me and only cost a quarter." "Stone
wall!... Humph!..."

Nell transformed the washtubs into a bath by the removal of the centre
partition, and within an hour was bathed and dressed. Sticking the
pins through her straw hat, dyed black, she took from the bottom
drawer of the cupboard a patent-leather hand-bag with colourful
worsted fruit embroidered upon its shining sides. She thought of the
night Grit had brought it home to her, his pride--he had bought it at
a store. But a glance around the room obliterated this memory, and she
mumbled, "Wish I warn't never, _never_ going to see this place again!
Wait till I get money...." She glared at the broken furniture, each
piece of which brought back some memory of the man. She could see him
drooping in the armchair, with his wrists crossed, fingers curled. She
glared at the shelf and imagined him fumbling for something that was
not there. She started for the door, then, turning back, reached into
the peach crate. "There! Keep your old molasses jug!" she said, in a
dry voice, and, replacing the jug on the shelf, she went out into the
hall.

Winding down through the tenement-house gloom, Great Taylor was not
without fear. Her footfall on the uncarpeted landings and iron treads
sounded hollow and strangely loud. The odours that in the past had
greeted her familiarly, making known absorbing domestic details of her
neighbours, caused her neither to pause nor to sniff. She reached the
narrow entrance hall, dark and deserted, and, hurrying down its
length, fumbled with the knob and pulled open the street door.
Dazzling sunlight, a blast of warm air and the confused clatter of the
sidewalk engulfed her. She stood vacillating in the doorway, thinly
panoplied for the struggle of existence. Her body was splendid, it is
true, but her spirit was small. Despite the sunlight and warmth she
was trembling. And yet, for years she had gone down into this street
confident of herself, mingling on equal terms with its wayfarers, her
ear catching and translating the sounds that, converging, caused this
babel. Now, suddenly, all of it was meaningless, the peddlers with
whom she had bickered and bargained in a loud voice with gestures,
breast to breast, were strangers and the street an alien land. Many
things seemed to have passed backward out of her life. She was no
longer Grit's wife, no longer the Great Taylor of yesterday. She was
something new-born, free of will; all the old ties had been clipped