The lemonade came: giggles and smacking lips softened the blare of the lights. “One can live,” Fanny murmured sipping her sweet drink, ... “without questions.” The room went its way up Time’s black tunnel. The girls’ congestion broke. They were one and one and one. They were many girls, now, some sweet, some bitter, some bright, some dull, some brave, some ugly and broken. They were many girls at work: they opened envelopes, marked blanks and sheets, sorted and marked ... they droned in many minds about little shut circles of thought, each shut from the other circles: circles spun about their many heads, colliding, rebounding, spinning away alone.... --One can live without asking questions. Not you. One can live spinning and droning. Not you. One can weave a steel sheet between one’s heart and one’s mind. Not you. Lord, I shall think. I promise, Lord.... I shall remember that I have suffered and died, that I am here, to think.... Lord, just a little longer. * * * * * Fanny walked home alone, avoiding Clara. In the dim afternoon the City was solid. Houses were made of stone and brick and were held up in their vast weights by pavements. Pavements solid strong, hold me up also. You hold these crowds, you hold these walls. Solid City, do not let me fall. Fanny walked tense through the slack afternoon, helping to hold herself. Her trip from the South was there. She runs swift, relaxed, through the world. She falls through the world in a train, falls upward. She falls upward upon God. _Hold me, City._ In her room, the Church. Her fists clenched. “I am going to move,” she muttered, her breath was angry. She hated ... she hated. “Damn that Church! it blots out most of the sun.” Down she went, deliberate, to the kitchen. Old Mrs. Deemis bent rhythmically over a padded board ironing towels. “Hot, eh? Mrs. Luve.” “Yes.” “Anything I kin do for you, dearie?” the woman filled the pause. Her gray hair fell in wet patches over her wide bland forehead. “Never you hesitate if there’s anything I kin do for ye, now.” Fanny, quailing before her sudden resolve to give notice, sat in a chair. “You couldn’t remove that Church for me, could you, Mrs. Deemis?” Mrs. Deemis stamped the steaming iron with elbows right-angled to the board. “Now, will you believes me, Mrs. Luve, I wisht I could!” Fanny tried to laugh.--Haven’t I been joking? “You mean Saint--acrost the way there, don’t you? They own this house, and they’re the meanest landlords ... the downright stingiest, meanest landlords, now, you ever seen. I been here twenty years. On the first of the month, it’s the rent quick, you bet. But if it’s the roof that leaks, or the plumbin’ that stinks--O any year’ll do for fixin’ that.” “This is Church property,” murmured Fanny. “Yes ... _this_....” Mrs. Deemis flourished the dismal kitchen with its seeping walls, its crumbling plaster ceiling, its ooze rotted floor, into the eyes of Fanny.