Chapter III: Part I: The Way of All Earth (3)

“Anne, I have been a blind fool. Even when the girl said you had gone
in his car, I couldn’t believe it until I learned that he had left
town. God knows I don’t want to stand in your way. The four thousand,
and what you can get on the equity in the house, will see you through
until you get your divorce. Let it be desertion. I will not contest.

BRICE.”

Gradually, after a day or two, she began again to think, to reason. It was all plain enough. Those words she had said when they parted, the night of the quarrel. “Anything I want him to be” and “Perhaps you will find that out sooner than you expect.” Her anger, her miserable, childish anger when she said them, the satisfaction she had had in hurting him. Her leaving the next day for Alice’s, and Alice driving her brother-in-law’s showy car. Lucille on the porch, staring after them. She could imagine that scene when Brice returned, and what Lucille must have told him.

“No, sir, she ain’t come in yet. She went off this mornin’ with Mist’ Copeland in the car.”

Something like that. And Brice’s anger at her disregard of his wishes, her apparent flaunting of his command not to be seen again with Ranney Copeland. Her not coming home. She turned hot and cold when she thought of what Brice had been through, that next day, at the office. His shame, when he had had to confess to Mr. Whitten that he had not so much in the world as two thousand dollars, the two thousand dollars that was only half of what she had drawn just the day before to put into Ranney Copeland’s hands, the two thousand dollars that would have given him that coveted and well-deserved better position, a real place in the world. Yes, her not coming home, after that next day of his. What sort of night had Brice spent? What sort of night, while she slept so dreamlessly in that soft bed of Alice’s? She recalled what Mr. Whitten had told her. On that Thursday Brice had gone back, closed up his desk, left.

Strangely enough, for a long time she could not look at Brice’s bureau. At last she was as strangely drawn to it, stood before it, touched it and drew away, before she gathered courage enough to open the drawers. A few things, only a few things had he taken. In his closet but one suit was missing, an old one. Her picture was still on the bureau, that picture she had had taken last year in the gown she had worn to the New Year’s dance. There had been another, of young Anne Warren, that she had declared absurd, with its hair arranged in that out-of-date way, that she had made him keep out of sight in the drawer. The frame was there, empty. She dropped to her knees by the bureau. He had taken that young Anne Warren, that Anne who had won his heart. Anne Denison, Anne in the ball gown, he had left behind.

Gradually, as the difficulties of the situation made themselves clear to her, she became filled with a cold anger against Brice, an anger far different from the earlier blazing fury. That he should have dared to believe that thing of her, that he should have dared to misunderstand her, and put her in this ghastly position. Oh, yes, she had said those bitter things. But she had lived with him ten years. How could he, how could he! Never in her heart had she been unfaithful, undevoted to him, any more than in her actions. Of course every woman, in those moments of desperate rebellion that the closeness of the marriage bond brings, thinks of what might happen, thinks of what she might do, thinks perhaps of leaving it all. But she had never meant it. No, never, never! Deliberately she closed her mind to what might have been going on in Brice’s mind. She would not let herself think again of what he had gone through during those days of her unexplained absence.

She did not love Ranney Copeland. But she had loved Brice, and this was what had come of it. Ranney Copeland? How much of truth was there in what she had said to Brice, that she could have Ranney Copeland whenever she wanted him? She thought of that, shrank away from the thought, grasped at it again. What else was there?

But first the world had to be faced, people had to be told, and the telling must come from herself, if the tale were to wear the guise she wished it to. There came a morning when she telephoned to make sure that Alice would be at home. An hour later she was in Alice’s upstairs sitting-room, where Mrs. Copeland was remonstrating with one of her small daughters who did not wish to go out for a walk. A patient maid was standing near holding the other child by the hand. The little girl who was consciously good eyed the one before whom Alice was kneeling with that stolid understanding of childhood, and with something of the good little girl’s self-complacency at the iniquity of the naughty one.

“But--I--am--not--going out with Nelly!” Elizabeth was saying.

“Yes, you are, darling! Come--put your arm in your coat.”

“Won’t!”

“Put your arm in, darling, for mother.”

“I won’t wear this old coat. I’m going to wear my new blue coat.”

“I’ll tell you!” Alice’s voice sounded as though she had just thought of the most wonderful thing. “I’ll tell you! You shall wear your blue coat the very next time you go out with mother.”

One thin arm went into the brown coat. “Well. When am I going out with you, mother?”

