AT NINE O‘CLOCK THAT MORNING PETER KEATING WAS PACING the floor of his room, his door locked. He forgot that it was nine o’clock and that Catherine was waiting for him. He had made himself forget her and everything she implied.

The door of his room was locked to protect him from his mother. Last night, seeing his furious restlessness, she had forced him to tell her the truth. He had snapped that he was married to Dominique Francon, and he had added some sort of explanation about Dominique going out of town to announce the marriage to some old relative. His mother had been so busy with gasps of delight and questions, that he had been able to answer nothing and to hide his panic; he was not certain that he had a wife and that she would come back to him in the morning.

He had forbidden his mother to announce the news, but she had made a few telephone calls last night, and she was making a few more this morning, and now their telephone was ringing constantly, with eager voices asking: “Is it true?” pouring out sounds of amazement and congratulations. Keating could see the news spreading through the city in widening circles, by the names and social positions of the people who called. He refused to answer the telephone. It seemed to him that every corner of New York was flooded with celebration and that he alone, hidden in the watertight caisson of his room, was cold and lost and horrified.

It was almost noon when the doorbell rang, and he pressed his hands to his ears, not to know who it was and what they wanted. Then he heard his mother’s voice, so shrill with joy that it sounded embarrassingly silly: “Petey darling, don’t you want to come out and kiss your wife?” He flew out into the hall, and there was Dominique, removing her soft mink coat, the fur throwing to his nostrils a wave of the street’s cold air touched by her perfume. She was smiling correctly, looking straight at him, saying: “Good morning, Peter.”

He stood drawn up, for one instant, and in that instant he relived all the telephone calls and felt the triumph to which they entitled him. He moved as a man in the arena of a crowded stadium, he smiled as if he felt the ray of an arc light playing in the creases of his smile, and he said: “Dominique my dear, this is like a dream come true!”

The dignity of their doomed understanding was gone and their marriage was what it had been intended to be.

She seemed glad of it. She said: “Sorry you didn’t carry me over the threshold, Peter.” He did not kiss her, but took her hand and kissed her arm above the wrist, in casual, intimate tenderness.

He saw his mother standing there, and he said with a dashing gesture of triumph: “Mother—Dominique Keating.”

He saw his mother kissing