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hold of anyone. “Let’s go to the park,” she suggested, but he waved this aside; she sensed that he was feeling aggrieved again. For a minute he went and stood by the window, staring at the crowds on the street; then he fetched a glass from the bathroom and dug the bottle of Scotch out of his suitcase.
    “I wish you wouldn’t,” she said timidly.
    “Why? Are you afraid I’ll climb onto my horse and start a pogrom?”
    “That isn’t funny.”
    “She is not amused,” he muttered, splashing some Scotch into the glass. He took a gulp. “You seem to care a lot more for all these people than you do for me.”
    “Of course I don’t. It was only that he seemed so terribly sad. Sad and gallant. You don’t know what he was like before.”
    “Right. And Otto is like a brother to you, and you seemed awfully fond of Rolf too.”
    “I wasn’t,” she said weakly. “He was just odd, like you said.” She could not explain the painful tenderness she had felt for them, her sense of knowing them as she would never know anyone else. She could not tell him how alien he seemed in comparison.
    He came over, still holding the glass, and started nuzzling her neck. “I’m the one you’re supposed to love. So show me, damn it. Show me you love me.” His tongue moved across her skin, leaving a sticky trail. She shut her eyes, willing herself to feel the heat in her stomach, so that everything could come right between them again. But rage was mounting in her; she had to fight back the impulse to put her hands on his chest and shove him away.
    Now he was unbuttoning her dress, a soft green silk thing she had bought for the trip. She kept waiting for him to notice that she was not responding, but though she kept her arms rigid by her sides, his hands went on moving greedily, onto her breasts. A faint odor of mildew wafted up from the carpet.She remembered, with a rush of shame, that Dr. Joseftal had not even wished her well for her marriage; he had not said he was pleased for her. He would go back and say to his wife, Louisa Straus is here with a man who is not her husband, and they would exchange troubled glances, both of them thinking of their own daughter.
    Phillip had unhooked her bra now, he was brushing his hands in circular movements over her nipples.
    “Stop,” she said, clutching at his hands. “Please stop.”
    He drew away from her, blinking, his face puffy. Then he sat abruptly on one of the plaid beds. “Christ,” he said; he reached for the bottle on the night table but pushed it away.
    Stealthily, she ran her tongue around her mouth; she snaked her hands around her back and hooked her bra back into place. “Don’t be angry at me. Please. I’m sorry.”
    “Are you? I doubt it. I don’t think you’re at all sorry.” Rising from the bed, he went and rummaged through the jumble of objects she had left on the dresser, picking up first one thing and then another. He fingered the keys to his house in London and put them in his pocket. “I’m going out for a bit. I’ll see you later.” She heard him open the closet and shut it again, and then the sound of the room door closing, not a slam but an oiled click.
    Five minutes later, panic had set in: she was crouching in front of the dresser, rifling through the drawers for his passport. If it wasn’t there, if he had taken it with him, it would mean he was never coming back. She heard the elevator stop on their floor and stood without breathing, squeezing her eyes shut, but the footsteps went in theother direction. Then she remembered him putting their passports in the tiny safe next to the bed, and knelt beside it, twirling the knob frantically. But there was no way she could open it.
    Since they had been in New York, she had forgotten that everything depended on his loving her, she had no right to refuse him. If he walked in now, she would run to him, holding out her arms. “I don’t know what came over me,” she’d say. “How could I have been so