“We’ll drive down to meet daddy this afternoon. There--now kiss me, and run.”

“How wonderful you are with them, Alice,” said Anne, a little sadly, when the children had left the room. “Where do you get all that patience?”

“Oh, it isn’t patience, really. It’s a sort of trying to meet them on their own ground, the poor little darlings. You know how you feel, yourself, sometimes, about doing things you don’t want to do, and wearing things you detest.”

“Is there really anything you detest, Alice?”

“Why, yes, of course there is. I don’t think about it very much, but there must be.”

“Ah, you have everything! Just look at this room of yours, at this house.”

Alice’s face grew serious. “Nance, I wish you would let me say something to you.”

“Oh, I know what you want to say.”

“I don’t believe you do, not really. I don’t minimize the comfort of having things, Nance, just because I’ve been one of the fortunate ones that have always had them. But, honestly, Anne dear, it is not things that make one’s happiness. I’d be happy anywhere, anyhow, with George and the children. I would. And you have Brice, Nance. He’s such a dear!”

Again came that ghastly coldness about her lips that she had felt in Mr. Whitten’s office. How had Brice dared to make it so difficult for her? She had to hold hard to that anger against him, had to find something to give her courage.

“Oh, yes, Brice. That’s what I’ve come here this morning for, Alice. To tell you, before anyone else. Brice and I have separated.”

Alice stared at her for a moment, then abruptly sat down. Anne moved a step or two across the room, back again, let herself sink softly into a low, deep chair. She thought she had done it well. But why, why, why did she have to do it at all?

Alice had flushed. “Anne Denison! How can you say a thing like that? Why, Anne!”

“It is quite true. Of course we are not going to make a scandal of it. There’s a way of doing it decently. Desertion, I believe, or something like that.”

For a long minute Alice Copeland sat there without moving, looking at Anne. Then tears came to her eyes. “Nance! It can’t be too late. Let me see Brice.”

“No use, Alice. Brice has already left town. Oh, it’s quite all right, much the best thing for us both.”

“You don’t believe that! It isn’t possible that you can!”

“Oh, please, Alice dear! It’s all settled, or will be, as soon as the thing can be arranged.”

“But divorce! Anne, you can’t.”

Anne said nothing. Was it all going to be as hard as this?

“Anne! Why, you’d be like that dreadful Callum woman we were talking about at the country club that day, or like Tessie Ogden. The last time she married again the day after she got her decree.”

“And why not? It’s quite legal, I believe.”

“Legal! After those promises, and the life together? Oh, Anne!” Alice was openly sobbing now. Anne did not look at her. Presently she spoke again. “Anne, there isn’t, there couldn’t be anyone else? Brice isn’t that sort.”

“I told you we’d call it desertion.”

“But Anne, Nance darling, think of the loneliness! What would you do, what could you do?”

“What does any woman do, any woman like me? I don’t know how to earn my own living. I’m not young. I’m not old, either. I want life. Yes, I do, I want life. Well, how does any woman get it?”

They sat there a while without speaking, without looking at each other. Presently Alice went to a window and leaned out. “Don’t let them play off the sidewalk, Nelly,” she called.

When she came back her manner had changed. “You’ve told me your news, dear. I suppose I ought to tell you ours. Or has Ranney already told you?”

“Ranney?”

“His engagement is to be announced at last. I had come to believe it never would be, but they settled it while he was there. He’s played fast and loose. She’s a nice girl. Too nice for Ranney. He’s so different from George.”

The light in the room had grown strange. Anne’s lips were cold. She must keep calm, keep smiling. “Oh, you’re always too hard on Ranney, my dear,” she heard herself saying. “He’s not a bad sort. I rather like Ranney. What is the girl’s name?”

A few minutes later Alice followed her out towards the stairs. “Anne, wait a moment. Forgive me for asking. Have you money enough? Because George and I----”

“Oh, plenty of money. Plenty. Thanks just the same, dear. You give Ranney my love and tell him I’m waiting to hear all about it. I must go now. Don’t look like that, Alice. I’m all right.”

Alice kissed her. “I can’t bear to think of it,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “Let me try, let George go to him. It can’t be too late.”

“Don’t, Alice, please, please,” Anne said. She drew away. The world went black.

