I smiled gently at her, "Eve leads a full life I think, Sel."

"Just the same, we've met the nicest young lawyer. Sophisticated and all that too."

I looked at my cousin and felt my resolution to tell them stick in my abdomen. Suddenly it all seemed very remote and alien; something that might,after all, in spite of beards and Negro equality, turn the simple good face into something hostile and painful and yes, frightened. It might be a terrible mistake. But Sel was. getting awfully carried away. Eve wouldn't think that part was funny when I told her. Eve refused to give the world any rights about it. If somehow Sel should ever reach the point of saying these things to Eve, it would be awful. Eve was so impatient and proud, so very proud. She accepted a lot because of me, because I asked it. But she hated presumptions. She was bored and contemptuous of pretenses that had to be carried that far. Eve was proud and courageous when she had to be, even intolerant. Yes, I thought with sudden tenderness. Eve was very proud and very lovely. So lovely I looked at the clock again.

"What does she do anyhow, sleep around a lot?" my cousin said in a flash of Great Warrington candor which offended me to the roots of my hair. My reply was like fire in my mouth.

"Really, Sel, does one have to be either a nun or a prostitute?"

I felt Dave looking at me and out of habit my mind raced to catch up with the sense of what I had just said, to analyze and measure the tone and depth of my defensiveness. It was alright. I decided, and relaxed.

"Well, she always seems to be out with some guy or other when she's invited here." Sel said.

I had cooled nicely and answered carelessly, "I'm sure I don't know darling. we seldom discuss our personal loves with each other. We're just not that close." The truth of everything Eve had ever said about it closed in on me heavily. The lies told for one reason sooner or later gave rise to suspicions of something else. She had told me that a thousand times. I looked down at my plate.

"Well," Sel went on, "the things you hear about these actresses. And a good looking girl like that doesn't look like someone interested in celibacy to me.

"Somebody want coffee? Sel? Rita?" Dave was standing with the pot poised above us. My eyes met his and suddenly searched them frankly. I tried to imagine those kind, warm eyes when they would know. Then, I wondered with a sinking feeling, if there would ever be such a time. I felt no such courage.

"Yes, I'll have some, thank you, Dave." My voice sounded to me like the whisper of indecision itself.

Dave bent over the table to pour. I was a quarter to eleven and the final curtain would be going down soon. Then she would be back stage in the dressing room alone. Her face would relax from the tensions and problems of Medea for the first time in three hours. She would sit in front of the mirror and take off the make-up slowly, very slowly. Eve did things so slowly.

"I mean," my cousin was saying, "it's spring. People are supposed to be falling in love all over the place. Of course Rita always looks like she's in love. Look at her."

"Maybe she's in love with life," Dave said pleasantly.

I thought of my face as it looked in the mirror that morning. Sel had forgotten how it had looked three years before, when all the emptiness of that first New York still rode in my eyes.

year