“That car salesman is going to come around to-morrow. What shall I tell him?” “The salesman. I don’t know! What do you want to tell him?” Etta pouted. In spite of the usual smile she had so carefully cultivated during the last seven years, her eyes were cold. “It isn’t what _I_ want to tell him. You know that. I’m not the one for whose sake we’re getting that limousine. But you can’t be driving around in that dingy sedan. You ought to have a real car. People expect it of you.” Always that argument. The apartment people expected of him, her dresses people expected of him, his name people expected of him. Nothing for her. Everything for him. Oh, a good wife! “You expect it of me, too, don’t you, Etta?” “Well....” “You all expect it of me? Your father expected an interest on his money: a nice home for you, nice clothes for you. He got it. My family.... Well, they’re well off now, they’ve no troubles. A nice home in the Bronx. Reba got her dowry, she got her lawyer.... Aren’t you, all of you, satisfied yet? What else do you want?” “Manny, I don’t understand you.” “No!” “What is the matter with you to-day?” To-day.... Seven years, nine, twelve.... “Etta, what would you say if I told you I’m through?” “What do you mean, ‘through’?” “That I’m going away?” “Where are you going?” He couldn’t answer that. Where would he be going? To the street? The street.... Etta had left him, shrugging her shoulders. She didn’t bother to try to understand him. One of his unaccountable fits! Alone, Emmanuel continued sitting at his desk. Would he really go away? The telephone rang. He recognized the voice. His uncle. For years the “support of the family,” who had helped him through college, helped his father with the basement penny business. A self-satisfied, ruthless, self-made man, narrow, full of many hatreds. A charitable, religious Jew, a good father. Cloaks and suits. “Manny, my son Dewey is gonna have for him a graduation party from high school. I want you positively to come.” Emmanuel promised. He liked Dewey, a boy who was forced to be bright, who was forced to be the best student in his class, Dewey, who had once received a beating in his presence for daring to read a novel on a Saturday instead of going to the synagogue. Was Dewey perhaps like himself? Emmanuel walked out of the house. At the door his chauffeur asked: “Shall I get the car, sir?” “No, I’ll walk.” The man touched his cap, looked after Emmanuel stupidly. It was raining. Emmanuel didn’t care. The rain would do him good to-day, he thought. It would be good to walk into the street while it was raining. Already the afternoon, dusk-cloaked, was slipping away and in the coming darkness the pavement of the street would reflect the light from the windows. Yellow pools of light.... It would be a long walk. The street was far away.