Free Waltz Into Darkness by Cornell Woolrich Page B

you go. And now I'll be all alone the
rest of the livelong day."
    "What
will you do with yourself?" he asked in compunction, with the
sudden--and only mometary--realization of a male that she too had a
day to get through somehow, that she continued to go on during his
absence. "Go shopping, I suppose," he suggested
indulgently.
    Her
face brightened for a moment, as though he had read her heart.
"Yes-!" Then it dimmed again. "No--" she said,
forlorn. Instantly his attention was held fast. "Why not? What's
the matter?"
    "Oh,
nothing--" She turned her head away, she didn't want to tell
him.
    He
took the point of her chin and turned it back again. "Julia, I
want to know. Tell me. What is it?" He touched her shoulder.
    She
tried to smile, wanly. Her eyes looked out the door.
    He
had to guess finally.
    "Is
it money ?"
    He
guessed right.
    Not
an eyelash moved, but somehow she told him. Certainly not with her
tongue.
    He
gasped, half in laughter. "Oh, my poor foolish littieJulia--I"
Instantly his coat flew open, his hand reached within. "Why, you
only have to ask, don't you know that--?"
    This
time there could be no mistaking the answer. "No--! No--! No!"
She was almost vehement about it, albeit in a pouty, petulant child's
sort of way. She even tapped her toe for emphasis. "I don't like
to ask for it. It isn't nice. I don't care if you are my own
husband. It still isn't nice. I was brought up that way, I can't
change."
    He
was smiling at her. He found her adorable. But still he didn't
understand her, which was no detraction to the first two factors.
"Then what do you want?"
    She
gave him a typically feminine answer. "I don't know." And
raised her eyes thoughtfully, as if trying to scan the problem in her
own mind, find a solution somehow.
    "But
you do want to go shopping, don't you? I can see you do by your look.
And yet you don't want me to give you the money for it."
    "Isn't
there some other way?" she appealed to him helplessly, as if
willing to extricate herself from her own scruples, if only she could
be shown how without foregoing them.
    "I
could slip it under your plate, unasked, for you to find at
breakfast," he smirked.
    She
saw no humor in the suggestion, shook her head absently, still busy
pondering the problem, finger to tooth edge. Suddenly she brightened,
looked at him. "Couldn't I have a little account of my own--?
Like you have, only-- Oh, just a little one, tiny--small--"
    Then
she decided against that, before he could leap to give his consent,
as he had been about to.
    "No,
that'd be too much bother, just for hats and gloves and things--"
About to fall into disheartened perplexity again, she recovered, once
more lighted up as a new variant occurred to her. "Or better
still, couldn't I just share yours with you?" She spread out her
hands in triumphant discovery. "That'd be simpler yet. Just call
it ours instead. It's there already."
    He
crouched his shoulders down low. He slapped his thigh sharply. "By
George ! Will that make you happy? Is that all it will take? God
bless your trusting little heart I We'll do it!"
    She
flew into his arms like a shot, with a squeal for a firing-report.
"Oh, Lou, I'll feel so big, so important! Can I, really? And
can I even write my own checks, like you do?"
    To
love someone, is to give, and to want to give more still, no
questions asked. To stop and think, then that is not to love, any
more.
    "Your
own checks, in your own handwriting, in your own purse. I'll meet you
at the bank at eleven. Will that time suit you?"
    She
only pressed her cheek to his.
    "Will
you know how to find it?"
    She
only pressed her cheek to his again, around on the other side of his
face.
    She
allowed him to precede her there, as was her womanly prerogative. But
once he had arrived, she kept him waiting no more than the fractional
part of a minute. In fact so precipitately did she enter, on his very
heels, that it could almost have been thought she had been waiting at
some nearby vantage point simply to allow him