly, but without answer: she was calm and content. She showed him the curtains, furniture, the wall-to-wall carpeting. “Dad had to sell some shares to get this, but we felt Nick needed the build-up. So did I.” She put on her coat to go out with him. “This is the best way for me, George. My mother thinks I’m right. You must go in the folkways, she says. There was nothing for me—” She paused, turned to him. “Do you know, George,” she said with a laugh, “I can hardly remember what I did in Paris, I don’t remember what it was like. I know it’s there,” she touched her forehead, “but it’s fading, like a dream. It was a waking dream, wasn’t it? I don’t want to think about it any more. I think Americans need their country more than other people. It’s in them.”
George was going to take her in the subway: she hailed a taxi. “I never go in the subway now,” she said with a laugh. “I never think of it.”
George went and sat in Washington Square. He felt calm, as one does when something exceptional has happened. A man beside him spoke. George looked. He was an elderly man, with creased neck, tanned skin, coarse grey hair, cut short, alert blue eyes in slits. An old man, sitting on a park bench, thought George.
“People of our age,” said the man to George, “don’t want to be pushed around.” George pretended to listen to the absurd old man: he thought everyone as old as himself. The old man told him something about his son and daughter-in-law: “The basement was flooded and they were in Karachi.” George said good-bye, got up and walked off. How can he see that I am his age? thought George to himself; I look so young. I am not interested in flooded basements.
He went back to the apartment in New York for which he paid rent and he found Barby there with some friends. She welcomed him excitedly. “You were going to be evicted, George—I paid the rent and we were just celebrating. Come and have a drink.”
“If I don’t have something, I’ll drop dead. It’s a wonder I’m not dead already,” said George, taking what was offered him, a glass of Scotch whisky. He never drank whisky. Barby kept egging him on to tell his experiences; and while he was looking elsewhere, flushed, talking wildly, she slyly, grinning at the others, poured Scotch into his glass, filling it again and again. George remained himself, but suddenly lay down on the floor and became unconscious. The party went on. Presently, leaving him there, they went out to eat. Barby spent the night at another apartment; though, not forgetting her prize, she went home early in the morning. George was still on the floor and feverish. He caught cold, was ill and took a long time to recover. When he did recover he did not for a long time speak of leaving Barby or going back to Paris. She got him back to work. Presently he went away, left her; and for years no one heard of him. He was seen in Paris, Sofia, Vienna, in Buenos Aires: then there was no news of him at all. Some said he was very disturbed, he thought various foreign services were after him, that he was a hunted man; others said he had quite recovered, had taken hold of himself and married a quiet young woman.
Just before her wedding, Linda’s father said to her. “You cabled me for money from Rome. What were you doing in Rome?”
“Oh, I was doing some work for that journalist I told you about. He went away and I had no money; so I thought I’d come home.”
“I had a letter from some fella in Paris. He came here and saw your mother. What was he to you?”
“Oh, he was a father to me.”
“Wasn’t he going to marry you?”
“I don’t think he cared for me. He was always doing what he wanted to. So I thought I’d come home.”
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