e snatched the doll from her and crammed it into the kitchen
stove and poked at it savagely to make it burn faster. Then he slammed
down the lid and looked ruthlessly up at Harriett with, "We've had about
enough of this sobbing around over _junk_!"

Harriett wanted him to come over to her house that last night but he
said he'd either go home with one of the fellows or bring one of them
home with him. She did not press it, knowing how little her brother and
her husband liked each other.

He went to the theatre that night with a couple of his friends. He was
glad to go, for it was as good a way as he could think of for getting
through the evening. They were a little early and he sat there watching
the people coming in; it was what would be called a representative
audience, the society of the town, the "best people" were there. They
were people Ted had known all his life; people who used to come to the
house, people his own family had been one with; friends of his mother
came in, associates of his father, old friends of Ruth. That gathering
of people represented the things in the town that he and his had been
allied with. He watched them, thinking of his own going away, of how it
would be an entirely new group of people he would come to know, would
become one with, thinking of the Hollands, how much they had been a part
of it all and how completely they were out of it now. As he saw all
these people, such pleasant, good-looking people, people he had known as
far back as he could remember, in whose homes he had had good times,
people his own people had been associated with always, a feeling of
really hating to leave the town, of its being hard to go away, crept up
in him. He talked along with the friend next him and watched people
taking their seats with a new feeling for them all; now that he was
actually leaving them he had a feeling of affection for the people with
whom he sat in the theatre that night. He had known them always; they
were "mixed up" with such a lot of old things.

Some people came into one of the boxes during the first act and when the
lights went up for the intermission he saw that one of the women was
Stuart Williams' wife.

He turned immediately to his friends and began a lively conversation
about the play, painfully wondering if the fellows he was with had seen
her too, if they were wondering whether he had seen her, whether he was
thinking about it. His feeling of gentle regret about leaving the