bottles above which flew a black swarm of flies.
Once when she was alone, and after watching a prolonged
and ineffectual outburst on the part of the baker,
Elizabeth Willard put her head down on her long white
hands and wept. After that she did not look along the
alleyway any more, but tried to forget the contest
between the bearded man and the cat. It seemed like a
rehearsal of her own life, terrible in its vividness.

In the evening when the son sat in the room with his
mother, the silence made them both feel awkward.
Darkness came on and the evening train came in at the
station. In the street below feet tramped up and down
upon a board sidewalk. In the station yard, after the
evening train had gone, there was a heavy silence.
Perhaps Skinner Leason, the express agent, moved a
truck the length of the station platform. Over on Main
Street sounded a man's voice, laughing. The door of the
express office banged. George Willard arose and
crossing the room fumbled for the doorknob. Sometimes
he knocked against a chair, making it scrape along the
floor. By the window sat the sick woman, perfectly
still, listless. Her long hands, white and bloodless,
could be seen drooping over the ends of the arms of the
chair. "I think you had better be out among the boys.
You are too much indoors," she said, striving to
relieve the embarrassment of the departure. "I thought
I would take a walk," replied George Willard, who felt
awkward and confused.

One evening in July, when the transient guests who made
the New Willard House their temporary home had become
scarce, and the hallways, lighted only by kerosene
lamps turned low, were plunged in gloom, Elizabeth
Willard had an adventure. She had been ill in bed for
several days and her son had not come to visit her. She
was alarmed. The feeble blaze of life that remained in
her body was blown into a flame by her anxiety and she
crept out of bed, dressed and hurried along the hallway
toward her son's room, shaking with exaggerated fears.
As she went along she steadied herself with her hand,
slipped along the papered walls of the hall and
breathed with difficulty. The air whistled through her
teeth. As she hurried forward she thought how foolish
she was. "He is concerned with boyish affairs," she
told herself. "Perhaps he has now begun to walk about
in the evening with girls."

Elizabeth Willard had a dread of being seen by guests
in the hotel that had once belonged to her father and