She pressed her fingers hard against her brow.--Little brain, is God in there? Her eyes with a new salience touched the objects in her room ... the blue burlap on her couch, the chair, the Bible, the wall of the still Church, the swift sun vaulting away above the vaulting roofs. She bound her fingers hard about her brow:--All of you ... all ... I hold you.... There is no air ... there are no spaces. I touch everything that my eyes see, everything that my mind holds.... God? Fanny sank to her knees on the floor. She felt her face free and bright above her body. Her face prayed, and her body: “God ... go ahead. If I can stand it, Go ahead. There you are down below. I see you. You draw me like a tree, crashing down, crashing down.” She held her Bible high, let it go, it fell. “God ... go ahead.” She got up, seated herself once more: and began to darn some stockings. She worked long. At times:--I am hungry. Better go out and eat, came to her faintly dizzy head. She could not. The room was ripe and round, holding her firm. A knock. “Come in.” --_Why am I not surprised?_ Christopher Johns stepped into the room, shut the door. She gazed at him silent. “You don’t mind?” he asked. “I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d look in. The lady downstairs ... what a dear old lady!... said you were out: I could knock if I wanted to be sure.” “Sit down.” He took off his coat and laid it on the couch. It crowded nearly the whole couch. He sat down. “I’m glad I found you in. This is a nice room,” he said. “Do they give you enough heat now winter’s coming?” She went on darning. “More heat than I’m used to at home.” “Where is your home?” “I have no home.” “You look so home-like there,” after a pause he went on, laborious, determined. “Darning your stockings ... in your dark-blue wrapper.” “All sorts of women darn stockings ... and wear wrappers.” She did not look at him. She was framed in the knowledge that he looked at her. She saw his hand go through his thick brown hair. She felt it. “I’ve been married fifteen years,” he said. “I know what I feel in you.” She bit her lips.--Tell me. Tell me! “For fifteen years I’ve been married to two women.” She looked up. “Only one of them legal, of course. But married to both of them just the same. I have had scores of girls during that time under my care. I know something of woman.” --About me? about me, kind man, what do you know? He answered her silence. “You I do not know. You are a mystery to me, Fanny. But you’re true and whole ... that I know ... like the whole earth.” He had called her Fanny!