"Poor little sick girl," he said as to a child. "I'm glad you're going away with your mother. We'll give you a nice rest and have you all fixed up." "You don't love me!" she said, looking at him stormily. "Please, Winnie. Things are hard enough." His face was drawn with the effort of his continued smile. "You don't." She turned over and closed her eyes. "Don't be absurd." He joked uncomfortably. But she would not look at him. He walked out on tiptoe as though he thought her asleep. When she knew he was gone she began to cry, and, keeping her eyes closed, moved her head from side to side and struck into the pillows with her fist. * * * * * Laurence did not go home to dinner, but remained working at the laboratory until after midnight. As he walked home the city streets, washed thinly with light, were yet thronged. His mind was sharply intent on itself. It was like the keel of a ship, parting the swarming life before it. But as he drew nearer the place where Winnie was his heart strained. He felt suffocated. There were women standing in doorways. Their shadows wove the darkness together and drew it tight about his heart. He hated his work but the doing of it gave him relief, for it could not enter him. The glow from a street lamp fell on his own house--purple-red walls that held Winnie. The big gilt figures on the transom above the door glistened on the glass that gave back a blank reflection of the light. He put in his latch key. The door, swinging away from him, seemed drawn inward with the pull of the darkness. It shut ponderously behind him. He hesitated a moment, resisting some unknown inevitability. It was very still in the dark. Only the stairs were half revealed by the pallor of the light that came in high up from the street. He walked up softly and opened the bedroom door. He could hear a breath like the respiration of shadow. He knew it was Bobby. Then somehow he realized that Winnie was awake and holding herself apart from the dark. He did not speak. She did not speak. He sat down and began to take off his shoes. As he laid the shoes away from him he was aware of her awareness as though she were seeing him stoop forward in the dark. He had a sense of his own motion as a pale line etched across a thick surface. When he unbuckled his belt and began to draw his trousers over his feet he felt the sharp sweep of his moving arms tearing the quiescence of the room. He stood up naked. His cold toes gripped the hot nap of the roughened carpet. He pulled on his pajamas and the white cloth, as it was drawn up his legs, was cool white fire, that burnt upward from his bare feet. The room seemed a final blackness into which the dark of the night outside had flowed and gathered as in a pool. Still feeling himself burning white in the cool cloth, Laurence walked to the side of the bed and looked down to see if Winnie were asleep.