It was really too bad that Natalie did not step off the brick sidewalk and walk on the grass. After all it was better, when one was setting out on new adventures, that one go swiftly and stealthily. There must be innumerable growling lions of respectability sleeping in the houses along the streets. “They’re pure sweet people, such as I was when I used to go home from the washing machine factory and sleep beside my wife in the days when we were newly married and had come back here to live in this town,” he thought sardonically. He imagined innumerable people, men and women, creeping into beds at night and sometimes talking as he and his wife had so often talked. They had always been covering something up, busily talking, covering something up. “We made a big smoke of talk about purity and sweetness of living, didn’t we though, eh?” he whispered to himself. Well the people in the houses were asleep and he did not wish to awaken them. It was too bad Natalie was weeping. One couldn’t disturb her in her grief. That wouldn’t be fair. He wished he might speak to her and ask her to get off the sidewalk and walk silently on the grass along the roadway or at the edge of the lawns. His mind turned back to the few moments at Natalie’s house. The devil! He had expected a row there and nothing of the sort had happened. When he got to the house, Natalie was waiting for him. She was sitting by a window in a dark room, downstairs in the Swartz cottage, and her bag was packed and sitting beside her. She came to the front door and opened it before he had time to knock. And there she was all ready to set out. She came out carrying her bag and didn’t say anything. As a matter of fact she had not said anything to him yet. She had just come out of the house and had walked beside him to where they had to pass through a gate to reach the street and then her mother and sister had come out and had stood on a little porch to watch them go. How bully the old mother had been. She had even laughed at them. “Well, you two have got the gall. You tramp off as cool as two cucumbers, now don’t you?” she had shouted. Then she had laughed again. “Do you know there’s going to be a hell of a row about this all over town in the morning?” she asked. Natalie hadn’t answered her. “Well, good luck to you, you husky whore, trotting off with your damned reprobate,” her mother had shouted, still laughing. The two people had turned a corner and had passed out of sight of the Swartz house. No doubt there must be other people awake in other houses along the little street, and no doubt they had been listening and wondering. On two or three occasions some of the neighbors had wanted to have Natalie’s mother arrested because of her foul language but they had been dissuaded by others, out of consideration for the daughters. Was Natalie weeping now because she was leaving the old mother or was it because of the school-teacher sister whom John Webster had never known?