his burial temptation came to his widow.

Grit's widow was "Great" Taylor, whose inadequate first name was
Nell--a young, immaculate creature whose body was splendid even if her
vision and spirit were small. She never had understood Grit.

Returning from the long, wearisome ride, she climbed the circular iron
staircase--up through parallels of garlic-scented tenement gloom--to
her three-room flat, neat as a pin; but not even then did she give way
to tears. Tears! No man could make Great Taylor weep!

However, drawing the pins from her straw hat, dyed black for the
occasion, she admitted, "It ain't right." Grit had left her nothing,
absolutely nothing, but an unpleasant memory of himself--his grimy
face and hands, his crooked nose and baggy breeches.... And Great
Taylor was willing that every thought of him should leave her forever.
"Grit's gone," she told herself. "I ain't going to think of him any
more."

Determinedly Great Taylor put some things to soak and, closing down
the top of the stationary washtubs, went to the window. The view was
not intriguing, and yet she hung there: roofs and more roofs, a
countless number reached out toward infinity, with pebbles and pieces
of broken glass glittering in the sunlight; chimneys sharply outlined
by shadow; and on every roof, except one, clothes-lines, from which
white cotton and linen flapped in the wind at the side of faded
overalls and red woollen shirts. They formed a kind of flag--these
red, white, and blue garments flying in the breeze high above a nation
of toilers. But Great Taylor's only thought was, "It's Monday."

One roof, unlike the rest, displayed no such flag--a somewhat
notorious "garden" and dance hall just around the corner.

And adjacent to this house was a vacant lot on which Great Taylor
could see a junk-cart waiting, and perhaps wondering what had become
of its master.

She turned her eyes away. "I ain't going to think of him." Steadying
her chin in the palms of her hands, elbows on the window-sill, Nell
peered down upon a triangular segment of chaotic street. Massed
humanity overflowed the sidewalks and seemed to bend beneath the
weight of sunlight upon their heads and shoulders. A truck ploughed a
furrow through push-carts that rolled back to the curb like a wave
crested with crude yellow, red, green, and orange merchandise. She
caught the hum of voices, many tongues mingling, while the odours of
vegetables and fruit and human beings came fai