.. I must--must go!" my lips trembled.
"Why, we're just getting acquainted ... I didn't mean for you to go
yet."
She rose, dropping the letters all in a heap.
She was the aggressive one now. She drew me to her quickly, "Stay ...
and I'll promise to be good to you!"
I pushed back, loathing ... loathing her and myself, but myself more,
because in spite of all my disgust, my pulses leaped quick again to
hers.
"Sit down again."
I did not listen, but stood.
"I was thinking that you would stay for supper and then we could go to
some show and after come back here and I would give you a good time."
* * * * *
I staggered out, shocked beyond belief, the last animal flush had died
out of me. All my body was ice-cold.
"Promise me you'll come again this day next week," she called after me
persistently.
She drew the door softly shut and left me reeling down the dark
corridor.
* * * * *
I could hardly speak to my father that night. I avoided him.
* * * * *
At the creeping edge of dawn I woke from a dream with a jerk as I slid
down an endless black abyss. The abyss was my bed's edge and I found
myself on the floor. When I went to rise again, I had to clutch things
to stand up. I was so weak I sat on the bed breathing heavily. I tumbled
backward into bed again and lay in a daze during which dream-objects
mixed with reality and my room walked full of people from all the books
I had read--all to evaporate as my father's face grew, from a cluster of
white foreheads and myriads of eyes, into _him_.
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