Chapter II: Part I (2)

"You _must_ go with me! I can't bear it if Papa says anything to me about Laurence! What shall I do?" Winnie dragged Mrs. Farley across the brightly swept parlor carpet and into the hall.

May had already opened the front door. Mr. and Mrs. Price stood against the light of the street, their faces in shadow. Behind them the coachman was turning the carriage away. The footman sat very straight with his arms folded. The wheel spokes flashed. The polished black sides glistened.

Mrs. Price's flat face was very white above her elegant black dress. There were fine lines of strain under her pale eyes staring wide through her delicate pince-nez. The nostrils of her flat nose quivered a little. She had a thin narrow body and broad flat hips. She was breathing quickly. On her drawn lips there was a labored smile.

Mr. Price removed his beaver hat and revealed the top of his broad flat head, bald and bright, above his hard eyes which were like cloudy stones of pale blue. His thick under lip, thrust sullenly forward, showed under his thin yellow-gray mustache. There was no color anywhere about his face. Only under his chin where he had not shaved clean you might detect his beard by a colorless shining.

There was a moment of silence and hesitation. "Winnie!" Mrs. Price's voice shook. "Mamma!" They lay in each other's arms.

Mrs. Price's fragile hand moved uneasily over her daughter's hair.

Mr. Price, gruff and uncomfortable, his face unmoved, said, "Where do I come in?"

Winnie reached out and patted her father's arm. He took her hand. She kissed him, not wanting to. He made her think of herself. She wanted to relax in joyous agony. Lifting her soft strange eyes to her mother, Winnie was double, knowing, as before a mirror, how she looked. Sweet to have people unkind when you could forgive them!

But behind everything the recollection of Laurie intruded harshly.

In the background Mrs. Farley stood uneasily, and May, afraid to enjoy the family happiness, yet unable to leave, hopped from one foot to the other with subdued exclamations, her face alternately blank with confusion or atremble with response.

"Don't cry, Winnie, dear. We are all so glad, Mrs. Farley." Mrs. Price pushed Winnie gently aside and put out a frail hand, determined, though it shook a little. Mrs. Farley's fingers were clumsy, fumbling for Mrs. Price. Mr. Price shook hands in a fat abrupt fashion. They passed into the house.

"Not too much emotion. Not too much emotion," Mr. Price grumbled. May retreated before him wonderingly. No one had noticed her.

Then Winnie said, "This is May, Mother."

They all stopped. May stopped inside herself. "Dear!" Mrs. Price had kissed her. May knew the kiss to be stale, dry, with a bitter middle-aged smell, and was ashamed of knowing. The dry bitter kiss drank of May's coolness. She was dumb under the caress of the sick hand.

The parlor was clean and gloomy.

"Sit down, sit down," Mrs. Farley said. "I--we----" She was trembling all over. She wept because of the rightness of things. "Such a glare!" She tottered to the shade. Her silk dress rustled.

"There, Mrs. Farley. We're all right. An experience like this is good for all of us. Christ has taught us to forgive our enemies and when we do I believe we never have cause to regret it."

Mr. Price sat down awkwardly and coughed severely into his mustache. His furtive gaze traveled malignantly about the shabby room.

"How-d'ye-do, Mrs. Price? Mr. Price?" Alice walked heavily in among them. Mrs. Price turned around, disconcerted. Their hands touched. Alice seemed to take charge of things. Mrs. Price suddenly felt weak and was obliged to seat herself.

Winnie was annoyed. She went up to Alice plaintively. "Oh, I'm so happy, Alice!" She wept.

Alice was still, like a warm rock. "We're happy to see you happy."

As Alice remained gruff and unmoved Winnie became more humble. "You don't look like it. Please let me be happy, Alice. I can't if--if----"

"Nonsense," Alice said.

Winnie smiled mistily at everybody.

"Come sit by me. I want to see my dear little girl." Mrs. Price disliked Alice, who remained hard and kind while Winnie cried with happiness. "You're not well, I know. Mrs. Farley wrote me. There, there. We must begin to take better care of you." Mrs. Price pulled Winnie to her. Winnie's eyes, rapacious with humility, were lifted again.

Mr. Farley came in, casting a rapid glance around the group. His smile was patient. Fear made him tired.

"Well, well--we're so--Mrs. Price." He stopped before her, not sure that she would shake hands with him. She gave him her finger tips and he took them miserably.

"Yes, I'm sure you all enjoy seeing Winnie happy," Mrs. Price said. She was cold and kind. Mr. Farley knew what she was thinking of--Helen out in Kansas City. They had spoken of the old scandal in objecting to Winnie's marriage.

"Mr. Price?"

"Hello, Farley. Hello." Mr. Price got up reluctantly. His hand clasp was a condescension.

Mr. Farley had given his hand limply. His mouth bent with acceptance. His smile was still tolerant but a little bitter, and he did not look up.

"Winnie comes first, Farley. Time to disagree about other things later."

"I hope we are through with disagreements."

"Yes, Farley, I hope we are. Ahem."

Mr. Price sat down again abruptly.

"I'm so happy, Papa Farley!"

Winnie's eyes. He shuddered, trying not to see them, fearful that he would forget to smile. "I'm glad you are, dear."

Winnie clapped her hands and turned once more to her mother. "Bobby! You haven't seen Bobby! Oh, he's the dearest----He's upstairs taking a nap."

Alice stood defiantly in the center of the gloomy room, her feet apart, her stout hips set out. "Want me to see if he's awake?"

"Suppose we all go out and leave Winnie alone with her parents for a few minutes," Mrs. Farley suggested, her voice quavering slightly. She puckered her lips and frowned, smiling about her at the group. When she stood up her gray taffeta dress settled slowly, with a calm sound, in folds about her. The hem lay out on the carpet. She had a scrap of yellow lace at her neck and above it in her withered loose skin you could see the flutter of a pulse.

