The girl’s figure, close to him as it was, seemed like a pillar of mist. “It’s lovemaking,” he thought, “just the relief of lovemaking, that saves a person’s touchy mind from these morbid thoughts. But Christie doesn’t depend on that, any more than I do. What would Jason say if he saw us now?” And then there came upon him a curious sense of shame that his mind had the power of wandering so far. “Is her mind wandering too?” he thought. “What is going on in her mind?”

He spoke to her then⁠ ⁠… to that blur that was her face in the darkness.

“As long as we see each other like this, it’ll go on being all right, won’t it, Christie?”

Her voice replied to his voice with a sound that might have been a whisper out of his own heart or might have been a cry from the other side of the world.