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Agnes Andrews would be sixty before very long, and for many years she had been obliged to wear spectacles with lenses so thick that it wasn’t easy to see the expression in her eyes: you had to rely on the smile or the frown or the patient, neutral look of her mouth. And her husband had to acknowled…

Alone in the kitchen, preparing drinks and coming to an abrupt, nervous decision that he’d better have a quick one now, here, before taking the tray into the living room, Dr. Andrews wondered once again what it was that could make him tremble in the presence of this dearest child, this particular g…

He set his empty glass on the floor and got quickly to his feet, as he always did for shouting, but he didn’t shout. Instead he peered very closely at her face, as if trying to penetrate the surface of it, and said, “My God, you really mean this, don’t you. I’ve really lost you, haven’t I. You don’…

Through the difficulties of two more years there were times of peace, times of exultant companionship and other times of exasperation and bickering, or of silence; it all seemed to settle out into what David called a good marriage.

“Hey, Susan?” he would ask now and then, affecting a boyish bash…

He hurried to the other dark bedroom, where he allowed himself just enough light from the hall for guidance.

“David?” Susan said, half asleep, turning heavily in the bedclothes. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re home.”

“Yeah,” he told her. “Oh, Jesus, baby, so am I.”

And in her arms he discovered th…