David sent for her, but she wrote him a little note, formal and
restrained. She would come in a day or two, but now she must get her
bearings. He was, to know that she was not angry, and felt it all for
the best, and she was very lovingly his, Elizabeth.

She knew now that she would eventually marry Wallie Sayre if only to get
away from pity. He would have to know the truth about her, that she did
not love any one; not even her father and her mother. She pretended to
care for fear of hurting them, but she was actually frozen quite hard.
She did not believe in love. It was a terrible thing, to be avoided
by any one who wanted to get along, and this avoiding was really quite
simple. One simply stopped feeling.

On the Sunday after she had come to this comfortable knowledge she sat
in the church as usual, in the choir stalls, and suddenly she hated the
church. She hated the way the larynx of Henry Wallace, the tenor, stuck
out like a crabapple over his low collar. She hated the fat double chin
of the bass. She hated the talk about love and the certain rewards of
virtue, and the faces of the congregation, smug and sure of salvation.

She went to the choir master after the service to hand in her
resignation. And did not, because it had occurred to her that it might
look, to use Nina's word, as though she were crushed. Crushed! That was
funny.