8

That night she lay looking out at the stars, and thinking. Another night came back to her when she had watched the stars with Brice, while they were still in that first new, terrible strangeness of union, of unforeseen distastes, on her part of mute shrinking from contacts and bareness of mind and body which Brice took so naturally and joyously. She had thought Pelham a strange place for him to choose for their honeymoon; a place where there was nothing to do, no one to be seen, no one to show herself to. The cottage on the bank of the stream, their tiny, too-intimate room with one window, the table where they had their meals with the old sisters whose sole means of livelihood came from boarding the casual trout-fishermen and more frequent lumbermen--she would have been restive there, if it had not been for Brice’s adoring. That she had welcomed. She would yield her hand, her lips, with a gratifying feeling of conferring. At times Brice had taken her gifts hesitantly, worshipfully; at other times tempestuously. The moments of devoutness pleased her more. Even in those early days she had told herself it was that attitude, that state of mind, that she would foster in him.

On their last evening in the woods it had been Brice who had shown reluctance to leave them. Even in that hour Anne was for going on to the next thing, the new thing, the thing beyond, unafraid of whatever it might be, purposing always to sway it towards herself, to make it her own. She had never questioned that she could influence and form the new life they were going into together.

But Brice had drawn her out of the cottage that evening, and they had walked along the rutted road, the dark woods treading the hill on their left, the stream murmuring at the foot of the slope like music heard in a dream. The moon was young and pale, blending its light with the lambency of the stars. They walked through mottled shadows, Brice’s arm about her. Sometimes as they emerged into an unshadowed place where the moonlight found her hair his arm would tighten. She would let her head fall back against his shoulder, gratified at his tremor of emotion, at the sense of power it gave her.

They came to a place where the road dropped to the level of the stream, where a broad rock from which Brice had often fished protruded above a pool where trout would rise a few hours later. They stood there side by side. Before the silvery beauty gemmed in the setting of the surrounding woods Brice’s arm had dropped away. He loved the place. He had led his love and his emotion to it, and stood with his face upturned to the stars, wrapt, a votary before the altar on which he has just laid his gift. Anne felt the withdrawal of his spirit. She was more conscious of Brice than of the shimmering water, of the stars. She was a little teased, amused, impatient at his enraptured, upturned look. She wanted his return to herself.

“Dear,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Brice looked at her. “You are,” he murmured. “You are beautiful. Our last night here.”

“Are you glad?” she laughed.

He did not answer. He did not touch her, did not move. All playfulness and all passion seemed to have left him. He was remote, a being other than the man who had held and caressed her. She became restive. She went close to him, brushed against him, raised her face in the moonlight.

Afterwards they sat on the rock until the moon dropped over the hill, and the pool lay dark beneath the shadowing trees, and the stars shone on the face of the stream, on Brice and herself. She was satisfied.

“We ought to go in,” he said. “I ought not to keep you out here in the dampness. You might get chilled.”

She smiled to herself, moved her cheek softly against his, yielded herself more to his arms. “This is so sweet,” she whispered. “And we are going away tomorrow.”

He pressed his lips to her hair, on her closed eyes, while the stars moved on.

Oh, she would always know how to manage Brice, how to bring him back to consciousness of her! What was instinctive at that early time had gradually developed into a technique that perfected itself as the need grew for holding him, controlling him. She had believed that she knew Brice’s mind and heart, all his impulses and reactions, just as she believed she managed them all for his well-being and her own. Her ultimate conception of successful marriage was that the woman must dominate, possess, and manage the man; woman’s part was to be the silent mainspring, man’s the clicking wheels.

Now and again during the years she had been aware of that same silent withdrawal of Brice’s which she had first encountered in Pelham under the stars. She believed it was only his masculine inarticulateness, or mental indolence, or contentment too absolute to be broken by speech or action. If by chance she suspected herself momentarily forgotten or disapproved of, she had always known what to do. She could make him see her again as beautiful, admirable, desirable. If it came to argument, she had always been able to make him say that she was right, or at any rate to yield to her. Only this last time had she failed; and she would not have failed even then, if Brice had not, in this inexplicable way, disappeared.

But there was the bare, ugly fact. He had disappeared. He had done the utterly unforeseen, and now she was lying in Alice’s house, her body filled with the dull ache of fever, looking again at the passage of the stars. Tonight the pool was not a peaceful depth above which she rested in Brice’s arms and drew him to thought of her. It was not peaceful. It was an enveloping blackness, hideously silent, that surged about her and buffeted her about like a leaf in the wind, helpless, rebellious, longing to rest, longing to find again some firmness of thought that eluded, that spun dizzily and mockingly through her brain. She was alone. There was no Brice. It was as though, after ten years, he had abruptly thrown her arms from his neck and sent her into that whirling night of bewilderment where nothing was as she had known it, nothing was real.

