Vinson was sitting at the kitchen table, tracing the pattern of the plastic cloth. Christine went and stood before him at the end of the table, like a prisoner before a judge.
"Well?" she asked wearily. "Now what?"
"Nothing," he said without looking up. "I knew this already."
"You "knewT
"Yes, I knew. Chet Staples, a civilian who works in the Navy Department, told me he'd seen you with this man at a party, and — oh, some of the things he'd heard. Chet's the kind of guy who likes to break that sort of news."
"Why didn't you tell me you knew?"
"I was waiting for you to tell me about it."
"And if I never had?"
"I knew you would, Christine. You're honest."
"I'm not honest!" she said passionately. "How can you say that after what I've done to you? How can you be so — so calm about this, Vin? What's wrong with you? Don't you care?"
He looked over her head out of the kitchen window where the tulip tree held out bare branches to a cold drizzle of rain. As if he were speaking to himself, he said: "111 leave it to you to guess how much I care."
"This is the end then — isn't it? We can't go on together with this between us."
"We couldn't have gone on with this as a secret between us.
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I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't told me. But you have, and so ... No, this isn't the end. Could be it's the beginning of something a bit better for us?" He put it as a question, looking at her with a shy pleading, like a child that does not know if it is going to be praised or scolded.
"Could be?" Christine felt her face lifting in a smile. As Vinson rose to move towards her, the front door bell struck him rigid, his kiss arrested in mid air.
"My God - the Admiral!"
"Let them ring. Let them think we're out, or dead, or — "
"For Christ's sake, Christine!" Vinson gripped her arm hard and turned her towards the door. "Get upstairs at once and make yourself look like something. Don't you understand? It's the Admiral!"
Christine kissed him lightly and picked up the skirts of her dressing gown. "Yes dear," she said, and ran upstairs smiling, as the bell pealed again, and a hand that could only be Mrs. Hamer's pounded the brass knocker on the door.
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The Nightingales Are Singing Page 38