It was on this day that she first helped her grandfather to the commode, that she had known the look of his feeble withered body, had glimpsed at it as she had folded his blanket about his shaking knees. She went away to walk in the twilight of the day, spinning rapidly along the street, meeting Frank and walking with him to the end of the town, merry with him over some joke that he had. Later Albert was sitting under her soft light. “Take your time, no hurry,” he said, half whispering as he stood by the door at his departure. “Take your time.” The papers scattered over her sofa in the room above had begun to reveal a hard story, hard to know and realize. She turned a bitter, unsmiling face from him as he stood by the door and glanced at her bent lips in the glass. “I’ll not hurry. Don’t bother yourself.” “But in the end you’ll come.” “Like a millstone, I will. Like a mountain.” “Mountain is no matter. I’ll get you. You’ll be glad to be got.... I’ll show you what a man can do. When I set-to I’m a real lover.” She wanted his face between her hands at that moment, but she would not trust her tenderness. She remembered her grandfather’s withered body, his shrunken maleness, and she was broken by pity. She made her pity resemble scorn as she turned apart and laid the fiddlestick carefully in the case beside the fiddle. The evening was over. “When I come I’ll be a real lover. The kind you’ll want. I know you.” “Slam the door after you when you go, so it’ll lock. Please do. Just slam it hard.” “Two months I gave you. Time flies. It’s half gone already. Goen fast.” “Just slam it hard. Save me a trip out to the door.” * * * * * She had brought other papers from the cupboard in the back room, and she sat busy with these all of a day and half a night. She was weary now of the stale odors of decayed paper and dust, weary of the truth which was now established. Her father was father also to three mulattoes. Letters from her mother’s relatives touched the matter as if it were beyond dispute, reiterated it as if it were a knowledge well premised and antedating the discussions of funds and settlements. She laid all the letters relating to this subject in a pile together and studied them in order. They were letters from her mother’s father, now dead.