RECONCILIATION

The night outside was still and starry. The living room of the house was tense. The man and the woman in it stood a few feet apart, glaring hatred at each other.

The man^'s fists were clenched as though he wished to use them, and the woman^'s fingers were spread and curved like claws, but each held his arms rigidly at his sides. They were being civilized.

Her voice was low. ^"I hate you," she said. "I^'ve come to hate everything about you.^"

"Of course you do," he said. "Now that you've bled me white with your extravagances, now that I can^'t any longer buy every silly thing that your selfish little heart—^"

^"It isn^'t that. You know it isn^'t that. If you still treated me like you used to, you know that money wouldn^'t matter. It^'s that —that woman.^"

He sighed as one sighs who hears a thing for the ten thousandth time. ^"You know,^" he said, "that she didn^'t mean a thing to me, not a damn thing. You drove me to—what I did. And even if it didn^'t mean a damn thing, I^'m not sorry. I^'d do it again.

^"You will do it again, as often as you get a chance. But I won^'t be around to be humiliated by it. Humiliated before my friends—^"

^"Friends! Those vicious bitches whose nasty opinions matter more to you than—^"

Blinding flash and searing heat. They knew, and each of them took a sightless step toward the other with groping arms; each held desperately tight to the other in the second that remained to them, the final second that was all that mattered now.

"O my darling I love—"

^"John, John, my sweet—"

The shock wave came.

Outside in what had been the quiet night a red flower grew and yearned toward the canceled sky.