Old women crept along in the vague brightness, their backs bent, parcels of half-wrapped bread and bits of bloody meat held preciously to their shrunken breasts or clutched in the knots of their shawls. A policeman, leaning against a post, twirled his club and stared smugly into the bright vacant faces of two pearl-rouged girls in large black velvet hats. Mrs. Farley, very genteel in her shabbiness, shrank from the burly men and the rough children who ran almost under her feet. But she felt superior to them and the sight of them steadied her against life. For years she had bought bread at the bakery. As she went in the smell of baked bread floated against her face like a palpable assurance of unchanging things. But the memory of the morning's scene crept over her like a coldness which she seemed to feel in the roots of her hair. It was pain to feel the warmth of life flowing away. Her coldness shuddered miserably against the heat of the room. "Some rolls, please. Fifteen cents' worth." Mrs. Farley's smile was like the smile of the drowned, pale through water. Her voice was so modulated that the friendly blonde woman with her childlike eyes had to lean from behind the counter and ask again what was wanted. Mrs. Farley waited for the rolls to be wrapped. The steam from the shining coffee urns enveloped her. Every day for a dozen years. The world motionless in an atmosphere which held the gestures of the German baker and the big blonde woman with the smiling face. Mrs. Farley walked home slowly. The bag of bread dangled in her cramped hand as she faced the chill wind blowing against her from the direction of her home--chill wind of strangeness. Mr. Farley and Alice were in the house. Alice minded the children. Mr. Farley awaited his dinner. To Mrs. Farley they were wild fish out of the sea caught in her glass. They were in the house making confident motions there as fish swim at their ease in an aquarium. They were terrible as the sea in a looking-glass. Mrs. Farley mounted the front steps. Alice and Mr. Farley were a pain she would not admit. She shut them out. It should be night, and she would remain in the night where they meant nothing. As she walked through the hall to the kitchen she felt strong again with the monotony of life. Beds, chairs, tables, walls rose strong about her. She made herself still like the walls. * * * * * Mrs. Farley pushed the bedroom door back. She did not speak. Alice could barely distinguish the form which agitated the darkness with its quiet. The two women felt for each other through the gloom. They were like water insects fumbling with antennæ. "Mamma! Is that you?" Alice sat up straight in bed. Mrs. Farley, her heart beating unevenly, felt the harsh stiffening of Alice's outline against the white blot of the sheet. Mrs. Farley tried to speak. She felt as though the darkness were binding her lips with gray transparent folds of shadow tough as silk. "Yes."