She stood by the couch and stared down at her husband. Her eyes had the peculiar intent look of a mother who watches her sleeping baby. Her eyes roamed the whole length of his body, looking at his untidy clothing, his uncombed hair, at his muddy boots that had muddied his overcoat and the pillows. At last she slipped one arm under his shoulders and with a great effort pulled him up on the couch so that his head had a better resting place. She reached for a pillow and tucked it under his head. She picked up his limp, hanging arm and laid it across his body, pulled his gaping coat together and buttoned the bottom button. She made quick, sure movements, the movements of one who performs an accustomed human task. Having made him easier, less ungraceful in his inertness, she sat down on the edge of the couch and gazed intently into his face. Her eyes dwelt in turn on every one of his features and to every one she gave some sort of touch, his tousled hair a pat, his forehead a slow stroke, his closed eyes a touch of her finger-tips, and still in her face was that peculiar intent and anxious look, the look of a mother who dotes on her fragile treasure. Eddie Gordon slept, hardly breathing, not moving. His sleep was profound, sodden, the sleep of a hard and habitual drinker who gets drunk every night and sleeps until morning, drunk every morning and sleeps until night. His face had a greenish yellow color about the forehead and eyes, was flushed at the cheeks and swollen at the mouth. Sally knew what ailed him. It was a daily event in her life, and she found herself reacting to it this time exactly as she had many times before, as she did every time she saw her husband lying so still and helpless, his heart barely beating, his breath barely stirring. Always when she saw him thus, so profoundly helpless, so utterly and mystically babelike, the feelings of a mother for awhile possessed her completely. It possessed her as one is possessed by a mood. It possessed her against her will, this common emotion that had not yet found expression in her life. She dreaded this slow welling up of morbid desire to fondle and nurse that helpless, still baby, her husband. But it was not to be resisted while it ran its course. In that desire, during its beginning and even during the moments of her surrender to it, was something that filled her with self-horror. She felt herself tricked and made worse than silly. She felt herself infected with moral decay. Always she had fought against it, as she had this time, with little devices, delays, as one in sleep fights the approach of a bad dream which comes on regardless. And always she surrendered, for awhile. Always, for awhile, something in her was glad to have this man even thus dependent, thus her own. So she sat, prinking her husband’s hair, straightening his disordered clothing, lost in this strange little orgy of motherliness.