she did. Then for an instant they would look full at one another: the old woman cold, quiet; the girl weary
spent, her young face, her dark-dilated eyes, filled with <hatred> impotent hatred. Then she would go on and enter
her room and lean for a time against the closed door, hearing the grandmother's light click off, presently, some-
times crying quietly and hopelessly, whispering, "The old bitch. The old bitch." Then this would pass. She would
undress and stand looking at <herself> her face in the mirror, examining the mouth now pale and heavy,
flattened (so she would think); weary and dulled with kissing, thinking "My God. Why do I do it? What
is the matter with me?' thinking of how tomorrow she would face the old woman again with the ghost of dead kissing
heavy on her mouth like so many bruises, with a feeling of the pointlessness and emptiness of <her> life more profound
than the rage or the sense of persecution.

Then one p.m. at the house of a girl friend she met Paul de Montigny. He was from Louisiana. <He was dark, his
hair was crisp;>
[margin: <and close as a knitted cap;>]
his eyes were a [illegible] <hazel> hazel. There was a thickness about his mouth. She did not notice this the
detail at all. Perhaps she could not have> After he was gone, the 2 girls were alone. Now they looked at one another
quietly, like 2 swordsmen, with veiled eyes.

"So you like him, do you?" the friend said.

"Like who?" Elly said. "I didn't notice anyone in particular

"Oh yeah:" the friend said; she was also 18. "You didn't notice his hair, then. Like a knitted cap. And his
lips. Blubber almost." Elly looked at her. <"Wasn't your grandmother from Louisiana? Ask her about him.">

"What are you talking about?" Elly said.

"Nothing," the other said. She glanced toward the hall, listened a moment, then she <lit a> took a cigarette from the front of
her dress and lit it. "I dont know anything about it. I just heard about it. How his uncle killed a man that
accused him of having nigger blood."

"You're lying," Elly said.

The other expelled smoke. "All right. Ask your grandmother about his family. She used to live in Louisiana."

"What about you?" Elly said. "You had him in your house."

"I wasn't hid in the cloak closet, kissing him, though."

"O yeah?" Elly said with [thin fury?]. "Maybe you couldn't."

That night she and Paul sat on the shadowed veranda. But this time when 11 struck, there was [little a bit?] and cool and withdrawn about him; she was the one who spoke now in tense and urgent whispers. "No. No! Go. Please. Please."

"Oh, come on. What are you afraid of?"

"Yes!" she said. "I'm afraid."

"Tomorrow, then?"

No. Not ever again."

"Yes," he said. "Tomorrow."

This time she did not look in when she passed her grandmother's door. Neither did she lean against her own to