East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

Samuel glanced at him. “That’s right,” he said. “Set your teeth in it. How we do defend a wrongness! Shall I tell you what you do, so you will not think you invented it? When you go to bed and blow out the lamp— then she stands in the doorway with a little light behind her, and you can see her nightgown stir. And she comes sweetly to your bed, and you, hardly breathing, turn back the covers to receive her and move your head over on the pillow to make room for her head beside yours. You can smell the sweetness of her skin, and it smells like no other skin in the world—” “Stop it,” Adam shouted at him. “Goddam you, stop it! Stop nosing over my life! You’re like a coyote sniffing around a dead cow.” “The way I know,” Samuel said softly, “is that one came to me that selfsame way—night after month after year, right to the very now. And I think I should have double-bolted my mind and sealed off my heart against her, but I did not. All of these years I’ve cheated Liza. I’ve given her an untruth, a counterfeit, and I’ve saved the best for those dark sweet hours. And now I could wish that she may have had some secret caller too. But I’ll never know that. I think she would maybe have bolted her heart shut and thrown the key to hell.”