He stood before her with a kind of mocking fatigue, but she saw that he was sunk deep in himself. She wanted to drag him up. He shook his head. "I don't know what to say to you lately." She reached up and laced him with her arms. "Am I so unreasonable? Oh, Laurie, I don't want to die." He seated himself helplessly on the arm of her chair. "Why think about something so improbable as dying?" "But I might. I want you to care," she whispered. "Don't you think I care?" His voice had a grating note as he tried to be light. "Of course--yes--I guess so. But it's so awful to think about." "Then don't think of it." "I can't help it." Death. The word had not been alive to her until this moment. Suddenly she heard it about her, whispering like wings. She floated beyond Laurence, beyond the room. With a quick intake of breath she shut out terror grown too delicious. "Then you will let me go away with Mother? You won't stop loving me, Laurie?" "I'll shake you for talking nonsense," he said, getting up. She hated him for escaping her, but her mind was made up and the next day when her mother called the morning of departure was set. * * * * * Settling her pince-nez on her flat nose before her fixed and despairing eyes, Mrs. Price pressed Winnie's face to her flat black bosom. "I'm so glad, dear. It was so foolish of my little girl to hold out against having her parents do anything for her. Your father is so good, Winnie. There is nothing I can ask for you that he isn't willing to give. You mustn't deprive him of that pleasure." Winnie thought of Laurie and was stiff in her mother's embrace, yet at that moment could not have said which of them was most irritating. Mrs. Price always avoided Laurence's name. When Mrs. Price had gone Winnie lay in her room on the couch, excited and oppressed. She said death to herself, and the word echoed inside her like a cry down a long hall. Then the echo was lost in the deeps of darkness. But it continued to quiver below the surface of her life. Winnie thought of being sick. She was harsh with a knowledge of herself. She would not be sick. Closing her eyes she imagined her mouth. With a kind of horror of its own act, it pressed Laurence's. She woke up. The noonday sun outside was pale with rain. Winnie heard footsteps in the still noon street. Death. The dancing word fluttered ahead of the hurrying feet. Winnie moved fretfully on the couch. She saw Death as the face of an insistent stranger thrust into her own. Stupid thing which she did not know. She pushed it aside feebly, feeling for what had meaning to her--Laurence, Bobby, Mrs. Price.