"It's always hard, Hattie, for good women like you and like poor Lenie was to understand. It's better you don't. You shouldn't even think about it." "But, I.W.--" "If I didn't know Leon Kessler was no worse than ninety-nine good husbands in a hundred, you think I would let him lay a finger on the apple of my eye? I don't understand, Hattie; all of a sudden this evening, you're so worked up. Instead of happiness, you come like with a funeral. Is that why you wake me up out of a sleep? To cry about it? Don't think, Hattie, that just as much as you I haven't got the good of my child at heart. Out of a sound sleep she wakes me to cry because a happiness has come to us. Leon Kessler can have any girl in this town he wants. Maybe he wasn't a Sunday-school boy in his day--but say, show me one that was." She drew herself up, grasping him at the shoulders. "I.W., don't let him have our little Effie!" "Nonsense!" he said, in some distaste for her voice choked with tears. "Cut out this woman foolishness now and come to bed. Is this something new you're springing on me? I got no patience with women who indulge themselves with nervous breakdowns. I never thought, Hattie, you had nothing like that in you." Her voice was rising now in hysteria, slipping up frequently beyond her control. "If you do, I can't stand it! I can't stand it, I.W.!" He peered at her in the starlight that came down through the screened-in top of the sleeping-porch. "Why?" he said, suddenly awake, and shortly. "I worked for him nine years, I.W. I--I know him." "How?" "I know him, I.W. She's too good for him." "How do you know him?" "I--the girls, I.W. One little girl now, Cissie--I--I hear it all from my friend Delehanty--sometimes she--she writes to me. I--the models and--the girls and--and the lady buyers--they--they used to gossip in the factory and--I--I used to hear about it. I.W., don't! Let go! You hurt!" His teeth and his hands were very tight, and he hung now over the side of the bed and toward her. "He--I.W.--he--" "He what? He what?" "He--ain't good enough." "I say he is!" "But he--I.W.--she--she's such a baby and he--he--. You hurt!" "Then tell me, he what?" "I.W., you're hurting me!" "He what--do you hear?--he what?" "Don't make me say it! Don't! It--it just happened--with him meaning one thing all the time and--me another. I was thrown with that kind of a crowd, I.W., all my life. All the girls, they--It don't make me worse than it makes him. With me it was once; with him it's--it's--I didn't know, I.W. My mother she died that year before, and--I needed the job, and I swear to God, I.W., I--kept hoping even if he never put it in words he'd fix it. Kill me, if you want to, I.W., but don't throw our Effie to him! Don't! Don't! Don't!" She was pounding the floor with her bare palms, her face so distorted that the mouth drawn tight over the teeth was as wide and empty as a mask's, and sobs caught and hiccoughed in her throat.