Yet after all something was real. What Alice had told her, and the smiling nurse confirmed. Motherhood. Terrible. A leering joke of Fate, as unexpected, as cruel, as bewildering as Brice’s behavior. For hours she was benumbed at the knowledge. She felt about it as one feels towards death. It could not be true, there must be some mistake. Yet as in the case of death, all the while she admitted the inevitableness of it: as death comes surely to all, so had this thing come inescapably to her. She would still have to know, tomorrow, that it was real. For many tomorrows she would have to bear the burden of it, and alone. In time, she would have to suffer. Alone. There would be a child, and Brice not there to--to suffer for it. She thought of that, savagely. Oh, Brice should have suffered for this, as she would have to suffer! It wasn’t fair, wasn’t fair. Even if Brice had been there, it would not have been fair. After ten years, motherhood. She had never wanted children. She knew why other women wanted them, some women. They were hostages to a sort of happiness, to complacency, to stability, to the holding of their husbands. Oh, yes, to some women, doubtless, something to love and care for, something on which to gratify that sentimentality that she had always scorned. She had not needed children. She knew how to arrange her life without that bother, that clutter, as she knew how to hold Brice. A cry escaped her.

The nurse came, bent above her.

“No, no! I don’t want anything, thank you,” she said.

That was for the moment true. She would have welcomed oblivion, anything, anything, that would let her escape her shattered world. She had believed so unquestioningly that she understood Brice, knew his every thought, how to manage him, how to hold him. And now he had gone. He had deserted her, left her with this. A child. His child. For she did not think of it as hers. It was Brice who had loved children, wanted one of his own, though she had believed she had convinced him of the inadvisability of having them. How could they have gotten along with all the added expense of children? But now--! There was no permanency left. All her plans, all her ideas, were whirling about her; only those stars were serene.

Sometimes she lay burning with anger which always resolved into bitterness against Brice. He should be found, would be, must be. And then--oh, yes!--then she would know what to do. There would be no more of those silent withdrawals of his, no more of his futile rebellions against her will. She had been too soft, too gentle. She had underestimated his desire and need of pleasing her. Now there would be the child, a mighty weapon. And she would use it. As other women used it. Brice must be found.

It was Nicky who precipitated the affair of the search for him. The nurse was gone at last, leaving Anne still languid in body after the fever and shock, but well enough to go down to Alice’s sitting-room in the afternoons. She knew that Alice watched her, sensed Alice’s vague disappointment and was scornfully amused, however secretly. Doubtless Alice expected a softening in her, a rosy tenderness of anticipation, as if any sudden incident could make a person other than she had always been. For with returning strength Anne was becoming herself again, calm, measuring, coolly determined. She was only awaiting the apt moment for speaking of Brice to Alice and George.

Nicky came in grinning impishly at Anne lying on Alice’s couch, lithe and graceful, well enough aware that the gracefulness would pass, making the most of the moment, one arm above her head, the other hand between the pages of a magazine she had not been reading.

“So the blow has fallen!” Nicky remarked.

“Nicky, don’t!” cried Alice. “It’s so sweet.”

“Yes, isn’t it? Like all the rest of the bonds of matrimony. How does Brice take it? Solemnly, I suppose.”

“Do sit down, Nick,” said Anne, and added, “Brice doesn’t know the joy in store for him.”

Nicky sat down, and Alice, her eyes on her sewing, said in a tone which was meant to carry a warning that the subject was not to be pressed upon, “Brice is away, Nicky dear. What have you been doing lately?”

Veronica recognized the tone, and laughed aloud. “What’s up?” she asked, looking from Alice to Anne.

Anne, too, looked at Alice, who had flushed a little. “Isn’t she a cherub? Alice--I do love you. The plain truth is, Nicky, that old Brice has gone off. Thinks he’s left me.”

“Oh, Anne dear!” from Alice, beseechingly.

“I knew there was something queer,” Nicky exclaimed.

Anne stirred; the arm over her head came down. “Why?”

“Because Ambrose----”

Anne laughed, sat up. “Ambrose! Of course! Alice--why didn’t we think of that? Of course, Ambrose knows where he is.”

“Oh, as to what Ambrose knows, or thinks he does,” Nicky exclaimed. “I’ll leave that to you two! All he would tell me was that old Brice was sick or something. He said Brice wrote him a letter last week, from Albany or somewhere, and asked him to be good to you, Anne. To stand by you or something.”

