I want to be dead! I want to be dead! She said this over and over into her pillow. Her beautiful pale braid of hair was in disorder. Her thin legs protruded from her wrinkled skirts. She lifted her small tear-smudged face with her eyes tight shut. May wanted to tell Aunt Julia, but dared not. She knew Aunt Julia was sad, though she did not know why. Aunt Julia, however, resisted confidences. When she came in from work and found May waiting for her in the hall or on the stairs Aunt Julia made herself look tired and kind. "Well, May, dear, how are you? You seem to be a very bored young lady these days. Your father is thinking of sending you away to school when Bobby goes. How would you like that?" And she smiled in a perfunctory far-away fashion. May saw that Aunt Julia was in another world and did not want her. "I don't care. Whatever you and Papa decide. I'm an awful ninny and should be terribly homesick." "That would be good for you. You must learn to be self-reliant." Without glancing behind her, Aunt Julia passed quickly up the stairs and disappeared into her room. The door shut. To May it was as if Aunt Julia knew everything already and put her aside because of what she had done. She was dead and corroded with shame. Lonely, she wandered out into the back yard. The sky, in the late sunshine, was covered with a pale haze like faint blue dust. A shining wind blew May's hair about her face and swirled the long stems of uncut grass. The seeded tops were like brown-violet feathers. Beyond the roofs and fences the horizon towered, vast and cold looking. May wanted it to be night so that she could hide herself. She knew Nellie was in the kitchen doorway watching her. She wanted to avoid the eyes of the old woman. Paul could not love her while she was despised. White clothes on a line were stretched between the windows of the apartment houses that overhung the alley. The bleached garments, soaked with blue shadow, made a thick flapping sound as the wind jerked them about. When the sun sank the grass was an ache of green in the empty twilight. May thought it was like a painful dream coming out of the earth. She was afraid of the fixity of the white sky that stared at her like a madness. She knew herself small and ugly when she wanted to feel beautiful. If she were only like Aunt Julia she would not be ashamed. It grew dark. She loved the dark. There was a black glow through the branches of the elm tree against the fence. The large stars, unfolding like flowers, were warm and strange. In the enormous evening only a little shiver of self-awareness was left to her. She tried to imagine that, because she was ugly and impure, Paul had already killed her. The strangeness and exaltation she felt came to her because she was dead. She loved him for destroying her. * * * * *