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 what had happened, and the knowledge that he had betrayed her. There was, too, an odd new fear that he might become such a man as his father. It was born in that cold, gray light, of a sudden knowledge that deep inside him lay sleeping all the weaknesses, all the sensuality, of such a man. After what had happened in the night, he saw suddenly that he might come like his father to live in a shallow world that shut out all else. He was afraid suddenly, and ashamed, for he had been guilty of a sin which his father must have committed a hundred times.

Yet he had, too, an odd new sense of peace, a soothing, physical, animal sort of peace, that seemed to have had its beginnings months ago, in the moments of delirium when he had wanted to live only because he could not die without knowing such an experience as had come to him in the night. It was, he supposed, Nature herself who had demanded this of him. And now she had rewarded him with this sense of completeness. Nature, he thought, had meant his children to be Mary's children, too; and now that couldn't be. . . unless. . . unless Naomi died.

It was a wicked thought that kept stealing back upon him. It lay in hiding at the back of his mind, even in the last precious moments before Mary had left, when she stood beside the stove making the coffee. He had thought again and again, "If only Naomi died . . . we could be like this forever." Watching her, he had thought, despite all his will to the contrary, of what love had been with Naomi and what with Mary. And he had told himself that it wasn't fair to think such things, because he had never loved Naomi: at such