“From Albany! But that couldn’t have been all,” Alice cried. “He must have said more than that!” Anne’s eyes narrowed a little; she was thinking intently.

“All Ambrose told me. But he’s worried about it. Tried to call up your house, Anne. And went down to Whitten’s.”

Anne nodded. “Yes. I went there, too. Before I came to see Alice.”

Nicky chattered a moment or two of other things, looked at her wrist-watch and said she must fly. Alice went out of the room with her. When she came back, she sat down by Anne.

“Darling, I think Nicky came to say that. What did she mean?”

“I’ve wanted to tell you, Alice. It--isn’t easy.”

“I do think you had better. George could help, I am sure, if we knew. What was that about Whitten’s?”

“It goes back to the time I came here to look after the children. We had quarreled, and I did not leave word for Brice where I had gone. He--thought things.”

“Oh! But he couldn’t! Not that, Anne!”

“Apparently he did, though. He left me a note. I told you he had settled things. He thought he had. By telling me I might divorce him. He even left Whitten’s. Gave up his job. What he told Ambrose only goes to prove how determined he was.”

“Oh! But now----”

“Yes. That’s just it. Now there is--this. Brice will have to know this.”

“I knew George could help! He will find Brice, dear. And then--oh, you’re going to be happy, so happy, so happy, Nance! You and Brice--and what’s coming!”

Anne smiled, content for the time to leave it there. She was still weighted with that unaccustomed lassitude, and she knew George would act. Gradually she was able to be about the house again, and at last, one evening, George brought Ambrose with him for dinner. Anne sensed a crisis, and was gay throughout the meal. Afterwards she faced the two men.

“What is it?” she asked. “Out with it, George. What makes you and Ambrose so solemn? You have heard from Brice?”

“You know I always said you’d play the devil sooner or later, Anne,” Ambrose remarked. “Looks like you’d done it now.”

“Is that what you came here to say?” Anne flashed at him.

“No. I came to say I have been up to Albany myself. Brice stopped there overnight. Had only a suitcase with him. From there he apparently jumped off.”

“What do you mean, jumped off? If you think Brice is the sort of man who would----”

“I think I know Brice better than you ever did,” Ambrose said, savagely. “God--I hate to see his life ripped up like this.”

Alice protested, “Ambrose!”

“Well, damn it, I do! It’s my opinion Brice stood things as long as he could, and got out. I don’t blame him. But I do hate to see it.”

“You are implying that it is my fault,” Anne said. “I have never done anything, anything, that would justify Brice’s leaving me.”

“Please, please don’t quarrel,” Alice said.

“I have no intention of quarreling with anybody,” said Anne. “I never quarrel. I am very much obliged to Ambrose for going to Albany. I should think you would all understand that I want Brice to come back.”

“I know what cost him his job with Whitten,” said Ambrose.

Anne’s head went up. “I did that for the best,” she said. “If Brice had waited for me to explain it to him, he would have seen that. When he comes back, he will agree with me.” Suddenly she looked at George, threw out her hands in a gesture of appeal. “George, you’ll find him, won’t you? Oh, don’t you see? I want him to come back!”

Ambrose turned away impatiently, but George said, “Of course you do, Anne. We all do. And as for finding him, why, a man can’t absolutely disappear.”

“Oh, George,” Alice interjected, “I don’t know. There was that poor girl who started across the park with a book and box of candy. She was never heard from.”

“Nonsense, Allie! We’ll have Brice home again in a day or two. In a week, at latest. Don’t lose your nerve, Anne.”

“I’m not going to lose my nerve. I know what Alice is thinking. But it isn’t true. Brice is not dead.”

“You’re right, in that,” said Ambrose. “He’s no coward.”

“I think we should take every possibility into consideration,” ventured George. “Not that I----”

“What you are thinking about is not a possibility,” Anne affirmed. “I’ve told Alice that he sent me a letter, too.”

George nodded, but Ambrose looked at Anne, frowning. “Let me tell you, Anne, that you will not help us find Brice by keeping anything back,” said he.

“I’m not keeping anything back. I said I had told Alice. I’m willing to tell you. He wrote to me. I got the letter several days after he was gone, but he had posted it in New York. He told me to divorce him. For desertion. He said he would not contest.”

Ambrose bit his lip, walked restlessly about the room. After a moment Copeland said, “I feel that you ought to know, Anne, what the detectives said. They believe there is only one way of finding Brice. To advertise, to make the thing public.”

