They were both gone. Very well! She would simply expect them back, resolutely refusing to think where they had gone, what they might be doing. At five o’clock in the afternoon she began to clean her flat. Then she cooked a nice little supper and set it in the oven to keep warm. She mixed condensed milk and water in a bottle for the baby. She boiled its dirty clothes. Then, in a desperate search for work to do, she found an old pair of white shoes of Angelica’s, and began to clean them, singing all the while in a weird, cracked voice: "_Af_-ter the ball is _o_-ver, af-_ter_ the ball is done." She was trying with all her might to keep out of her head a terrible vision of a young mother standing on a bridge at night, with her baby in her arms. Still humming, she went into the bedroom, undressed, and got into bed, in a waking nightmare, half hypnotizing herself with her monotonous little song. She was too far gone even to feel relieved when at last she heard Angelica’s footsteps in the hall, heard her go into the kitchen and light the gas. Then silence. She lay listening for the baby’s cry; there wasn’t a sound. "What can she be doing in there?" she thought. "And what makes the baby so quiet?" Fear struggled against the lethargy that engulfed her. She got up, went to the kitchen, and stood in the doorway in her long, old-fashioned nightgown, regarding her child. Angelica sat beside the table, with a small box in her lap. "Angie! Where’s the baby?" cried her mother. "Gone," said Angelica. "I got a lady to take him." "Your own child?" screamed her mother. "Your own little baby? Oh, shame on you!" "Shut up! You don’t understand. Do you think I liked to give him away?" "Then get him back! Get him back, Angie! I’ll work for him till I drop. Don’t give him up!" "He’s gone, I tell you. Let me alone! Can’t you see how I feel?" "Then why, why, why did you do it, Angie?" Angelica stared at her somberly. "I don’t know," she said. "I had to. I thought it would be the best thing for him. She--the woman that’s taken him--she can do a lot for him. She’s kind and good. You’d like her." "Who is she?" Angelica did not intend to tell. She was too well aware of the preposterousness of having taken Vincent’s child to his wife. "No one you know," she said. Her mother was completely softened by this new idea, that Angelica had given up her dearly loved child for its own good. "You poor girl!" she said. "I suppose you meant to do what was best for him. But----” "I thought it would help me, too," said Angelica. "I couldn’t keep him." Mrs. Kennedy was shocked. She opened her mouth to speak again, but Angelica stopped her with a quick gesture. "No more!" she said. "I’ve had enough. Now you better go back to bed." "I don’t want to leave you," said her mother. She could imagine how hideous would be Angelica’s loneliness. "You better!" "Why? What are you going to do?" Angelica held up her tiny box.