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enough. I would like to live downtown—after all, I was born on Washington Square. And you could keep your name, you could have your own study.”
    â€œThank you,” she said, but he missed her irony.
    â€œWe could have a different kind of marriage, darling. And if you didn’t want children, we wouldn’t have them.”
    â€œBut you want children.”
    â€œI want you more.”
    â€œWhat about my lecture tours? I’ve given them up lately, but I plan to return to them.”
    Ned struggled for a moment. “Of course. As long as they aren’t too long.” He grinned charmingly. “I couldn’t bear to be without you.”
    Columbine looked out into the night. She pictured the life Ned described, and she saw that it could please her. She could feel happiness tug at her, make a soft bed for her to lie down in, to breathe deeply and slowly. She would never wake up at three o’clock in the morning, gasping in panic at her life. She would sleep the sleep of the contented, next to her husband.
    Wearily, Columbine stopped the train of her thought. She’d been married. She knew it could not hold off despair, or uncertainty, or fear. She knew it could imprison. She knew it could bind. Perhaps Ned was right, perhaps they could forge a different kind of marriage. But the thing she most feared about marriage to Ned he could not guard against. Marriage would make her weak. Already, her life with Ned had made her soft. Where had all her anxiety come from during the past months, but the knowledge that she was less than she could be?
    â€œNed, I’ve tried to explain this before,” she said. She couldn’t look at him, so she stared outside at the blackness. “You think I’m a strong woman. You don’t know how weak I am. Just in the past three years of being with you I’ve changed. I work less. I think less. There isn’t an edge to me anymore, Ned. I’ve grown soft. And it isn’t your fault, God knows. It’s me. I have a taste for luxury and sloth, for love and lightness, and I succumb.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with those things?”
    â€œNothing except that they should be balanced with hard work. And I haven’t been working very hard since I met you, Ned.”
    â€œIt seems to me you’ve been working all the time,” he grumbled, and she had to laugh.
    Her smile slowly faded as she stared out the window. “Maybe to you, I was. Maybe that’s the problem.”
    â€œBut I told you I would change my life. Then you, too, would change to meet it. We wouldn’t dine out, we would ignore society. I forced you to go to those awful dinners because I felt some kind of ridiculous responsibility to keep up the family name after my father died. I listened to pressure from my family when I shouldn’t have. But Columbine, I was wrong. Can’t you see that we can change?”
    She turned, her back to the sill. “Why can’t you change your life first, and then we’ll see? Why can’t we decide in a year, or six months? If you really mean it, Ned, if you really want your life to be different, then you’ll change it, not for me, but for yourself.”
    He was already shaking his head. “I can’t wait another year.”
    â€œAnd I can’t marry you now!” she cried. She raised her hands pleadingly. “I’m so sorry, Ned, but I can’t. Please understand.”
    He stared across the room at her, and his eyes filled. She looked so distraught, so beautiful, with her gold hair spilling out of her pins and her dark eyes soft with misery. “I’ll never love anyone but you,” he said. “But you’re killing me. It’s not enough for me anymore, Columbine. I want you at the head of my table. I want you in my bed. I want to go to sleep at night next to you. I can’t help that.”
    Tears were running down her face now. “I’m sorry.” She