"And, I gather, she was upset?"
"Much more than I'd ever thought she'd be."
"So what did you do about it?"
Will shook his head. "This is where it begins to get complicated," he said. "I had no intention of giving up my cocktail hours with Rachel; but I hated myself for making Molly so unhappy. At the same time I hated her for being unhappy. I resented her suffering and the love that had made her suffer; I felt that they were unfair, a kind of blackmail to force me to give up my innocent fun with Rachel. By loving me so much and being so miserable about what I was doing-what she really forced me to do-she was putting pressure on me, she was trying to restrict my freedom. But meanwhile she was genuinely unhappy; and though I hated her for blackmailing me with her unhappiness, I was filled with pity for her. Pity," he repeated, "not compassion. Compassion is suffering-with, and what I wanted at all costs was to spare myself the pain her suffering caused me, and avoid the painful sacrifices by which I could put an end to her suffering. Pity was my answer, being sorry for her from the outside, if you see what I mean-sorry for her as a spectator, an aesthete, a connoisseur in excruciations. And this aesthetic pity of mine was so intense, every time her unhappiness came to a head, that I could almost mistake it for love. Almost, but never quite. For when I expressed my pity in physical tenderness (which I did because that was the only way of putting a temporary stop to her unhappiness and to the pain her unhappi-ness was inflicting on me), that tenderness was always frustrated 'i; before it could come to its natural consummation. Frustrated because, by temperament, she was only a Sister of Mercy, not a wife. And yet, on every level but the sensual, she loved me with a total commitment-a commitment that called for an answering commitment on my part. But I wouldn't commit myself, maybe I genuinely couldn't. So instead of being grateful for her self-giving, I resented it. It made claims on me, claims that I refused to acknowledge. So there we were, at the end of every crisis, back at the beginning of the old drama-the drama of a love incapable of sensuality self-committed to a sensuality incapable of love and evoking strangely mixed responses of guilt and exasperation, of pity and resentment, sometimes of real hatred (but always with an undertone of remorse), the whole accompanied by, contra- puntal to, a succession of furtive evenings with my little curly-headed painter."
"I hope at least they were enjoyable," said Susila.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Only moderately. Rachel could never forget that she was an intellectual. She had a way of asking what one thought of Piero di Cosimo at the most inopportune moments. The real enjoyment and of course the real agony-I never experienced them until Babs appeared on the scene."
"When was that?"
"Just over a year ago. In Africa."
"Africa?"
"I'd been sent there by Joe Aldehyde."
"That man who owns newspapers?"
""And, all the rest. He was married to Molly's aunt Eileen. An exemplary family man, I may add. That's why he's so serenely convinced of his own righteousness, even when he's engaged in the most nefarious financial operations."
"And you're working for him?"
Will nodded. "That was his wedding present to Molly-a job for me on the Aldehyde papers at almost twice the salary I'd been getting from my previous employers. Princely! But then he was very fond of Molly."
"How did he react to Babs?"
"He never knew about her-never knew that there was any reason for Molly's accident."
"So he goes on employing you for your dead wife's sake?"
Will shrugged his shoulders. "The excuse," he said, "is that I have my mother to support."
"And of course you wouldn't enjoy being poor."
"I certainly wouldn't."
There was a silence.
"Well," said Susila at last, "let's get back to Africa."
"I'd been sent there to do a series on Negro Nationalism. Not to mention a little private hanky-panky in the business line lor Uncle Joe. It was on the plane, flying home from Nairobi. I found myself sitting next to her."
"Next to the young woman you couldn't have liked less?"
"Couldn't have liked less," he repeated, "or disapproved of more. But if you're an addict you've got to have your dope-the dope that you know in advance is going to destroy you."
"It's a funny thing," she said reflectively, "but in Pala we have liardly any addicts."
"Not even sex addicts?"
"The sex addicts are also person addicts. In other words, they're lovers."
"But even lovers sometimes hate the people they love."
"Naturally. Because I always have the same name and the same nose and eyes, it doesn't follow that I'm always the same woman. Recognizing that fact and reacting to it sensibly-that's part of the Art of Loving."
As succinctly as he could, Will told her the rest of the story. It was the same story, now that Babs had come on the scene, as it had been before-the same but much more so. Babs had been Rachel raised, so to speak, to a higher power-Rachel squared, Rachel to the rath. And the unhappiness that, because of Babs, he had inflicted upon Molly was proportionately greater than anything she had had to suffer on account of Rachel. Proportionately greater, too, had been his own exasperation, his own resentful sense of being blackmailed by her love and suffering, his own remorse and pity, his own determination, in spite of the remorse and the pity, to go on getting what he wanted, what he hated himself for wanting, what he resolutely refused to do without. And meanwhile Babs had become more demanding, was claiming ever more and more of his time-time not only in the strawberry-pink alcove, but also outside, in restaurants, and nightclubs, at her horrible friends' cocktail parties, on weekends in the country. "Just you and me, darling," she would say, "all alone together." All alone together in an isolation that gave him the opportunity to plumb the almost unfathomable depths of her mindlessness and vulgarity. But through all his boredom and distaste, all his moral and intellectual repugnance, the craving persisted. After one of those dreadful weekends, he was as hopelessly a Babs addict as he had been before. And on her side, on her own Sister-of-Mercy level, Molly had remained, in spite of everything, no less hopelessly a Will Farnaby addict. Hopelessly so far as he was concerned-for his one wish was that she should love him less and allow him to go to hell in peace. But, so far as Molly herself was concerned, the addiction was always and irre-pressibly hopeful. She never ceased to expect the transfiguring miracle that would change him into the kind, unselfish, loving Will Farnaby whom (in the teeth of all the evidence, all the repeated disappointments) she stubbornly insisted on regarding as his true self. It was only in the course of that last fatal interview, only when (stifling his pity and giving free rein to his resentment of her blackmailing unhappiness) he had announced his intention of leaving her and going to live with Babs-it was only then that hope had finally given place to hopelessness. "Do you mean it, Will-do you really mean it?" "I really mean it." It was in hopelessness, in utter hopelessness, that she had walked out to the car, had driven away into the rain-into her death. At the funeral, when the coffin was lowered into the grave, he had promised himself that he would never see Babs again. Never, never, never again. That evening, while he was sitting at his desk trying to write an article on "What's Wrong with Youth," trying not to remember the hospital, the open grave, and his own responsibility for everything that had happened, he was startled by the shrill buzzing of the doorbell. A belated message of condolence, no doubt. . . He had opened, and there, instead of the telegram, was Babs-dramatically without makeup and all in black.