was no part of her.

She sat thus for the better part of an hour, motionless except for one
forefinger that was, quite unconsciously, tapping out a popular and
cheap little air that she had been strumming at the piano the evening
before, having bought it downtown that same afternoon. It had struck
Orville's fancy, and she had played it over and over for him. Her
right forefinger was playing the entire tune, and something in the back
of her head was following it accurately, though the separate thinking
process was going on just the same. Her eyes were bright, and wide,
and hot. Suddenly she became conscious of the musical antics of her
finger. She folded it in with its mates, so that her hand became a
fist. She stood up and stared down at the clutter of the breakfast
table. The egg--that fateful second egg--had congealed to a mottled
mess of yellow and white. The spoon lay on the cloth. His coffee, only
half consumed, showed tan with a cold gray film over it. A slice of
toast at the left of his plate seemed to grin at her with the
semi-circular wedge that he had bitten out of it.

Terry stared down at these congealing remnants. Then she laughed, a
hard high little laugh, pushed a plate away contemptuously with her
hand, and walked into the sitting room. On the piano was the piece of
music (Bennie Gottschalk's great song hit, "Hicky Boola") which she had
been playing the night before. She picked it up, tore it straight
across, once, placed the pieces back to back, and tore it across again.
Then she dropped the pieces to the floor.

"You bet I'm going," she said, as though concluding a train of thought.
"You just bet I'm going. Right now!" And Terry went. She went for
much the same reason as that given by the ladye of high degree in the
old English song--she who had left her lord and bed and board to go
with the raggle-taggle gipsies-O! The thing that was sending Terry
Platt away was much more than a conjugal quarrel precipitated by a
soft-boiled egg and a flap of the arm. It went so deep that it is
necessary to delve back to the days when Theresa Platt was Terry
Sheehan to get the real significance of it, and of the things she did
after she went.

When Mrs. Orville Platt had been Terry Sheehan, she had played the
piano, afternoons and evenings, in the orchestra of the Bijou Theater,
on Cass Street, Wetona, Wisconsin. Anyone with a name like Terry
Sheehan would, perforce, do well anything she might set ou