“Well, now,” said the woman, “Everybody’s a stranger when you look at it that way. But everybody got a chance to find a little love. That’s the most important thing. When you got a little love, the rest don’t seem so strange or sad no more. There now, honey, there now.” Laura suddenly shied away from her. “Don’t call me honey!” she said, her face twisted with misery. The Negro woman let her go, shaking her head. “You pretty sick, girl,” she said. “You need a doctor, and that’s the truth.” Laura turned and walked out of the rest room on shaking legs. Outside she looked warily up and down the waiting platform. Only a handful of people were there. A train had gone through just after she entered the rest room and had taken most of the crowd with it. She waited in silence for the next train. The woman came out of the rest room after Laura. She stood some distance from her, staring at her with a mixture of distrust and pity, until the train arrived and the crowd separated them. * * * * * Laura came home too exhausted to talk about it, to be embarrassed with Marcie about the fight with Burr. She was so full of her experience, so absorbed in her father, that nobody else seemed real. She almost fell into her bed, with hardly a word to Marcie, and lay there wrapped up in herself, crying quietly for a long time. Things were no better in the morning. Somehow the enormity of Burr’s accusation hung between them like a curtain. They could look at each other only furtively; they couldn’t speak. They were embarrassed, a little afraid of each other, and it made them overly polite. All they said was, “Excuse me,” “pass the cream, please,” “I’m sorry.” Laura had the additional burden of her terrible flight from her father to keep her both silent and preoccupied. She was unable to figure it out. She knew she didn’t want to talk to him, to show him any forgiveness at all, to satisfy his curiosity about her—if he had any. She only wanted a glimpse of him; she wanted to reassure herself that he was still in New York, even though she knew he was. And she knew he might see her if she hung around his hotel. And she was ashamed that he should see her and know how important he was to her, even after his cruel denial of her. All these things were plain to Laura and yet when she looked back on the night before it seemed incredible. Especially her own terror. * * * * *