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Show ?S giving in to them mindlessly and irresponsibly, and she legretted the loss. She began to leave to catch her streetcar five or ten minutes early so that strolling she could listen to the trumpets of leaf and flower. After work though it was cold and she leaned into the wind blowing from the Lake, hurrying from Cottage Grove down 59th to Dorchester, to their apartment and Milt. But one night greeted her as soft and balmy as the springs of her memory, as scented and inviting as the best of her past which she had loved and lost, and as she moved through it even her tired muscles were pleasant to her, a part of the world's good. Now An American Dilemma was only an impediment weighing her down, a burden heavy in her arms and out of place in die glorious moonless star-studded night, and she wished fervently to be free of it, wished she were already free of it. And diat experience to come in which she met herself, which she had both longed for and feared, seemed hardly important now, juvenile even. Didn't she know herself in her desires?-to be Milt's wife and the modier of their children, to write poetry, to collaborate witli him on a study, perhaps significant, maybe even as meaningful as Myrdal's. Yes, and to secure for her children, and for herself and Milt, too, the best life she morally could. In that future was her self, her hope, her life, all of it clear and certain, and as she dreamed of it the whining cars over on the Midway reached her ear incredibly remote, no real part of her spring world, while above her the stars seemed to brush the tree tops. The man's footsteps broke in upon that hope, persistent, real, not back far enough to be ignored and not gaining to pass. She resisted the impluse to turn and look and immediately felt better: after all, it was early and she was passing right by the University, by one of the most civilized places on earth. Still, she told herself that under die next light she would glance back, that she should, but then she didn't, as if not looking were a point of honor. But in the darkness of the next block, under the dark trees and beside the high dark silent cold stone walls on her left, she regretted her decision. Now the footfalls absorbed her, stopping off all communion with the spring night, and slightly, she hoped unobtrusively, she leaned forward to lengthen her stride. His steps quickened to keep pace. She walked faster and when his steps began to gain she glanced back, saw a shadowed form, knew he was intent upon her and began to run. Longlegged and lean, faster than most girls, still she was a girl and he a man swifter to catch and dilemma 169 |