bought
her a piano whose tone was so good that to her ear, accustomed to the
metallic discords of the Bijou instrument, it sounded out of tune. She
played a great deal at first, but unconsciously she missed the sharp
spat of applause that used to follow her public performance. She would
play a piece, brilliantly, and then her hands would drop to her lap.
And the silence of her own sitting room would fall flat on her ears.
It was better on the evenings when Orville was home. He sang, in his
throaty, fat man's tenor, to Terry's expert accompaniment.

"This is better than playing for those ham actors, isn't it, hon?" And
he would pinch her ear.

"Sure"--listlessly.

But after the first year she became accustomed to what she termed
private life. She joined an afternoon sewing club, and was active in
the ladies' branch of the U.C.T. She developed a knack at cooking,
too, and Orville, after a week or ten days of hotel fare in small
Wisconsin towns, would come home to sea-foam biscuits, and real soup,
and honest pies and cake. Sometimes, in the midst of an appetizing
meal he would lay down his knife and fork and lean back in his chair,
and regard the cool and unruffled Terry with a sort of reverence in his
eyes. Then he would get up, and come around to the other side of the
table, and tip her pretty face up to his.

"I'll bet I'll wake up, someday, and find out it's all a dream. You
know this kind of thing doesn't really happen--not to a dub like me."

One year; two; three; four. Routine. A little boredom. Some
impatience. She began to find fault with the very things she had liked
in him: his superneatness; his fondness for dashing suit patterns; his
throaty tenor; his worship of her. And the flap. Oh, above all, that
flap! That little, innocent, meaningless mannerism that made her
tremble with nervousness. She hated it so that she could not trust
herself to speak of it to him. That was the trouble. Had she spoken
of it, laughingly or in earnest, before it became an obsession with
her, that hideous breakfast quarrel, with its taunts, and revilings,
and open hate, might never have come to pass.

Terry Platt herself didn't know what was the matter with her. She would
have denied that anything was wrong. She didn't even throw her hands
above her head and shriek: "I want to live! I want to live! I want
to live!" like a lady in a play. She only knew she was sick of sewing
at the Wetona West End Red Cros