"Elizabeth is leaving," and it meant nothing at all. Impossible. But while she sat motionless on the bed, seeing Elizabeth's bright silk scarves disappear one by one into the yawning suitcase, she knew, but her mind could not comprehend. And she felt what was almost a caricature of grief rush in to fill the griefless, wordless vacuum.

It was nothing at all like the dream, the dream that of late had broken her sleep and sent her at midnight into the toilet to smoke endless cigarettes. Months ago she had begun dreaming it. It was always the same: the street, closed off at the near end by an ornate iron fence; the colonial row houses, like Georgetown or the Village, but fallen into middle class drabness; ashcans on the sidewalk; stone steps; a spring afternoon and Elizabeth, wearing a tan gabardine, walking away from her. The breeze caught her light straight hair and lifted it gently. The risen sun touched its excellence with gold.

That was all. It was a very simple dream. The only thing of interest was the fence, and the street itself. But it was all so clear, so detailed that she had always been sure it would be that way.

That it would end some way, she had never doubted. As she had said to Elizabeth, just a few months before, "I'm not one of those romantic people who thinks love lasts forever. We can't be Tristan and Iseult . . ." And Elizabeth had nodded consent.

Her mind turned back to the afternoon's conversation. She had been trying not to think of it. Now she did, her hands groped on the nightstand for a cigarette. No matches. Could she ask Elizabeth where they were? What nonsense this all was. What would happen if she were to walk over to her, if she were to take her in her arms again and kiss that hair, that proud delicate neck? And say, and say, just say There was someone else for Elizabeth now, someone, she guessed, who was young and handsome. She had seen a snapshot lying on the dresser, but it was badly blurred; not so blurred, however, that she could not sense the graceful slender strength of the boyish body, clad in a light shirt, a slim dark skirt. Elizabeth had told her in the afternoon that the change of apartment was "so much more convenient for her work." On the table beside the cigarettes was a card, and on it a strange name, an address only blocks away, a telephone number. She tried to imagine herself dialing the number, holding the receiver, politely asking to speak to Elizabeth. Why not? She herself had always said that a lover should be free to leave, that there must be no promises between them, that new experiences kept one fresh.

A fly buzzed impatiently against the inside of the window. I am getting old, she thought. Very old. But forty isn't old. It mustn't be. She smoothed the spread under her hand. She would be alone now. But how long? How could there be anyone else?

The click of the catch on the suitcase seemed terribly loud in the room. It mustn't happen this way. Oh God. She would speak, she would, all the great, blind, groping, lovely words that she had never spoken-never spoken but once, to someone years before. "Elizabeth?" Her voice shook and she struggled to control it. "Elizabeth." It had sounded to her almost like a shout.

The girl across the room turned, and put the suitcase on the floor. For an instant their eyes met, matching pain for pain.

"What is it?"

"Do you . . . Do you have a match?"