“One night he came to see me. That was when he was on _The Sun_, and he had made such a hit, you remember? He was drunk that night. He came to the house drunk. I used to wonder how he could get drunk--how he could--such a sweet boy. Now I know why. He got himself drunk so he could run away from responsibilities--so he would be helpless--so he could be a child, just as he is now. He was beautiful that night--drunk. He was beautiful partly because he was drunk. Can you understand that? Some men are that way. He was that way then. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes sparkled, and his yellow hair stood up all over his head, glittering in the lamplight. He sat on the couch and drew up his knees so that his feet were on the couch too. He sat there and talked to me. He lisped when he talked. His head was unsteady on his shoulders, like a baby’s. He talked to me about his mother. You know she died when he was five. He had to grow up unfinished. He had become a man but he was still a child. He told me how beautiful his mother was and how he would have been different if she had lived. I was like her, he said. He sat there and talked to me just about as he would have talked to his mother, I suppose, if she had been there in my place. The room was warm and after awhile he couldn’t talk at all. But he was beautiful, as a child is beautiful. His yellow head fell over against me. I put my arms around him and pulled his head down and held him close to me. I didn’t know what I was doing. Maybe I didn’t want to know. “After that I couldn’t resist him. I didn’t try. I wouldn’t let myself think about you. Eddie needed me. The whole thing with me was pity. A woman must pity something! I told myself that Eddie needed me. I loved him for his weaknesses.” The tall man slowly nodded his head. “I knew that was why you married him,” he said. “I can see how a woman would do that.” The woman went on: “After we were married I used to go out and hunt for him when he didn’t come home. I still do sometimes. I hunt for him in the back rooms of saloons, at the bar, down at the Press Club. I go along the streets where I know he is likely to be. I lead him home by the hand. Yes, and he leans on me, and he babbles to me like a baby as we go along the streets, he says the same things over and over again the way a baby does. He comes with me through the streets like a child that was lost and is glad to be found again. And when I get him home I wash his face and feed him. I put my arm around him and make him eat. I undress him and put him to bed. And he is glad of it. He is glad to be like a baby; then he can live that part of his life that was never finished. And I used to be glad too.” “You used to be glad?” the tall man said. “That is hard to believe.”