r matter.

Sally muttered: "Enough of that!" and started for the kitchen door. Just
as she reached it the telephone rang.

Sally went quickly to the phone and lifted the receiver. The instant she
pressed it to her ear she recognized her husband's voice--or thought she
did.

"Sally, come to the office!" came the voice, speaking in a hoarse
whisper. "Hurry--or it will be too late! Hurry, Sally!"

Sally turned with a startled gasp, looked out through the kitchen window
at the autumn leaves blowing crisp and dry across the lawn. As she
looked the scattered leaves whirled into a flurry around Tommy, then
lifted and went spinning over the fence and out of sight.

The dread in her heart gave way to a sudden, bleak despair. As she
turned from the phone something within her withered, became as dead as
the drifting leaves with their dark autumnal mottlings.

She did not even pause to call Tommy in from the yard. She rushed
upstairs, then down again, gathering up her hat, gloves and purse,
making sure she had enough change to pay for the taxi.

The ride to the office was a nightmare ... Tall buildings swept past,
facades of granite as gray as the leaden skies of mid-winter, beehives
of commerce where men and women brushed shoulders without touching
hands.

Autumnal leaves blowing, and the gray buildings sweeping past. Despite
Tommy, despite everything there was no shining vision to warm Sally from
within. A cottage must be lived in to become a home and Sally had never
really had a home.

One-night stand! It wasn't an expression she'd have used by choice, but
it came unbidden into her mind. If you live for nine years with a man
who can't relax and be human, who can't be warm and loving you'll begin
eventually to feel you might as well live alone. Each day had been like
a lonely sentinel outpost in a desert waste for Sally.

She thought about Tommy ... Tommy wasn't in the least like his father
when he came racing home from school, hair tousled, books dangling from
a strap. Tommy would raid the pantry with unthinking zest, invite other
boys in to look at the Westerns on TV, and trade black eyes for marbles
with a healthy pugnacity.

Up to a point Tommy _was_ normal, _was_ healthy.

But she had seen mirrored in Tommy's pale blue eyes the same abnormal
calmness that was always in his father's, and the look of derisive
withdrawal which made him seem always to be staring down at her from a
height. And it filled her with te