OWEN CAREY
Their relations remained what they had been in the beginning. Carey made the mistake of being demonstrative toward her only once—when he bought her an old amber necklace with his first check from Fair Anne Hathaway—and she recoiled from his attempted caress into a morbid seizure of half-idiotic animal abjectness. He could not reach the source of this morbidity. He did not know how. He had to wait. And he waited nearly two years before he found his solution.
13
Then, one summer night, when they were returning from a walk in Central Park for by this time he had persuaded her to come out with him occasionally, for a little exercise, after dark—a furtive-looking man passed and stared at her, as they crossed Columbus Avenue on the way home; and she clutched at Carey's arm, making a noise in her throat as if she were strangling.
Carey caught her. "What's the matter? What is it?"
She gasped, "It's him!" and tried to run.
Carey held her back. "Wait a minute. Go slow. Who is it?"
But she could only whisper: "It's him! It's him!"
The man had stopped in the street and stood watching them.
"Good!" Carey said. "I've been hoping he'd turn up. Go slow. If it's he—he'll follow us."
[ 35 ]
