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Show 304 Whether she had ever addressed him as Elder Hood in the beginning he could not remember, but it would have jarred him to hear her call him that now, or at any time since her baptism, and he knew he had not been jarred that way. Likewise-such was the coerciveness of habit-it would have felt like a dangerous familiarity if she had called him Lorin. He could not think of anything else she might have called him in the meantime; she must, then, have never addressed him by name at all during all the past months. For his part he was damned, he decided, if he was going to call her Sister Kline now, but he was fearful of the alternative. While his trip over here alone was not in the strict sense innocent, he was by no means sure what exactly he had expected to do. His heartbeat had not steadied itself since he had left Sorenson in the hospital, but that didn't necessarily mean he was going to do something drastic. He had once seen a dog straining at a leash and barking murderously at an enemy until the leash had slipped, whereupon the dog had turned and slunk off, its tail between its legs, glancing back fearfully at the enemy. Being suddenly laid open to a choice you never expected to have to make took your breath away and made small spots of light bash around in front of your eyes. It would help define things, he suspected, if they had something they could call each other. "Did I tell you Richard was in Detroit?" she asked artlessly. "I think you mentioned it. Yes." "So here we are talking about our sex lives and neither one of us with a chaperon." She doubled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. "Does that mean you'd better go?" "Probably." "Listen, would you just stop playing a role long enough to t e l l me what you're thinking?" |