"What for?"

"Because I want you to."

He stood still.

"I wanted to tell you . . ." But she got stuck. He came back, felt for the bench, and sat down.

"Look, Lisha," he said in a cooler voice, "it doesn't make any difference."

"Yes it does, it makes a lot. I wanted to tell you that I'm not engaged. He did ask me, but I'm not."

He was listening, but without expression. "Then why'd you say you were?"

"I don't know. To make you mad."

"And so?"

"And so," said Lisha. "And so, I wanted to tell you that you may be blind but that's no excuse for being deaf, dumb, and stupid. I know you were sick and I'm very sorry, but you'd be sicker if I had anything to do with it."

Sanzo sat motionless. "What the hell?" he said. She did not answer; and after quite a while he turned, his hand reaching out and then stopping in mid-gesture, and said nervously, "Lisha?"

"I'm right here."

"Thought you'd gone."

"I'm not done yet."

"Well, go ahead. Nobody's stopping you."

"You are."

A pause.

"Look, Lisha, I have to. Don't you see that?"

"No, I don't. Sanzo, let me explain – "

"No. Don't. I'm not a stone wall, Lisha."

They sat side by side in the warmth a while.

"You'd better marry that fellow."

"I can't."

"Don't be a fool."

"I can't get around it. Around you."

He turned his face away. In a strained, stifled voice he said, "I wanted to apologise – " He made a vague gesture.

"No! Don't."

There was a silence again. Sanzo sat up straighter and rubbed his hands over his eyes and forehead, painfully. "Look, Lisha, it's no good. Honestly. There's your parents, what are they going to say, but that's not it, it's all the rest of it, living with my aunt and uncle, I can't … A man has to have something to offer."

"Don't be humble."

"I'm not. I never have been. I know what I am and this – this business doesn't make any difference to that, to me. But it does, it would to somebody else."

"I want to marry you," Lisha said. "If you want to marry me, then do, and if you don't then don't. I can't do it all by myself. But at least remember I'm in on it too!"

"It's you I'm thinking of."

"No it's not. You're thinking of yourself, being blind and the rest of it. You let me think about that, don't think I haven't, either."

"I have thought about you. All winter. All the time. It … it doesn't fit, Lisha."

"Not there, no."

"Where, then? Where do we fit? In the house up there on the Hill? We can split it, twenty rooms each. . . ."

"Sanzo, I have to go finish the ironing, it has to be ready at noon. If we decide anything we can figure out that kind of thing. I'd like to get clear out of Rakava."

"Are you," he hesitated. "Will you come this afternoon?"

"All right."

She went off, swinging the water-jug. When she got to the cellar she stood there beside the ironing board and burst into tears. She had not cried for months; she had thought she was too old for tears and would not cry again. She cried without knowing why, her tears ran like a river free of the ice-lock of winter. They ran down her cheeks; she felt neither joy nor grief, and went on with her work long before her tears stopped.

At four o'clock she started to go to the Chekeys' flat, but Sanzo was waiting for her in the courtyard. They went up the Hill to the wild garden, to the lawn above the chestnut grove. The new grass was sparse and soft. In the green darkness of the grove the first candles of the chestnuts burned yellowish-white. A few pigeons soared in the warm, smoky air above the city.

"There's roses all around the house. Would they mind if I picked some?"

"They? Who?"

"All right, I'll be right back."

She came back with a handful of the small, red, thorny roses. Sanzo had lain back with his arms under his head. She sat down by him. The broad, sweet April wind blew over them level with the low sun. "Well," he said, "we haven't got anywhere, have we?"

"I don't know. I think so."

"When did you get like this?"

"Like what?"

"Oh, you know. You used to be different." His voice when he was relaxed had a warm, burring note in it, pleasant to hear. "You never said anything. . . . You know what?"

"What?"

"We never finished reading that book."

He yawned and turned on his side, facing her. She put her hand on his.

"When you were a kid you used to smile all the time. Do you still?"

"Not since I met you," she said, smiling.

Her hand lay still on his.

"Listen. I get the disability pension, two-fifty. It would get us out of Rakava. That's what you want?"

"Yes, I do."

"Well, there's Krasnoy. Unemployment's not supposed to be so bad there, and there must be cheap places to live, it's a bigger city."

"I thought of it too. There must be more jobs there, it's not all one industry like here. I could get something."

"I could pick up something with this caning, if there was anybody with any money wanting things like that done. I can handle repair work too, I was doing some last fall." He seemed to be listening to his own words; and suddenly he gave his strange laugh, that changed his face. "Listen," he said, "this is no good. You going to lead me to Krasnoy by the hand? Forget it. You ought to get away, all right. Clear away. Marry that fellow and get away. Use your head, Lisha."

He had sat up, his arms around his knees, not facing her.

"You talk as if we were both beggars," she said. "As if we had nothing to give each other and nowhere to go."

"That's it. That's the point. We don't. I don't. Do you think getting out of this place will make any difference? Do you think it'll change me? Do you think if I walk around the corner . . . ?" He was trying for irony but achieved only agony. Lisha clenched her hands. "No, of course I don't," she said. "Don't talk like everybody else. They all say that. We can't leave Rakava, we're stuck here. I can't marry Sanzo Chekey, he's blind. We can't do anything we want to do, we haven't got enough money. It's all true, it's all perfectly true. But it's not all. Is it true that if you're a beggar you mustn't beg? What else can you do? If you get a piece of bread do you throw it away? If you felt like I do, Sanzo, you'd take what you were given and hold on to it!"

"Lisha," he said, "oh God, I want to hold on – Nothing – " He reached to her and she came to him; they held each other. He struggled to speak but could not for a long time. "You know I want you, I need you, there is nothing, there is nothing else," he stammered, and she, denying, denying his need, said, "No, no, no, no," but held him with all the strength she had. It was still much less than his. After a while he let her go, and taking her hand stroked it a little. "Look," he said quietly enough, "I do … you know. Only it's a very long chance, Lisha."

"We'll never get a chance that isn't long."

"You would."

"You are my long chance," she said, with a kind of bitterness, and a profound certainty.

He found nothing to say to that for a while. Finally he drew a long breath and said very softly, "What you said about begging . . . There was a doctor, two years ago at the hospital where I was, he said something like that, he said what are you afraid of, you see what the dead see, and still you're alive. What have you got to lose?"

"I know what I've got to lose," Lisha said. "And I'm not going to."

"I know what I've got to gain," he said. "That's what scares me." His face was raised, as if he were looking out over the city. It was a very strong face, hard and intent, and Lisha looking at him was shaken; she shut her eyes. She knew that it was she, her will, her presence, that set him free; but she must go with him into freedom, and it was a place she had never been before. In the darkness she whispered, "All right, I'm scared too."