for the last
time.

But presently she did stop her sobbing and got up and cleared the table,
and washed the dishes and even glanced at the crumpled sheets of the
morning paper that she never found time to read until evening. By eight
o'clock the little flat was very still.

V

THAT'S MARRIAGE

Theresa Platt (she that had been Terry Sheehan) watched her husband
across the breakfast table with eyes that smouldered. When a woman's
eyes smoulder at 7.30 a.m. the person seated opposite her had better
look out. But Orville Platt was quite unaware of any smouldering in
progress. He was occupied with his eggs. How could he know that these
very eggs were feeding the dull red menace in Terry Platt's eyes?

When Orville Platt ate a soft-boiled egg he concentrated on it. He
treated it as a great adventure. Which, after all, it is. Few adjuncts
of our daily life contain the element of chance that is to be found in a
three-minute breakfast egg.

This was Orville Platt's method of attack: First, he chipped off the
top, neatly. Then he bent forward and subjected it to a passionate and
relentless scrutiny. Straightening--preparatory to plunging his spoon
therein--he flapped his right elbow. It wasn't exactly a flap; it was a
pass between a hitch and a flap, and presented external evidence of a
mental state. Orville Platt always gave that little preliminary jerk
when he was contemplating a step, or when he was moved, or
argumentative. It was a trick as innocent as it was maddening.

Terry Platt had learned to look for that flap--they had been married
four years--to look for it, and to hate it with a morbid, unreasoning
hate. That flap of the elbow was tearing Terry Platt's nerves into raw,
bleeding fragments.

Her fingers were clenched tightly under the table, now. She was
breathing unevenly. "If he does that again," she told herself, "if he
flaps again when he opens the second egg, I'll scream. I'll scream. I'll
scream! I'll sc--"

He had scooped the first egg into his cup. Now he picked up the second,
chipped it, concentrated, straightened, then--up went the elbow, and
down, with the accustomed little flap.

The tortured nerves snapped. Through the early morning quiet of Wetona,
Wisconsin, hurtled the shrill, piercing shriek of Terry Platt's
hysteria.

"Terry! For God's sake! What's the matter!"

Orville Platt dropped the second egg, and his spoon. The egg yolk
trickled down his plate. The spoon made a clatter