Mr. Farley sighed deeply. "I'm ready and willing to discuss anything. I have felt lately that I have become an intruder in your mother's eyes, but I hardly know what has happened, Alice." Mrs. Farley glanced at the bright baldish spot in her husband's scalp. It seemed to her the center of the unreality in which she had existed of late, and she was as if held together by the grip of the glasses on her nose, the one tense and sure sensation which contradicted her feeling of dispersion. Then she looked at Alice. "I can't leave May and Bobby upstairs alone even to talk things over." She pulled the red shawl about her neck and started for the door. "It seems to me you and your father have settled my life for me, anyway," she called back. Mr. Farley did not move for a moment after her exit. Then he stood up, and, making a hopeless gesture with his hands, walked out in silence, shaking his head. His thoughts were eddying in a current which sucked down his self-esteem. He wanted to give back her happiness to his wife that it might make him beautiful in his own eyes. He wanted the cool peace of purchased misery. Alice, left alone, was hot and futile. I shall go out of me in dark blood. She walked to the window. The street was empty. Over the blue-bright housetops, the quiet sky and the cold moon. She leaned her forehead against the glass and looked into the street. She felt suddenly tired, endless, capable of giving birth to endless selves. She was tired. She could not die. She was like a mother bearing herself forever like endless children. PART III There was a blacksmith's forge down the road by the farmhouse where Winnie and her mother were staying. In the morning in the silence the first sound Winnie heard was the chiming of the hammer like a bell. There were maple trees against her window. The leaves were yellowing. When the sun shone through them they were a silken veil of light. The days were long and bright. The farmer's wife was busy with household tasks and Winnie and her mother spent uninterrupted hours on the long narrow veranda when Mrs. Price embroidered, or read a novel while Winnie listened. Winnie was oppressed by the silence. She had not cared at first to believe that she would have a child, but the dark thought ran along after her like a dog that will not be beaten off. She knew it was there in her mind, but she would not recognize it. Dr. Beach came into the country to visit her. He spoke of the care she must give to her health and he told her that if she continued to improve over a long time she might be able to evade the operation. It was only when he gave her hope that despair forced her to realize herself. She gazed at him in helpless terror. When he turned to speak to her mother, Winnie left the room, and while he remained she did not come back. After the doctor had gone Mrs. Price entered the old-fashioned farm bedroom and found Winnie lying on her face.