"We certainly should," Alice said.

"Why, that's very nice. I don't----" Mrs. Price looked around, uncertain, well-bred.

"Yes, yes. Come, May." Mrs. Farley took May's small cold hand, moist in her dry one. Alice went first and Mr. Farley shuffled after the others, head bent, smiling, not sure why they were going out.

Mrs. Price had risen with her husband and stood, sad and calm, watching them leave. Life had wrung her, but she had grown sure in compromise. There was dignity in her sureness.

"Well," said Mr. Price shortly, "I don't see that husband of yours about!"

Winnie started tremulously. She smiled at him with a relaxed mouth. "Papa, dear, I know----" She gulped, still smiling.

"Yes, I know. I know. I suppose he's run away from us."

"He'll probably be in later, won't he, dear?" Mrs. Price's transparent smile was a thin shield guarding Winnie from her father.

Winnie tried to speak. Then she gave way and flung her white arms about her mother's throat. "Oh, M-mother!"

"There, there. I know."

"Confound him!" said Mr. Price very savagely, biting his mustache.

"Please, Perry!"

"Oh, that's all right. That's all right. I'm not going to lose my temper."

"Don't cry, Winnie. Sweet Winnie."

"What I want to know is whether that--whether he refused to meet us or not?" Mr. Price asked.

"Oh, Mother--Papa--I----"

"Don't cry, Winnie. It's all right. Your father has resolved to overlook things and if he can bring himself to do that about what has already happened this last little rudeness certainly won't matter."

"But he said he--he would come."

"He did, eh? And then went out."

"Now, Perry--please?" Replying to his wife's pale smile, Mr. Price coughed ambiguously.

"You need never be afraid of your father conducting himself in anything but a generous manner, Winnie. I wish you might have been at church last Sunday when he presented the new organ!"

"I know, but----"

"That's all very well, dear." Mrs. Price's voice had a disappearing quality. It floated and drifted from her lips and her words died away from her like the shed petals of a flower.

"I want--I want you and Papa to let me be happy! I--I----Sometimes I think nobody's happy. Mamma and Papa Farley are not. I----"

Above Winnie's bowed head Mr. and Mrs. Price exchanged glances.

"They don't deserve to be!" Mr. Price snorted after a minute.

Winnie glanced up. Mrs. Price's face twitched with worry.

"Now, Perry, dear, please? Remember! We decided not to speak of that again." She nodded toward the closed door of the hall. "I suppose by now you have heard all about Mamma and Papa Farley, Winnie--all the things that worried your father so, that he tried to tell you about when you and Laurence ran away--but living here with them as you are, I think it best for us to try to forget it. Mrs. Farley is a very long-suffering woman and has borne her lot very patiently."

Winnie wanted to ask more. She hid her face again. Once Laurie----

"Laurence never talks of it, and you know before, when Papa tried to tell me, how it was--you wouldn't let him. What was it, Mamma?"

"Do we need to talk about it, dear?" Mrs. Price stroked Winnie's hair.

"It was the talk about the town. I don't see why she shouldn't hear it! I wanted her to know it all before so that she could understand my objection to such a match."

"But we never understood clearly how it was ourselves, Perry. You know when Winnie was married and you wanted to tell her I thought it was no fit topic for a young girl. I said----"

"Yes, I know you _said_, but if she had known all about the thing from the start she might have made a better match for herself. At any rate, she's old enough to hear things now."

Winnie looked up and stood away from her mother. "Please, Papa, Laurie----"

"Yes, Perry, it isn't right to Winnie. We mustn't feel this way about her husband."

Winnie's little face was hard and a small soft fire of malice burned in her eyes. Though she resented Laurence, she was with him against her parents. She would have exulted in making them feel his inexorableness. Because he was strong against them she seemed to feel herself inside his strength, corroding it with her weakness. Mingled with her desire to swallow her world was a vague terror of her loneliness when it should happen.

"Well, that's all right, Vivien. I'll say nothing about her husband, but that father-in-law of hers----It seems to me the more she knows about him the better!"

"Perry, but in their house!" Mrs. Price was weary. Her smile seemed to hurt her. Her white hands shook.

Winnie was drawn up taut, cautious like a savage on a spoor.

"Perhaps Father ought to tell me all of it," she said.

"But not now! Not here! You said you knew----"

"I did know there was some reason Mamma and Papa Farley didn't get along. I knew there was a woman----"

"Yes! That miserable woman he was entangled with in that filthy affair. I don't remember whether I told you that he tried to leave Mrs. Farley and live with her. Helen--Wilson--something--Mrs. Wilson. The husband had him up as co-respondent. Then they discovered she was going to have a child." Mr. Price spoke gruffly and hurriedly in a low voice and chewed his mustache.

Winnie trembled with excitement. Mamma and Papa Farley. Laurie. She felt crafty and sure of herself. Why had Laurie never told her all of this? He did not like to have her speak of it.

"Perry, we can not! We must not! For Winnie's sake!"

"Did Papa Farley and the woman have the child, Papa?"

"Oh, Winnie," Mrs. Price protested, "how can you ask such things!"

Mr. Price, hands in pockets, rose on his toes and sucked his mustache in and out.

"They committed every sin which the flesh has been heir to since the fall of man, so I suppose they had a child too."

"You don't know?"

"I have it on very good authority that they did."

"The child, of course, was spirited away."

"And where did the woman go?"

"Out West. To Kansas or Texas. Something." Still he rose on his toes. The flavor of his mustache seemed to give him a peculiar relish.

"Oh, Papa, how awful! I didn't know it was as bad as that." Winnie dilated with her secret. A quick passionate resolution of triumph shot through her. Her eyes shone tragically.

