May rolled the soft cloth in her little trembling hand. She had hoped when she spoke that her father and grandmother would somehow relieve her of Aunt Alice whom she carried inside her so oppressively, but now she knew they would not. "Go upstairs and begin to undress yourself," Mrs. Farley said. "Yes'm." May slid to her tiptoes. Her belly ached with a kind of sickish hunger. She went out into the hall to the foot of the stair, and laid her pale hand on the cold, slick rail which caught dim reflections from the bright open door of the dining-room. She would have to go up alone, past Aunt Alice's door. The dark did not want her because she had told. It was white and blind against her eyes. Quivering in every limb she tiptoed up the steps. When Laurence was alone with his mother he said, a little sharply, "Alice is inclined to be a busybody and to make herself generally obnoxious, Mother, but I don't believe her condition is as bad as you seem to imagine. You must remember that all old maids don't go mad." Mrs. Farley kept her eyes away. "You don't see what I do. You heard May. Alice has had this curious obsession of trying to separate me from her father----" Mrs. Farley could not go on. She stood up and began to draw off the tablecloth to shake the crumbs out. The gas jet hissed softly above them, and the white curtains before the open windows were like white stirring shadows against the thick night beyond. Laurence began to talk of some indifferent subject and Mrs. Farley dared not bring him back to the thing of which she wished to speak. * * * * * One afternoon a fancy struck Laurence to abandon work and go out to Winnie's grave. Summer was passing and it was half cold again. The sunshine was a pale fluid trickling across the withering grass of the cemetery. The maples were already beginning to turn and their ghostly scarlet leaves were like pale flattened flames. He stood by the grave and heard the hissing of the wind through the sunny grass, and the rattle of husks in the cornfield that ran along the cemetery wall. The plowed fields beyond were purple plush, misted with a fire of green. Nearer, dirty brown sheep moved over the raspberry-colored stubble. Between Laurence and the sun was glowing foliage that seemed to burn with a secret. The sight of the mound, beaten in by the autumn winds, and already somewhat sunken, made him sick. When he went home he said to his mother, "I've some good news for you. I've given up the struggle." Mrs. Farley did not look at him when he said this. She was startled and afraid to answer at once. They were in the kitchen, and, smiling a little, she stared before her into the sink, by which she stood. The clear stream of water, dancing with light, hung like a thread of glass as it flowed slowly from the shiny spigot into the porcelain bowl. The back door was ajar and the bitter-sweet smell of wet, dying grass floated into the room.