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will never bring himself to publicize his grievance. Cass, on her part, realized that Eric will never, really care for her of any woman; she realizes, also, that she cannot beat to leave her two sons. Richard beats her to vent his blasted pride, and Cass meets Eric at the Museum of Modern Art to say farewell. The novel leaves the Silenskis tragically unhappy in spite of their material well-being.

Vivaldo bids an affectionate farewell to Eric when Eric leaves for his museum valedictory with Cass, and then returns to his own apartment and to Ida, who voluntarily confesses to her affair with Ellie. Vivaldo forgives her for respasses which he had known about all along, thus practising an ethic which was revealed to him earlier, in the company on Eric: "Perhaps you can begin to become admirable, if, when you're hurt, you don't try to pay back...Do you know what I mean? Perhaps if you can accept the pain that almost kills you, you can become better." (538) He identifies him so completely with Ida and her ambitions and her suffering that the distance between them evaporates: "...his heart began to beat with a newer, stonier anguish, which destroyed the distance called pity and placed him, very nearly, in her body..." (584) Ida on her part accepts his sympathy and love, and offers her own: "'...I wouldn't have given you such a hard time, if I didn't love you. That's why I had to tell you everything.'" (588) Their story ends with the colored girl and the white boy, too exhausted to make love, locked in each other's arms, with Ida having assumed the mother role so natural for a woman: "Her long fingers stroked his back, and he began, slowly, with a horrible, strangling sound, to weep, for she was stroking his innoncence out of him." (589) The