"Winnie--my dear--you are in no state to hear things like this," Mrs. Price said. There was a light knock at the door. "Psh!"

Mr. Price started a little, but continued to elevate and lower himself on his toes and stare at the ceiling. Winnie clutched her hands to her breast.

"Come in." Mrs. Price lifted her trembling voice.

Alice's face in the doorway. None of them could look at her. Winnie met the face at last.

"Bobby's awake."

"Isn't that nice. Now I will see the dear baby."

"Yes, Mother. Come, Father." Winnie, with a high dreamy expression of conscious pain, followed Alice out.

* * * * *

The bedroom, dark, cluttered by too great an attempt at coziness, had grown a little shabby. The yellow shades were drawn under the lace curtains. The blue carpet showed here and there a warp of colorless cords. On the sofa the velvet and plush pillows were embroidered with mottos and flowers. There were a heavy bureau, an old-fashioned bed, and Bobby's crib. May slept in the nursery across the hall.

Bobby, his eyes still opaque with sleep, sat upright in bed, a dreamy look of disapprobation on his face.

Mrs. Price could say nothing for a moment, then, "How lovely! How lovely! What a beautiful healthy child!"

Winnie caught him in her arms.

Mrs. Farley moved forward, feebly shocked. "He's too heavy! Oh, you mustn't do that, Winnie!"

Winnie turned and gave him to her mother. Bobby's fat body was sodden and relaxed in his grandmother's arms. Mrs. Price's resigned hands moved over him agitatedly. "He's so beautiful!" Feeling ashamed, she knew not why, she kissed him. "Look, Perry!"

"Fine boy," said Mr. Price.

Winnie danced about. "I knew you'd think so."

Mr. Farley waited sheepishly, approving with his patience.

"We're all proud of him," said Alice shortly. Mrs. Price glanced up with a start. "He's a fine grandson," she declared after a minute. There was something defiant in the way she stroked his hair, but she remained very gentle and ladylike.

May stood to one side, quivering. She wanted them to see her but, for fear they might send her away, kept very quiet. When Bobby did not want to be petted she was uncomfortable and when he liked it she was happy too.

* * * * *

Laurence had come into the house and, finding the lower floor deserted, had gone upstairs. He stood in the bedroom doorway. Winnie saw him first. She was disconcerted for a moment. A little shiver of excitement went through her. But she recovered herself as she gazed at him and felt small and strong.

"Laurie!" She made a cooing sound of pleasure. She turned to her mother. "Oh, Mamma, I want you and Laurie to hug!"

Mrs. Price's face was stained with faint color. She grew brittle and tense in her uncertainty. Holding Bobby on her arm, she put her hand out. It was as if she put her hand between herself and Laurence. "I hope we both love Winnie enough to overlook things," she said.

"I hope so, Mrs. Price," he agreed, coming forward, his lids drooping as if to shut out the painful sight of them all. He smiled in shame. They shook hands.

"Now, Papa!" Winnie led her father forward by his coat sleeve.

"How-d'ye-do, Farley? How-d'ye-do?" Mr. Price was bluff and reluctant. Their hands barely touched. Laurence kept his glance on the carpet.

"Now I am so happy!" Winnie clung to her husband's arm. Her softness sank into him. He felt that if he lived he must harden himself against it. When she finally freed him he drew a deep unconscious breath. Then he forced his somber eyes full on Mrs. Price's face. "I am thankful, for Winnie's sake, that you and Mr. Price made up your minds to this," he said.

"We won't reproach ourselves with the past, Mr. Farley," Mr. Price interrupted. He would not allow his wife to be addressed in lieu of himself.

"I've never reproached myself, Mr. Price," Laurence answered coldly. Still he looked away.

"I don't doubt it, Mr. Laurence Farley! I don't doubt it!" Mr. Price's manner was full of secret scorn. He rocked on his toes and sucked his mustache ends again.

"The babies are dears," Mrs. Price said. "Bobby is wonderful."

Laurence regarded Bobby. "Sit up. Hold your head up. Don't act as though you were half asleep."

"Don't be cross with him, Laurie!" Winnie pouted. Laurence was torn. He must refuse to praise Bobby as the Prices praised him. Laurence felt that he could not protect his child against the approbation of his enemies. May sidled up to her father. When she touched him he did not look down at her, but put his arm about her. He held his shame of her close in his heart like a wound that he would not let be seen. He stroked her hair.

"Bobby is too heavy for you, Mrs. Price," Mrs. Farley protested, coming forward with an air of furtive protest.

"No, no!" Mrs. Price, exaggeratedly polite, held him closer and smiled. The smile made Mrs. Farley helpless. Mrs. Price knew it.

Mr. Farley had been outside the group. Now he moved nearer Mrs. Price and, leaning forward, shook Bobby's inert fist. "You like your old grandad, eh? You like your old grandad?"

Bobby scowled on them all and put his thumb to his mouth.

"What did I tell you about sucking your thumb?" Laurence demanded sternly.

Winnie's sweet eyes, covert with knowledge, gloated on her husband's face. "Don't be cross to him, Laurie, when everything's so nice."

"Stop sucking your thumb." Laurence took Bobby's thumb down from his mouth.

"For Heaven's sake, leave him alone. You'll nag him to death. All this ohing and ahing is enough to drive him to something worse than sucking his thumb," Alice said shortly.

Laurence gave her a swift contemptuous glance of anger, but controlled himself. "That's a good boy," he said more kindly as Bobby lifted himself straighter and stared around.

"Oh, everything's so nice! I was so afraid it wouldn't be!" Winnie sighed again with happiness. Laurence passed his hand over his eyes, the delicate hand that, below the coarse sleeve of his coat, was like the revelation of a secret.

