"Now you see why I won't do it. I won't try to stop you. I love you, Dominique." She closed her eyes, and he said:

"You'd rather not hear it now? But I want you to hear it. We never need to say anything to each other when we're together. This is — for the time when we won't be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is the only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become your whole existence. But I would not want you then. You would not want yourself — and so you would not love me long. To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.' The kind of surrender I could have from you now would give me nothing but an empty hulk. If I demanded it, I'd destroy you. That's why I won't stop you. I'll let you go to your husband. I don't know how I'll live through tonight, but I will. I want you whole, as I am, as you'll remain in the battle you've chosen. A battle is never selfless."

She heard, in the measured tension of his words, that it was harder for him to speak them than for her to listen. So she listened.

"You must learn not to be afraid of the world. Not to be held by it as you are now. Never to be hurt by it as you were in that courtroom. I must let you learn it. I can't help you. You must find your own way. When you have, you'll come back to me. They won't destroy me, Dominique. And they won't destroy you. You'll win, because you've chosen the hardest way of fighting for your freedom from the world. I'll wait for you. I love you. I'm saying this now for all the years we'll have to wait. I love you, Dominique."

Then he kissed her and let her go.

AT NINE O'CLOCK that morning Peter Keating was pacing the floor of his room, his door locked. He forgot that it was nine o'clock and that Catherine was waiting for him. He had made himself forget her and everything she implied.

The door of his room was locked to protect him from his mother. Last night, seeing his furious restlessness, she had forced him to tell her the truth. He had snapped that he was married to Dominique Francon, and he had added some sort of explanation about Dominique going out of town to announce the marriage to some old relative. His mother had been so busy with gasps of delight and questions, that he had been able to 'answer nothing and to hide his panic; he was not certain that he had a wife and that she would come back to him in the morning.

He had forbidden his mother to announce the news, but she had made a few telephone calls last night, and she was making a few more this morning, and now their telephone was ringing constantly, with eager voices asking: "Is it true?" pouring out sounds of amazement and congratulations. Keating could see the news spreading through the city in widening circles, by the names and social positions of the people who called. He refused to answer the telephone. It seemed to him that every corner of New York was flooded with celebration and that he alone, hidden in the watertight caisson of his room, was cold and lost and horrified.

It was almost noon when the doorbell rang, and he pressed his hands to his ears, not to know who it was and what they wanted. Then he heard his mother's voice, so shrill with joy that it sounded embarrassingly silly: "Petey darling, don't you want to come out and kiss your wife?" He flew out into the hall, and there was Dominique, removing her soft mink coat, the fur throwing to his nostrils a wave of the street's cold air touched by her perfume. She was smiling correctly, looking straight at him, saying: "Good morning, Peter."

He stood drawn up, for one instant, and in that instant he relived all the telephone calls and felt the triumph to which they entitled him. He moved as a man in the arena of a crowded stadium, he smiled as if he felt the ray of an arc light playing in the creases of his smile, and he said: "Dominique my dear, this is like a dream come true!"

The dignity of their doomed understanding was gone and their marriage was what it had been intended to be.

She seemed glad of it. She said: "Sorry you didn't carry me over the threshold, Peter." He did not kiss her, but took her hand and kissed her arm above the wrist, in casual, intimate tenderness.

He saw his mother standing there, and he said with a dashing gesture of triumph: "Mother — Dominique Keating."

He saw his mother kissing her. Dominique returned the kiss gravely. Mrs. Keating was gulping: "My dear, I'm so happy, so happy, God bless you, I had no idea you were so beautiful!"

He did not know what to do next, but Dominique took charge, simply, leaving them no time for wonder. She walked into the living room and she said: "Let's have lunch first, and then you'll show me the place, Peter. My things will be here in an hour or so."

Mrs. Keating beamed: "Lunch is all ready for three, Miss Fran ... " She stopped. "Oh, dear, what am I to call you, honey? Mrs. Keating or ... "

"Dominique, of course," Dominique answered without smiling.

"Aren't we going to announce, to invite anyone, to ... ?" Keating began, but Dominique said:

"Afterwards, Peter. It will announce itself."

Later, when her luggage arrived, he saw her walking into his bedroom without hesitation. She instructed the maid how to hang up her clothes, she asked him to help her rearrange the contents of the closets.

Mrs. Keating looked puzzled. "But aren't you children going to go away at all? It's all so sudden and romantic, but — no honeymoon of any kind?"

"No," said Dominique, "I don't want to take Peter away from his work."

He said: "This is temporary of course, Dominique. We'll have to move to another apartment, a bigger one. I want you to choose it."

"Why, no," she said. "I don't think that's necessary. We'll remain here."

"I'll move out," Mrs. Keating offered generously, without thinking, prompted by an overwhelming fear of Dominique. "I'll take a little place for myself."

"No," said Dominique. "I'd rather you wouldn't. I want to change nothing. I want to fit myself into Peter's life just as it is."

"That's sweet of you!" Mrs. Keating smiled, while Keating thought numbly that it was not sweet of her at all.

Mrs. Keating knew that when she had recovered she would hate her daughter-in-law. She could have accepted snubbing. She could not forgive Dominique's grave politeness.

The telephone rang. Keating's chief designer at the office delivered his congratulations and said: "We just heard it, Peter, and Guy's pretty stunned. I really think you ought to call him up or come over here or something."

Keating hurried to the office, glad to escape from his house for a while. He entered the office like a perfect figure of a radiant young lover. He laughed and shook hands in the drafting room, through noisy congratulations, gay shouts of envy and a few smutty references. Then he hastened to Francon's office.

For an instant he felt oddly guilty when he entered and saw the smile on Francon's face, a smile like a blessing. He tugged affectionately at Francon's shoulders and he muttered: "I'm so happy, Guy, I'm so happy ... "

"I've always expected it," said Francon quietly, "but now I feel right. Now it's right that it should be all yours, Peter, all of it, this room, everything, soon."

"What are you talking about?"

"Come, you always understand. I'm tired, Peter. You know, there comes a time when you get tired in a way that's final and then ... No, you wouldn't know, you're too young. But hell, Peter, of what use am I around here? The funny part of it is that I don't care any more even about pretending to be of any use ... I like to be honest sometimes. It's a nice sort of feeling ... Well, anyway, it might be another year or two, but then I'm going to retire. Then it's all yours. It might amuse me to hang on around here just a little longer — you know, I actually love the place — it's so busy, it's done so well, people respect us — it was a good firm, Francon & Heyer, wasn't it? — What the hell am I saying? Francon & Keating. Then it will be just Keating ... Peter," he asked softly, "why don't you look happy?"