"Then you've no religious, or ethnic objections to my opening your present now?"

"No," I said, "but don't expect another tomorrow morning."

"We'll see about that" he said, opening the wrappings.

It was a photograph of Bernini's St. Teresa with an expensive silver frame. I knew Teresa was one of Kusaki's favorite subjects, one he had begun with William James, then going on to the autobiography of Teresa herself. I had not shared his enthusiasm, had in fact rejected St. Teresa as just a neurotic, if an energetic one.

"Eros of Thanatos," I asked.

Kusaki turned and smiled at me.

"Eros" he said, looking back at the picture, "Eros the picture and Eros the picture-giver."

I burst out laughing. "Is that the wisdom of the East?" "I'm twenty-seven, neither a boy-nor-thank God-blind!"

Kusaki smiled again and, getting up, went to the Christmas tree and took a package out from under it. Outside the snow was beating against the window. I could hear it.

The package was, evidently, a phonograph album.

I smiled and accepted it, saying, "I'll wait till tomorrow morning, after all, I'm staying over."

The voice of Callas on the phonograph had risen to some immense height. It was "Norma". I had a feeling that something unpleasant was about to happen.

"Open it now," said Kusaki.

"But then I won't have a present tomorrow," I protested.

"I'll give you another present tomorrow," he said, laying his hand on mine, "open it."

I slipped the ribbon off and undid the paper, realizing for the first time, that I was afraid of Kusaki. He was very intelligent, and one of the chief marks of his particular intellect was that he rarely wasted time or motion. Each visit he made, each remark had a purpose. And I now felt, that even his gifts this the first I had received from him-would bear this force, perhaps, more than his other actions.

I had undone the wrappings.

It was the Tristan and Isolde.

I looked at Kusaki, who was again seated on the couch, but this time-with good reason-not smiling.

He knew! When had he known?

He looked at me directly, his eyes seemed to say, "your move."

But the board seemed upset, the pieces falling on the floor, the edge of my vision, touched by that terrible darkness I had experienced so briefly earlier when I had slipped in the street. . . .

I had spent the last Christmas alone. Ronnie, who was my roommate (and lover), had gone home for the vacation. My father was dead, my mother had gone to Florida with my aunt, and although my brother and his wife had invited me to stay with them in New York, the expense of the trip there was too great, and even if I could have afforded it, the trip was purposeless. I wondered if it was being gay that separated me from the possible joys of living with my brother, his wife and their three children. I knew that for me there was only my studies and Ronnie.