"You didn't think your husband was going to refuse to shake hands with me, I hope?" Mr. Price demanded. His unsmiling joviality was terrifying. No one could ever say exactly when he became serious and he was perfectly aware of the tremors of uncertainty that stirred in his hearers. He enjoyed disturbing them.

"We are exercising mutual forbearance," Laurence put in quietly. In the irritation of Mr. Price's presence something was slipping from Laurence's grasp. It was only half-heartedly that he continued to hold himself.

"Forbearance toward me! I hope you don't think I want you to exercise forbearance toward my religious views, young man! Has he come to his senses since you married him, Winnie?"

Winnie smiled feebly. Laurence looked at the floor. His lip twitched.

Mr. Price seemed to wish to drown out the echo of his words in the ears of those present and began to talk fiercely to Bobby. "Fine child. Father not going to raise you up to be a prizefighter, is he? Wouldn't surprise me. I hope your mother'll bring you up as a Godfearing man. She mustn't leave your education regarding the next world to your father. You'd better take him in hand, Winnie." He stared at his daughter with his vague hard eyes.

Laurence felt his parenthood raped. "Winnie and I have come to a perfect understanding regarding Bobby's education," he sneered.

Mr. Price glanced up at Laurence. "Have, eh? Ain't you an atheist? Last time I talked with you, didn't you tell me you were an atheist?"

"I did, Mr. Price. I'm afraid I am deficient in tact." Smiling, Laurence lifted eyes in which the light of hate was drawn inward toward some obscure point of agony.

Mrs. Price set Bobby on the floor. His legs were stiff with being held and he made a few steps away from her uncertainly like a drunkard. "The dear child!" she murmured uneasily. Her quiet smile was over her face like the still surface of a pool filled underneath with little frightened fish.

"Tact, eh?" Mr. Price was not sure what the remark meant, but, to give himself time, permitted a knowing twinkle to creep into his eyes. He rose on his toes. "If you'll leave off trying to set up science in the place of God we'll overlook your lack of tact," he conceded finally.

Laurence bit his lips. He assumed an irritating air of indulgent amusement. It was irresistible. He dared not look at Winnie. "I've sworn to preserve a reverential silence in regard to all of your pet fallacies, Mr. Price."

"My pet fallacies, eh! The years haven't taught you respect for the opinions of your betters, then?"

"I've never met them," Laurence said. Mr. Farley coughed. Mrs. Price had called Bobby back and was talking to him in a low tone, very intently. Mrs. Farley talked to Bobby too. Alice made with her tongue a clicking sound of impatience. Laurence had moved away from May. She watched the men in controversy. Her mouth hung stupidly open. She had a shivering white face and her eyes were all pupil. She looked as though she had drowned herself in the darkness of her own eyes.

"Please, you two!" Winnie laced and unlaced her fingers.

"You haven't? You know when you're in the wrong, do you?"

"On the rare occasions when that happens," Laurence said with an ostentatious affectation of good humor.

"And you haven't found out yet that you're committing a sin when you set yourself up in opposition to Divine Truth! You're very complaisant, young man! Very complaisant! But I'll tell you that Natural Science is out of date. The Darwinists and Haeckelists and the rest of the dirty crew have to come crawling back to the Creator they denied, with their tails between their legs."

"You're making a dangerous admission in acknowledging such an appendage, Mr. Price." Smiling at the floor, Laurence reached out and drew May to him again. He defied them with his loyalty to her.

"Am I? The devil had a tail before he ever heard of Darwin, seems to me!" Mr. Price was still uneasy, but swelled a little with the readiness of his retort.

"Laurie!" Winnie patted Laurence's sleeve, her voice humble.

The humility in her voice inferred something in him which outraged his self-respect. "And I haven't a doubt that as in the present case the ass had ears!" he said sharply.

Winnie began to cry.

"I'll go, Winnie," he told her. It was inevitable. He had been that way before with Mr. Price. His hand fell from May's shoulder. He walked out. In the silence the group could hear the thick beat of his feet as he descended the carpeted stairs, and the reverberation of the front door which he slammed as he passed into the street.

Mr. Price's face was a dull red. He puffed out his cheeks. "That's what it comes to!" He shrugged his shoulders unutterably and turned with a gesture of departure and dismissal.

"Please don't go, Father!"

Mrs. Farley was wringing her hands. As May watched she seemed to be weeping from her own eyes her mother's tears.

"For Heaven's sake, don't take Laurence seriously, Mr. Price," said Alice.

Mr. Price lifted both hands with the palms out. "I don't! I don't! God forbid that any one should take that foolhardy blasphemy seriously."

Mr. Farley passed his hand over his face as though to brush away a cloud. His eyes were uneasy, his smile one of apology. "Laurence will regret it as soon as he is in the street."

"Regret! Regret's not the right emotion to recall that kind of talk. I take no account of what he said to me, but no one can go about in contempt of the God who made him and not suffer for it."

"I know----" Mr. Farley hesitated. His lips quivered a little.

"Oh, I knew I couldn't be happy!" sobbed Winnie.

Mrs. Price took her daughter in her arms. "Now, dear, your father has made up his mind to be forbearing. He won't go back on his word."

"No, I won't go back on my word, but I don't know whether I can ever bring myself to the point of coming into this house again. Not when that man's here."

"You oughtn't to take Laurence seriously, Mr. Price," Alice repeated. "I think we ought to forget about him and not spoil Winnie's day."

"I can't forget about him, Alice!" Winnie lifted her head indignantly from her mother's shoulder. Deep in her imagination Winnie, in a lace nightdress, was putting her arms about Laurie's neck. Her veins swelled strong and taut with confidence. She resented the injustice of being forced to choose between Laurence and her parents. Because of other things she could not forgive she would pardon him the day's scene, but she would not pardon her parents yet.

