He could not answer. He put his hand to his head and walked away from her. For a moment he stood by the window with his hands over his eyes. At last he said, "It is cruel and useless to subject your mother to a thing like this--not to mention that I don't deserve it, Alice." "I know it, Papa, but I hate to have to keep looking at the thing. You and Mamma are of no earthly use to each other, and it seems so stupid for you to sacrifice yourself to a lie like this." Mr. Farley hung his head and smoothed his broad brow with slow trembling fingers. "Readjustments are expensive, Alice." "I know they are, but you can't blame me for wanting to see things right." They were silent. Mr. Farley was uncomfortable. He did not know what was expected of him. "You must try to comfort your mother," he said at last. "She'll probably find some comfort for herself," Alice said bitterly. "Well, I must go to the office. My first duty to her is there." Trying not to hurry, Mr. Farley, his face averted, walked out. His back, as he disappeared through the doorway, looked stiff and weary. He seemed weak and humiliated like a big dog in pain. * * * * * At the noon hour Mrs. Farley came downstairs and shambled about the house, forcing herself on Alice's sight but refusing to speak. As Mrs. Farley's fingers fell into their wonted tasks the scene of the morning became less real to her than the feel of cloth and the posture of furniture. The habit of contentment crept back upon her. She wanted nothing of others. What should they want of her? Dryly she preserved her already half-mummied antagonism. * * * * * On the glass windows that stretched, twinkling with light, across the broad front of the bakery and lunch room, the name was inscribed in a half moon of raised white letters. Behind the glass were mounds of iced cakes and piles of glossy yellow rolls resting in wooden trays. A pink-faced German, with flat cheek bones, a stiff mustache, and narrow good-natured eyes, stood in his undershirt and trousers draped with a soiled apron, and laid out a new supply of cakes with alternate chocolate and white so that they formed a geometric pattern. Behind him on a rear wall a large clock marked six, the hands, on the stark white dial, rigid as the limbs of the crucified. Above him lights glowed through globes of clouded glass. Groups of wagon drivers and workmen in gray jumpers sat at the tables and, leaning forward with chests to the marble tops, slopped coffee from their saucers and shoveled huge accretions of potatoes and meat into their mouths in the attitudes of hunting animals. Outside, in the dusk, light spread hazily about the lamps in the street. Over the roofs stars quivered delicately like fiery flowers of pale green on a shaken spray.