Anne paled. Her hand went to her mouth. “Not that!” she gasped. “I couldn’t stand that!”

Ambrose wheeled towards them. “No. Anne’s right. Not that!” said he. “Brice never in his life made a move without thinking it through first. He has gone. Therefore, he wanted to go. Neither Anne nor you nor I have the right to force him back against his will. Oh, I know what you’re thinking of, Alice! But if Brice wanted to cut out his old life, he knew what he was doing. I say, let the thing drop. Take Brice’s decision. You’ve no right to do anything else.”

“You’re not considering Anne, nor the child that’s coming, Ambrose,” George said, mildly. “We’ll find Brice. There’s no question of that. But of course if Anne doesn’t wish it, there shall be no publicity.”

“I couldn’t stand it, George,” said Anne, and Alice added, “Of course not. It’s not to be thought of.”

A week passed, two weeks, and still there was no word of Brice. Something kept Anne from asking, but her nervousness grew, and she watched Alice and George, unfailingly kind, and to her awakening sensitiveness increasingly anxious. Her strength had returned, but not her old vigor. She was beginning to feel it impossible to accept Alice’s hospitality much longer, yet the idea of returning to that empty house was curiously repugnant. It was not the old repugnance towards its smallness and cheapness. It would remind her so of those last days there when Brice’s staying away had for the first time given her a doubt of her own power and rightness. She did not want to live through days like those again, nor nights like those. The memory of them gave her an actual quivering of the flesh. She knew that Alice watched her, and turned her face away when Alice’s eyes would meet her own. One morning she grasped her courage and said:

“Why not tell me, Alice?”

Alice’s eyes filled with tears. “Darling, it’s so dreadful,” she said. “We haven’t heard a word. George has had two detectives. They haven’t a trace of him, after Albany. George is a director of the bank. He has found out that Brice took almost no money with him. It’s so dreadful!”

Anne’s mood alternated between anger and panic. What should she do, what could she do, if Brice were not found? How did he dare to remain away? How did he dare, after those years together, to doubt her to the point of behaving so unprecedentedly?

It was not until an afternoon when Tessie Ogden came in, unannounced, that the pride was born which was to become a force more impelling than anger or panic. Until that day she had succeeded in eluding all of Alice’s guests; but Tessie came into the upstairs sitting-room without warning.

“Oh, you poor, poor darling!” was Mrs. Ogden’s greeting. Anne had to endure the embrace that followed, listen to words that her own coolness had no power of stemming.

“Men, these men! I’ve had my experience, my dear! You can’t tell me anything about it. It’s just the way my first husband treated me. Simply went off with another woman, my dear. So what was I to do?”

“What on earth are you talking about, Tessie? Why the confidence?”

“Don’t pretend with me, Nance darling. I know all about it. I sympathize. How I sympathize!”

“I don’t understand. There is nothing for you to know, except that I have been rather ill, while my husband is away on business.”

Mrs. Ogden laughed, touched Anne’s hand playfully. “Your Lucille works for me, now. Needs training, of course, but--! It’s really touching, her devotion to you, her indignation at the way you were treated!”

“Why get your news from a servant, Tessie? What is it worth, from such a source?”

Tessie leaned back in her chair, lighted a cigarette, smiled languidly.

The next afternoon, when Alice was out, Anne left the house and walked to the terraced side-street that she had not seen for weeks. A faint nostalgia gripped at her throat, not for Brice, not for the house nor the things in it, but for the security that had slipped away from her. She had even more distaste than before for the street and the house, but at least it had represented an established place in the world, however small, however undesirable. She could never live there again, yet she was seeking it out in an unformulated desire to snatch at some of that lost security. The little girl who used to run to meet Brice called to her, swirled up on roller skates. The laundryman’s wagon was at the curb beyond. The grass on her own plot was long, bits of paper and string caught in it. On the porch a yellowed newspaper had blown into a corner. A folded circular was stuck between the knob and the door. She took out her latch-key. How close the hall was!

There was an oblong of white on the rug, where it had dropped through the letter-slot. She grew dizzy, grasped at the door for support. Brice.... Why had they not known he would write?

She picked up the letter without turning it over. She could not yet look at his writing. She went blindly into the living-room. The window shades were at uneven heights. Not his chair. The sofa. Her hat was so heavy.

Then she turned the letter in her hand. It was not from Brice. Miss Willy’s handwriting.