"It's all right, dear. Miss Farley don't mean that. She only wants us to forget the things your husband said to your father and I think that is exactly right. After he considers it I am sure he will come to the conclusion that he acted wrongly and be sorry too."

"I've had so much trouble," Winnie went on.

"Come, Bobby, let us all go downstairs and play games and help Mamma to forget her troubles." Alice jerked Bobby's hand. Leaning on her mother, Winnie followed. Mrs. Farley, her eyes red-rimmed with unshed tears of perplexity, shambled after, her dress rustling and disturbing her desire for self-effacement. Mr. Farley descended the stairs with finger tips gliding along the rail, smiling the abased smile of a blind man. May, hesitating on each step, dragged unnoticed a long way behind.

* * * * *

In the early morning the cloudy air had a texture like wet wool. The sky radiated colorless heat like a pool of warm water which one saw into from the depths. Work had not yet begun on the corner house, but in front of it dangled platforms suspended from pulleys. The vacant windows smeared with paint gave the house the look of a silly face smeared with weeping, an expression of tortured immobility.

Alice, on her way to work, had just emerged from her front doorway. As she descended to the street she watched ahead of her a tall, very thin woman in a worn silk blouse and an old skirt that still smacked of an ultra mode. The woman dragged beside her a very little boy in tight pants and a gay shirt. The little boy, swinging by her hand, leaned heavily away from her to pull a small red wooden wagon after him.

When the woman turned her head Alice saw her bright blonde hair combed in glossy and salient puffs, a cheap and unconscious defiance above her wasted face and her breasts, sucked dry on her flat body.

Alice walked after her. Life. Thinking of money. In the hot bed they touched each other. Rent due. The child began to cry.

Old maid barricaded behind ridicule. Coolness of being outside. Loneliness like a cool wound.

The woman went on. Taller, narrower in distance, with her long limbs and graceful stoop she resembled a sculptured angel. Tomb. Apartment. The woman walked before Alice into a narrow marble doorway. The stone rolled back and the angel went into the tomb. Haggard and bitter face. A little rouge put on carelessly. Despair. No one knows why.

* * * * *

Laurence had come in during the night and gone to sleep on the box couch without disturbing Winnie. In the morning she was the first to awaken.

It had rained before dawn. The hot sun floated outside the window in voluptuous mists. The white curtains seemed stained with the pinkish-brown light. They swayed and parted and between their folds the moist air flowed heavily from the steaming street.

Winnie could hear the staccato tap of a hammer on the house next door. Horses' hoofs rang on the asphalt with a flat sound.

The curtains opened like lips and made a whispering noise. Then Winnie could see the wet bronze roof opposite shining blankly against the faint bright sky.

The room was crowded with the atmosphere of two people who have quarreled. They were oppressed by their consciousness of each other. Through the darkness of his shut lids Laurence, only feigning sleep, tried to ascend above the close room and his almost intolerable awareness of Winnie's presence.

She had seen his lids flutter. Tired and sweet, she regarded him mercilessly. She could see how tense the lines of his body were under the couch cover he had drawn up over his feet. His lids, pressed tight together, twitched a little.

"Laurie!"

With a helpless feeling, he opened his eyes.

Winnie's heart beat combatively, triumphantly. "I've been lying here looking at you," she said, her plaintive pout begging him to infer everything. "Bobby's still asleep."

Bobby lay in his little bed relaxed like a drowned child. His lips were pale. His face damp with the heat. His shock of blonde hair fell back on the pillow away from his head. Winnie, beside her big baby, abandoned herself to a sense of dependence which she felt him to justify.

"Yes? I must have slept very hard." In an effort to hide his surprise Laurence responded quickly to her overture. He sat up, smiling elaborately, and began rubbing his eyes.

Winnie would not let him escape through such casualness. "Are you still angry with me, Laurie?" She lifted herself among the pillows and rested on one elbow. There was a terrible youngness about her soft, hungrily uplifted face, her thin neck, the collar bones showing below her white throat. Her eagerness was too vivid. He was conscious of her rapacious youth. It made him tired. Youth demanding of him life and more life. Winnie was ill, but there was no rest for them even in her pain. He felt old and afraid of her, as though he would never be able to get up from the couch.

"Angry with you? Was I angry with you?" He covered his eyes. His lips, smiling below his fingers, were deprecating. He stood up slowly and lifted his trousers from a chair. He felt ridiculous to himself putting them on.

"Laurie? Please? Don't be angry with me for wanting to see Mamma!"

He was hurt without knowing how she hurt him.

"Please kiss me, Laurie, dear! Don't be angry! I can't bear to have you angry with me!" Her eyes, strangely defenseless, opened softly to his. Their softness enveloped him and drew him down against the harsh little sparks of reserve that burnt in their depths.

"Kiss you?" he said. He took her fingers in his and kissed them. His lips were grudging. He still smiled. "Don't accuse me of being angry with you, Winnie. I want you to have your mother back."

"But I want you, too. Kiss me! _Really!_ Not like that."

He leaned forward and his lips brushed hers. But she would not let him go. She was so slight, pulling him down, that he could not resist her. She pressed her mouth hard against his face.

"Don't be angry with me."

"I'm not angry--wasn't angry." Each word was a little shake to loosen himself from her.

"You won't talk to Papa that way again?"

"I won't give myself the opportunity. I won't see him again."

"Oh, Laurie!"

He withdrew above her, making himself paternal. "You must be sensible about this thing, Winnie. It's all right. I want you to see and be with your parents. If I avoid them it will be only for your sake. You're not well, Winnie. You're a little unreasonable."

