"You're sweet," she said.
Leaning out from the side of her bed, she kissed him. She
sprang up, and hastened to the window, laughing nervously, and
deploring: "I shouldn't have done that! I shouldn't! Forgive
me!" Plaintively, like a child: "Istra was so bad, so bad. Now
you must go." As she turned back to him her eyes had the peace
of an old friend's.
Because he had wished to be kind to people, because he had been
pitiful toward Goaty Zapp, Mr. Wrenn was able to understand that
she was trying to be a kindly big sister to him, and he said
"Good night, Istra," and smiled in a lively way and walked out.
He got out the smile by wrenching his nerves, for which he paid
in agony as he knelt by his bed, acknowledging that Istra would
never love him and that therefore he was not to love, would be
a fool to love, never would love her--and seeing again her white
arms softly shadowed by her green kimono sleeves.
No sight of Istra, no scent of her hair, no sound of her
always-changing voice for two days.
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