"The more I see of your case, Lilly, the less I understand it. To think of anyone in this world of suffering deliberately bringing it upon herself. Why, my dear, it isn't any of my business, but when I think of those parents of yours out there, comprehending nothing, and that poor bewildered husband of yours, I could cry for them." "Do you think I don't, Mrs. Blair, whole nightfuls of tears? Why, yesterday at the Library in my home paper I saw a little local notice of my mother's euchre club meeting at our house--it was a knife, somehow--the pain of it--" "I'm not saying so much about the husband, only, God knows why a woman should throw away a life-time of protection just because a man chews with his temples and--" "Surely you haven't taken that literally! I only tried to symbolize for you that the unimportant mannerisms that may even delight in one person can become monstrosities in another. Oh, I haven't made you understand--" "Yes, dear child, you have made me understand this much. What a fine sense of satire the power behind the throne of the world must have. Take me--that first little two-by-four home of mine over in a back street of Newark. Talk to me of freedom! I married to get away from it. Somebody who cared whether I came or went. Somebody who cared enough to want to restrict me." "Ah yes, but--" "We had a little house on Dayton Street; must have been a hundred years old, with funny little leaded panes and a staircase rising out of the parlor to a queer old box of a bedroom with slant walls. We painted the floors ourselves and Lon did the doors in burntwood. He had a feeling for the artistic, Lon had. That was the way we met--that was--the way--we--met." "How?" "He was a police sergeant then, and I was bookkeeping for the time for Metz Producing Company. Lon used to drop in once in a while for passes. Then he got to waiting for me evenings with little pencil drawings of all the funny things that had happened to him during the day. I was strong for him to get off the force and take up art, but even then, now that I look back on it, I can see that Lon was fed up on propositions that it was driving him half mad to resist. That in itself should have put me on my guard, but it didn't. I don't know why I'm telling you all this--" "Go on."