"I can't bear being sick! Oh, Laurie, I won't be operated on! I can't bear it!" Her voice was passionate. She shrank, looking smaller among the big pillows. He pushed her into the limbo of invalidism. She did not know how to get out. His kindness was a wall between them.

He smoothed her hair. She was crushed under his tolerant hand smoothing away curls from her tear-wet face. "Shall I tell Mamma Farley you are ready for your breakfast?"

She gazed at him. Her eyes hurt him. They stabbed him through the silence she made. "Laurie, I think we are going to be so happy and then all at once when you talk about my being sick you seem so far away. You do love me?" She clung to his arm.

"Of course."

"Then kiss me again." He kissed her. Her terrible hunger hurt and confused him. He would rather not have seen her thin throat that suggested a young swan's, her pointed chin, her eyes, and the reddish hair which had slipped in confusion about her shoulders. The room, filled with her knick-knacks, choked him--her clothes on a chair, some soiled satin slippers, the mirror from which she seemed always to shine, her child asleep--hers and his together. He could not explain himself--felt that he was growing hard. He was ashamed of not loving her enough. Ashamed of the strength it gave him to know that he was not for her--now--that her health was keeping them apart.

"I want us to be happier than anybody, Laurie! Your father--you never talk to me about it! That woman out West who had a child by him! It's so--so terrible!" She felt his resentment of her persistent reference to it. There was something drunken in her which made her sling out words that were not wanted. She regretted a little this waste of her hoarded knowledge, but at the same time she was glad. He did not want to talk of it. She felt injured because he did not want to talk to her of it. She leaned against him. The tears ran from her blind uplifted eyes.

"That's nonsense, Winnie. What have we to do with them? I want you to be happy, too." He sat down beside her. She felt hopeless, as though she had lost him.

"Not just me, Laurie. Both of us."

"Of course. Both of us."

She was crushed. "You didn't know I knew all about your father, Laurie."

"No. I never told you the details, because it didn't seem worth while."

"You never tell me anything--not about yourself--or anything."

"I didn't think I could tell you anything about myself you didn't know already."

"Don't joke! I want you to love me."

"I do love you."

She was tired. She buried her face in the pillows. He rose from the bed and put on the rest of his clothes, but when he said good-by to her she would not answer him. He outraged the essence of her sex. She was weak. She wanted him to be weaker than she. She felt that he owed it to her. It was a crumb from his strength, she felt, to be weak to her who had to be weak to the whole world. She would not forgive him.

* * * * *

Laurence went out of the room, out of the house. A pale fiery mist rose up from between the houses and filled the wet morning street. The houses with lowered blinds were secret and filled with women. Girls going to work came out of the houses like the words of women. Women going to market passed slowly before him with their baskets. Pregnant women walked before him in confidence. The uncolored atmosphere threw back the sky. It was the mirror of women. Laurence felt crowded between the bodies of women and houses. He walked quickly with his head bent.

On the concrete pavements, washed white as bones by the storm of the night before, were rust-colored puddles. Dark and still, they quivered now and again, like quiet minds touched by the horror of a recollection. The reflections of the houses lay deep in them, shattered, like dead things.

* * * * *

Mrs. Farley stumbled up the dark stairway. Her knotted fingers with their tight-stretched skin kept a tense and fearful grasp on the scratched rim of the lacquered tray. On the clean frayed napkin she had put one of her best plates and on it rested a bloody peach and a dull bright knife. The peach, balanced uncertainly, rolled a little as Mrs. Farley moved. The knife clinked. Black coffee beaded with gold turned to saffron when it poured over into the saucer. The toast, burnt a little along the edges, slid back and forth in the napkin which enfolded it.

She stopped before Winnie's room. "Winnie!" Her voice sounded cracked with fatigue. With the tip of her black slipper, which was rough and gray with wear, she pushed the door back. The room opened bright before her. Her smile grew hard and solicitous.

Winnie sat up straight among the creased pillows against the dark old headboard. Her eyes were red. She smiled, too, and was consciously brave.

"Good morning, Mamma Farley! See how you have worked for poor little no-account me! Put the tray down and let me kiss you."

"Bobby isn't awake?" Mrs. Farley asked, embarrassed by her own pleasure as she pressed bitter and grateful lips to Winnie's firm cheek.

"Are you glad I was happy yesterday?"

"I hope you are happy today. You know how glad we all were."

"I want to be happy, Mamma Farley."

"And you will be, Winnie." Mrs. Farley set the tray shakily on the tossed bed clothes.

"You, too, Mamma Farley, dear. I want you to be happy, too." Winnie held out a small inexorable hand, and Mrs. Farley, unable to behave otherwise, took it. Winnie squeezed her mother-in-law's fingers. "I know you haven't always been happy, Mamma, dear." Winnie's dim eyes were lustful with pity. Mrs. Farley was frightened. Her hand trembled and she tried to pull back and resist the invitation of sympathy. "Papa Farley ought to love you more than anybody in the world!" Winnie asserted, passionately tender.

Mrs. Farley was shaken. Who's been talking to Winnie? She pressed her lips quiveringly shut. Her eyeglasses twinkled and shuddered with her heaving breast. Winnie felt herself strong with a love that nothing could resist. Exultant, she gloated inwardly over the knotted hand that trembled in her grasp.

"Your parents--I don't know--we won't talk about old people's troubles, Winnie." Mrs. Farley was recovering herself. Perhaps Winnie didn't mean that. "I suppose Papa Farley loves me in his way just as you love me in yours."

Winnie would not let her go. "You stand up for him. You're so good to him," she insisted with a kind of worshiping commiseration.

"Why shouldn't I be?" Mrs. Farley dared, trying to smile while she frowned, her evasive eyes shifting a little.

