Finally in self-defense and to save herself from being upset every night when she was tired and worn out anyway, she told her mother that the next time she mentioned Jim's name she would leave the room. And she only had actually to do this three times before poor mama succumbed, as she always did when she was met firmly. However, she still managed to say a volume in Jim's favor with her deep sighs and her "Oh, Georgia's," but Georgia always pretended she didn't know the meaning of such signs and manifestations. Of course, especially at the beginning, her husband's face often came unbidden between her and her page, but she gathered up her will each time to banish it again, and it's surprising what a woman can do if she only makes up her mind and _sticks to it_. But her dreams were the trouble. Jim would enter them. She didn't know how to keep him out. And he always came, sometimes two or three nights in succession, to bring her pain. She usually appointed her Sunday rendezvous for an hour before noon at Shakespeare's statue in the Park, and sailed off cheerily in her best bib and tucker to meet Mason, leaving behind her a fine trail of excuses, a complete new set each week, to explain to mama why she couldn't go to mass. On this particular morning she said she had a date with a girl-friend from the office. With the best intention in the world she was never on time and always kept him waiting. She was so unalterably punctual for six days a week that the seventh day it was simply impossible. Stevens usually became slightly irritated during these few minutes--what business man wouldn't?--and referred to his watch at hundred-second intervals, determined to ask her once and for all why she wasted so much time in tardiness. But when finally he distinguished her slim little figure in the Sunday throng that was streaming toward him, his impatience left not a wrack behind. They started gayly northward, bantering each other in urban repartee. As they passed gray Columbus Hospital their mood swerved suddenly and they talked of sickness and death and immortality. Her belief was orthodox, but it did not hold her as vividly as it held the old folk in the old days. Had she lived nearer to the miracles of the sun going down in darkness and coming up in light; or thunderstorms and young oats springing green out of black, with wild mustard interspersed among them like deeds of sin; of the frost coming out of the ground; and the leaves dying and the trees sleeping; she would perhaps have lived nearer to the miracles of bread and wine, of Christ sleeping that the world may wake.