One of the two paintings on the bedroom walls was of the old tree. The tree dominated the old story-and-a-half white house with the green shutters that was the Halseys' home. Her home. Alex had painted that picture as well as the other showing the graceful loop of the river and the roofs of the village of Thayer in the distance. Ruth had been with him as he painted that second picture from the jutting rock ledge five hundred feet above the river. "I was just ten then, Essie," she chirped gaily. "I remember how afraid I was of the height and how Alex scolded." But Alex was dead now and all she had to remember of him was the paintings and the photographs that Mother kept in a battered brown leather folder. For a moment the bright sunlight in her beloved maple tree's leaves seemed to dim and the room wavered about her. She wondered about that. She must tell her father or her mother. Perhaps the polio, light touch of it or not, had hurt her eyesight. Glasses! She shuddered at the thought. The room shimmered and blurred--and suddenly broke apart to reform into something.... She squinched her eyes shut to the hideous vision. And then opened them the merest slit. Nothing had changed.... "MOTHER!" she cried. "Daddy!" she cried. "What has happened?" She heard the door to--to this hideous travesty of a room opening. Her eyes darted around the shrunken metal-walled shell, even the ceiling curved overhead, and she saw two grotesque daubs taped to the walls that parodied the paintings of her dead brother Alex. The coloring was ugly and the proportions out of line. And it was not canvas but curling sheets of paper taped and painted to resemble frames! A big man, sandy-haired and with vertical wrinkles deep between piercing blue eyes, came into the room. She shrank into the bed, seeing that the sheet she tugged taut across her breast was ragged and blue. "Ruth," he said, a slow smile making his face almost handsome, "you're better. You haven't spoken in weeks." Ruth wanted to giggle. As though they could keep her quiet. Daddy was always shushing her.... But who was this big man in his dusty drab coveralls and dropped dust mask dangling upon his chest? "Don't you know me, Dear? It's Buhl, your husband." Buhl was fifteen and only a couple of inches taller than Ruth. Of course he had sandy hair like this man. But this man was old enough to be Buhl's father. This was crazy--like one of the dreams that always made her unhappy. So? So it was a dream. She felt warmth and release. Why not see what this dream had to offer that might be amusing to remember and tell Buhl sometime soon. Wouldn't he laugh when he heard she had dreamed about him? And been married to him.