"Because he don't deserve it! Because he did what he did. Oh, Mamma Farley, I know you don't want me to talk about it, but I can't help it. I love you so. You're so wonderful to me!" Winnie's eyes shone, mercilessly sweet, into the hunted eyes of the elder woman.

"I don't know what you mean, Winnie."

They looked at each other. Mamma Farley could not look. She picked at the sheet.

"You dear! You dear!" Winnie hugged her. She was crying.

Again they leaned apart and regarded one another. Mrs. Farley's inflamed, withered eyelids twitched.

"Do you think Laurence really loves me? I'm so afraid!" Winnie said suddenly.

"Of course, Winnie."

"Oh, Mamma Farley, I want to be happy. I couldn't bear it if Laurence----" She buried her face in Mamma Farley's dress. Mrs. Farley stroked her hair.

"We're all foolish when we're young, but God is good to us. When we grow old we can have a little peace. But you're young enough--even for the kind of thing you want." Her pale mouth had a shriveled look of bitterness. "Love between men and women--the love you are thinking about--is not much in life, Winnie."

"But I couldn't bear not to have--not to have anybody love me."

"Look in the mirror. They'll love you." Mrs. Farley's eyes in her wet, wrinkled face were hard with contempt under the seared granuled lids.

Winnie, lying back, gloated over the thin white hair, the lined flaccid cheeks, and the eyes that glowed with weeping. Winnie swam in the strength of love like a swimmer sure of himself in trusted waters. She was grateful to the age and ugliness which did not claim her.

Mrs. Farley did not want Winnie to gaze at her any more. "Look! Bobby's awake," she said.

Winnie was satisfied and ready to be glad of Bobby, too.

The child sat up drunkenly. His touseled hair, matted with sweat, lay dark on his brow. His eyelids were pale and swollen with sleep. He rubbed them with his fists.

"Children are the surest happiness," Mrs. Farley said.

Winnie was oppressed. "I'm so afraid of being sick, Mamma Farley."

"You'll soon be well, I hope." Mrs. Farley had an air of resolution and dismissal. She went squinting to the crib. "My, what a sleepy boy!"

Laurie. Love. Children. Winnie had a terrible sense that she was losing some unknown thing which was precious and belonged to her but of which she was afraid.

"His night drawers are too small. His grandmother'll have to make him some. There's some nice stuff at that store next to the bakery."

They talked of shops. The atmosphere of the room seemed to lift with the lightness and sureness of their talk. They were safe and at rest among unchanging irrelevances. Women knew best the sureness of trifles. These were the things which did not change--which men could not change.

* * * * *

Late afternoon. There was no sun. Below the blank gray sky, the long blank street. Along the street a pair of sleek and ponderous black horses, with thick manes and shaggy fetlocks, plodded before a loaded dray. Their bodies rocked and swayed tensely with strain. Their huge feet clattered and strove against the asphalt. The hands of the driver, red, with full, knotted veins, hung loose between his knees, holding the slack reins. His body, in a khaki shirt, was hunched forward miserably. From his fat stupid face his eyes glanced dully under a bare thatch of neutral tinted hair. Only the horses, purposeful and immense in their obedience, seemed to understand.

In the gutter a street-sweeper, mild and tired, pushed dry ocher-colored manure into heaps. Again and again he stooped and lifted the shovel and the manure fell into a cart. He wore ragged white gloves too large for him. He was patient, but his gaze roamed, vague with speculation. Servant of the horses that dirtied the street, he was less sure than they.

At the corner house work was over for the day. The abandoned platforms of the painters dangled loosely on the long ropes. Through the smeared window-panes you saw empty rooms blank as the faces of idiot women waiting for love.

Alice walked slowly home from work. She saw her own windows where the awnings did not stir. Drooping, they cast their scalloped outlines vaguely into the depths of the shadow-silvered glass. May was on the front step.

"Hello, May." Aunt Alice's voice, very gruff.

May sucked her finger and ducked her head sidewise, smiling. Her finger slipped out of her mouth with a plop. She put it back between her wet lips.

"Coming in?" Aunt Alice held the door back. May went after her into the hall that was full of the smell of baking bread. Aunt Alice threw off her hat and walked, heavy-footed, into the living-room. May trailed after her in limp timidity.

Winnie, in her lilac négligé, sat in an armchair. "Oh, Alice. I've been talking to the doctor again and he's so horrid. He says I should have been operated on right after Bobby was born and now I'm getting worse."

Alice stood beside the chair and stared down. "Doctors like to croak."

Winnie reached up and clutched Alice's square dark hand. Winnie's white fingers were little claws digging into Alice's swarthy flesh. "Say I don't have to! I can't, Alice! I can't!"

"Well, I certainly wouldn't until I got into better shape nervously than you are now."

"Mother wants me to go away with her and I don't dare. I know it would do me good but I don't dare, Alice." Winnie half sobbed.

"Don't dare? What rot! Why shouldn't you dare?"

"Laurie will hate me if I go off with Mother! It doesn't matter how sick I am, he will hate me!"

"Winnie, you're talking the most unmitigated nonsense."

"I'm not, Alice. You don't know. He can't forgive me for wanting to be kind to Mother."

"I haven't noticed any signs of unforgiveness on his part. I admit he acted like a fool on Sunday but I suppose he can't be blamed. Your father's not the easiest person in the world to get on with, himself."

"I know, but you don't understand. Sometimes I think Laurie hates me for being sick. He don't love me any more! I know he don't."

"Laurence hate you for being sick! Good God!" Then Alice added, "You shouldn't talk this way before May, Winnie."

Winnie had her eyes shut. She made a gesture away with her hands. "Go out, May."

May moved into a shadow by the door, but she did not go out.

