Mrs Benat stood up. "Who's to say?" she asked wearily. "I want to spare my daughter a miserable life, and she tells me it's a sin."

"Not for you, mother. For me. I can't keep your vows!"

"Well, God forgive us both, then. And him. I meant it for the best, Lisha." Mrs Benat went off to her room, walking heavily. Lisha sat on at the table, turning a spoon over and over in her hands. She felt no triumph from having for the first time in her life opposed and defeated her mother. She felt only weariness, and sometimes as she sat tears welled into her eyes again. The only good thing about it all was that there was no longer anyone she feared. At last she went into the room she shared with Eva, found a pencil and a scrap of paper, and wrote a very brief letter to Sanzo Chekey, telling him that she loved him. When it was written she folded it very small, put it in a heavy old gilt-brass locket her mother had given her, and fastened the chain about her neck. Then she went to bed, and lay a long time listening to the endless, aimless blowing of the wind.

Sara Chekey, as Mrs Benat had said, had no patience. That same night she said to her nephew, while Volf and Albrekt were at the tavern, "Sanzo, you ever think about getting married? Don't pull a face like that. I'm serious. I thought of it a while back, I'll tell you why. You should see Lisha Benat's face when she looks at you. That's what put it into my head."

He turned towards Sara and said coolly, "What business of yours is it how she looks at me?"

"I've got eyes, I can see what's in front of me!" Then she caught her breath; but Sanzo gave his disquieting laugh. "Go ahead and look, then," he said. "Only don't bother to tell me."

"Listen, Sanzo Chekey, there you stand in your pride acting like nothing on earth made any difference to you, and never think that what I'm saying might have some sense in it you might listen to. What good do you think I'd get out of your marrying? I was just thinking of you and happened to notice – "

"Drop it," he said. His voice had broken into the strained, arrogant note that exasperated Sara. She turned on him with a rush of justifications and accusations.

"That's done it," Sanzo broke in. "I'll never see that girl again." There being nowhere else to get away from Sara, he went out, slamming the door behind him. He ran down the stairs. Out on the street, without his stick, his coat, or any money, he stopped, and stood there. Lisha wanted to get him, did she? and Sara wanted him got? And they had laid their little plans, and he had fallen for it! – When the awful tension of humiliation and rage began to subside, he had lost his bearings and did not know which direction he was facing, whether he had moved away from the doorway or not. He had to grope around for several minutes to locate himself. People passed by, talking; they paid no attention to him, or thought he was drunk. At last he found the entrance, went back upstairs, took ten kroner from his father's little cashbox, brushed past the protesting Sara, and slammed the door a second time.

He came back about ten the next morning, flopped down on his hallway bed, and slept all day. It was Sunday, and his uncle, having to pass the sprawled figure several times, finally said to Sara, "Why'd he go bust out again? Took all his money, Volf says. He ain't bust out like that all summer. Like he used to when he first got home."

"Yes, drinking up the money that's to support him and his father, that's all he's good for."

Albrekt scratched his head and as usual answered slowly and not exactly to the point. "Seems like a hell of a life for a fellow only twenty-six," he said.

The next day at four Lisha came to the apartment. He proposed that they walk out; they went up onto the Hill, to the garden. It was October now, an overcast day getting ready to rain. Neither of them spoke as they walked. They sat down on the grass below the empty house. Lisha shivered, looking out over the grey city, its thousand streets, its huge factories. Without sunlight, the garden was dominated by the forbidding dark bulk of the chestnut grove. A train whistled across town far away.

"What's it look like?"

"All grey and black."

She heard the childish whispering note in her own voice. But it had not cost his pride to ask the question of her. That was good, that lightened her heart a little. If they could only go on talking, or if he would touch her, so that for him she would be there, then it would be all right. Soon he did reach out to her, and willingly she put herself entirely inside the hold of his arm, resting her cheek against his shoulder. She felt a tension in him as if he had something he wanted to say, and she was about to ask him what it was, when he lifted her face with his hand and kissed her. The kiss grew insistent. He turned so that his weight was on her and pushed her back, the pressure of his mouth sliding down to her throat and to her breasts. She tried to speak and could not, tried to push him away and could not. His weight pushed her down, his shoulder blocked out the sky. Her stomach contracted in a knot, she could not see, but she managed to gasp out, "Let me go," a weak thin whisper. He paid no heed; he crushed her down into the stiff grass and the darkness of the earth, with such strength that she felt only weakness, weakness as if she were dying. But when he tried to force her legs apart with his hand it hurt, so sharply that she began to struggle again, to fight like an animal. She got one arm free, pushed his head away, and writhed out from under him in one convulsive movement. She got to all fours, staggered to her feet, and ran.

Sanzo lay there, his face half buried in the grass.

When she came back to him he had not moved. Her tears, which she had managed to control, started again as she stood by him.

"Come on, get up, Sanzo," she said softly.

He lay still.

"Come on."

After a while he twisted round and sat up. His white face was scored with the crisscross marks of the stiff grass, and his eyes when he opened them looked to the side, as if staring across to the grove of chestnuts.

"Let's go home, Sanzo," she whispered to his terrible face. He drew back his lips and said, "Get away. Let me alone."

"I want to go home."

"Then go! Go on, do you think I need you? Go on, get out!" He tried to push her away, only striking her knee. Lisha went, and waited for him at the side of the drive outside the garden. When he passed her she held her breath, and when he was a good way past her she began to follow him, trying to walk soundlessly. The rain had started, thin drops slanting from a low, quiet sky.

Sanzo did not have his stick. He strode along boldly at first, as he did when he walked with her, but then began to slow down, evidently losing his nerve. He got along all right for a while, and once she heard him whistling his jig-tune through his teeth. Once off the Hill, in the noisier streets where he could not hear echoes, he began to hesitate, lost his bearings and took a wrong turn. Lisha followed close behind him. People stared at both of them. He stopped short at last, and she heard him ask of no one, "Is this Bargay Street?"

A man approaching him stared at him and then answered, "No, you're way off." He took Sanzo's arm and headed him back the right way, with directions, and questions about was he blind, was it a mill accident or the war. Sanzo went off, but before he had gone a block he stopped again and stood there. Lisha caught up with him and took his arm in silence. He was breathing very hard, like an exhausted runner.

"Lisha?"

"Yes. Come on."

But at first he could not move at all, could not take a step.

They went on, slowly, though the rain was getting thicker. When they reached their building he put out his hand to the entranceway, touching the bricks; with that as reassurance he turned to her and said, "Don't come again."