May ran out and left Winnie looking into the glass beyond where the child had been. Winnie could not understand how she could be blamed for anything. She was so innocent, so childlike. At one time Laurence had been able to discover no faults in her. She recalled the early months of their marriage and remembered that in those days whenever she had reason to think him displeased with her she made funny little pictures of herself with her hands over her eyes and, signing them "poor Winnie," left them under his plate at table where he found them at the next meal. A pang of hatred shot through her, mingled with the recollection of caresses, involuntary on his part. She felt a need for justifying her increasing hardness of heart and when she regarded herself sadly in the mirror she was reassured. It was as if in the way her tousled reddish curls shot back the light there was something that contradicted blame. It was four o'clock. Through the window the sunshine on the row of houses opposite paled their red bricks to the purplish tint of old rose petals. At the end of the street where the square began bunches of raw green foliage floated with a heavy stillness above the smutty roofs steeped in light. Behind the bright yellow-green leaves the blue sky melted into itself as into its own dream. Laurence came home early on Saturdays and Winnie decided to dress. As she opened the front of her négligé Bobby entered the room and made her hesitate. He sweated and panted, dragging his feet and lugging with both hands a small tin bucket filled with the dirt he had dug in the back yard. He was very fat. He wore overalls and there was dirt smeared in the creases of his neck under his firm chin. "Bobby! How can you!" "Dirt. Nice dirt," Bobby explained. Everything about him showed that he belonged to himself. His brown eyes were passively against his mother. Grunting laboriously, he stooped and began to empty the rich purplish earth on the clean-swept blue carpet. Winnie's eyes flashed. "Don't you dare do that, Bobby!" She sprang toward him, trying to be angry. He did not mind. He kept his fat shoulders bent to his task. "Stop it, I say!" Only a few grains of the damp, dark soil remained in the bright bucket. She gripped his elbow. He glanced at her, his solemn eyes twinkling with a kind of placid malice. His grasp on the tin handle relaxed and he sat down very flat on his plump bottom. Winnie dropped down beside him and began to laugh. She could not have said why but she always felt flattered by his defiance. "Now what shall I do?" she demanded. They stared at each other.