"I can't bear being sick. It m-m-makes me so old. Papa Farley--that time Papa Farley--that woman. They had a child, M-m-mother told me. Oh, do you suppose Laurence will do like that?"

"Like what?" Alice's voice was sharp--almost threatening--with distrust.

Winnie kept her eyes shut and wrung her hands. "I thought you knew all about it, Alice."

"About what?"

"Don't act as though you couldn't forgive me! That woman out West--and--and your father started to get a divorce and gave it up. I'm so afraid Laurence won't love me any more!"

Alice knew that her parents had had some trouble. It was the year she was away at school. She had heard fragments--allusions. Now she felt strange. She wanted to hear more but could not--not from Winnie's lips. Alice's coarsely fine face burnt bronze with shame. Her sad eyes of thick brown searched Winnie's evasive features distrustfully. "You mustn't talk about this, Winnie," Alice said. "In the first place it has nothing to do with Laurence. You know as well as I do that Laurence cares for nobody but you and never will. I don't believe he feels hard toward you because you want to see your mother."

"Now you're angry with me?"

"I'm not. I'm going upstairs to wash and brush. You cut out this morbid nonsense, Winnie." Alice smiled a hard, kind, dismissing smile, and turned away, walking briskly out with her firm, awkward stride.

May edged out of the shadow and came nearer her mother. It was half dark in the room. Winnie sniffed, oblivious to May. May came and stood very near. She reached over and passed a hesitant hand along the arm of her mother's chair.

Winnie started. May drew back and stood teetering on one foot, her face alternately dark and smiling. "Oh, May, I t-told you to go out."

May hung her head. A sort of shiver like the shimmer of water passed over her pale, uneasy face. She wanted to go toward her mother. Wanted almost unendurably to go. But something in her mother held her off. May was in torment between the two impulses which possessed her equally.

Winnie wiped her eyes. "Come here," she said at last. May went forward, smiling, trembling, half released. "You love me, May?"

May could not speak. She choked with affirmation. Her face was in Winnie's warm neck. May lost herself in the warm throat and the soft hair. If she did not have to see her mother's eyes it was well. May had a terror of eyes. They made her know things about herself which she could not bear. Sharp looks splintered her consciousness.

Winnie, overcoming a shudder, admitted the caress. "You'll always love Mother, won't you?"

* * * * *

After the evening meal Mr. Farley took a newspaper into the living-room. There he sat by the lamp with the green shade. Through the still room the light, concentrated under the lamp shade, rushed to the carpet. On the way it spread, glistening, over the oak table, and brightened one-half of Mr. Farley's face. The newspaper in his hands was glassy with light. The print looked gray.

The rain that made the air sharp had not yet fallen and the dim curtains against the open windows shook now and then as with sudden palpitant breaths.

Alice walked about the room nervously. Several times she went to the window and glanced out. When she pulled the curtain back her father's newspaper flapped against his hand, but he showed no impatience.

Alice came and stood before his chair. "Come go for a walk with me!"

"Walk?" He looked up at her. He was vaguely patient and smiling a little. "Isn't it raining?"

"No. Come along." Alice took his arm. He folded his paper carefully and placed it on the table. Then, stiff and heavy in his movements, he got up.

Alice dragged him into the hall and he took his hat down. "You ought to have something over your head," he said to her.

"Rubbish! It's summer. Come on."

Alice flung the front door wide. The wind took their breaths for a second. He stumbled a little as he followed her down the steps and into the empty street. Overhead the moon, a lurid yellow, scudded between transparent black clouds.

"It's too stormy to walk. We mustn't go far or the rain will catch us."

"It won't yet awhile. I had to get out of that house." Alice linked her arm in his. She could feel his discomfort in her talk as though it came through her sleeve against him.

"I'm sorry to hear you talk about your home like that, Alice." Mr. Farley sounded hurt.

"Who wouldn't! I loathe Mamma--that's all."

Mr. Farley's arm quivered where it brushed Alice's shoulder. "You're unjust to her. She's done the best she can for you."

"Has she! Well, my God, she couldn't have done worse."

"I don't think you're just to her."

They walked on. Alice's heavy skirt beat her ankles above her stout shoes. Mr. Farley's coat-tails flapped. Paper rustled in the gutter.

"You make me sick about being just to Mamma," Alice said almost tenderly. "Whom was she ever just to? What about being just to yourself?"

"We can't ask too much for ourselves in this life," Mr. Farley said soberly.

"Bosh! I wish to Heaven you had left her that time when you wanted to!"

Mr. Farley was shocked. Alice had never spoken to him like this. His arm quivered more than ever. Unable to reply to her for the moment, he was a dung-beetle, rolling his astonishment over and over and making it ready for speech.

"I hardly know how to answer you, Alice. I don't think there ever was a time when I could have taken any joy which came through a sacrifice of other people's happiness. I----" He was confused by his own words. He stopped talking suddenly: Alice could feel that his body was rigid against hers. He could not forgive her.

"Not even when you loved that Mrs. Wilson, eh?" She remembered the name all at once, having heard it long ago.

Mr. Farley stopped, still. He put his hand to his forehead. His other arm fell away from Alice. It took him an instant to answer her. She tapped her foot on the pavement. The wind whizzed in their ears.

"Alice, I--you are referring to things too personal to--I ought to resent it."

"Resent it. I'd be glad to see you resent something." She wanted him to strike fire against her mother's dullness.

He could not bear her smile.

"Your mother is a good woman----"

"I suppose she is. God save us from good women!"

Mr. Farley walked on slowly. He walked like an old man. It made him feel tired when he thought that anyone questioned the nobility and excellence of his resolution.

"When you have had more experience of life, Alice, you will see how easily we err, and how it's always better to accept the weight of old burdens rather than assume new ones."

"I'm not likely to be offered new ones."

"What do you mean?"