ently again. What a circus the kids were!

The clock struck nine as they finished this, and Neale heard the stir
and shifting of chairs. Paul said, "Mother, Mr. Welles and I have fixed
it up, that he's going to put us to bed tonight, if you'll let him."
Amused surprise from Marise: Mr. Welles' voice saying he really would
like it, never had seen any children in their nightgowns except in the
movies; Paul saying, "Gracious! We don't wear nightgowns like women. We
wear pajamas!"; Mark's voice crying, "We'll show you how we play
foot-fight on the rug. We have to do that barefoot, so each one can
tickle ourselves;" as usual, no sound from Elly probably still reveling
in the proudness of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

A clatter of feet on the stairs, the chirping voices muffled by the
shutting of a door overhead, and Eugenia's voice, musical and carefully
modulated, saying, "Well, Marisette, you look perfectly worn out with
fatigue. You haven't looked a bit well lately, anyhow. And I'm not
surprised. The way those children take it out of you!"

"Damn that woman!" thought Neale. That sterile life of hers had starved
out from her even the capacity to understand a really human existence
when she saw it. Not that she had _ever_ seemed to have any considerable
seed-bed of human possibilities to be starved, even in youth, if he
could judge from his memory, now very dim, of how she had seemed to him
in Rome, when he had first met her, along with Marise. He remembered
that he had said of her fantastically, to a fellow in the _pension_,
that she reminded him of a spool of silk thread. And now the silk thread
had all been wound off, and there was only the bare wooden spool left.

"It's not surprising that Mrs. Crittenden gets tired," commented
Marsh's voice. "She does the work of four or five persons."

"Yes," agreed Eugenia, "I don't know how she does it . . . cook, nurse,
teacher, housekeeper, welfare-worker, seamstress, gardener . . ."

"Oh, let up, let up!" Neale heard Marise say, with an impatience that
pleased him. She must have been at the piano as she spoke, for at once
there rose, smiting to the heart, the solemn, glorious, hopeless chords
of the last part of the Pathetic Symphony. Heavens! How Marise could
play!

When the last dull, dreary, beautiful note had vibrated into silence,
Eugenia murmured, "Doesn't that always make you want to crawl under the
sod and pull the daisies over you?"

"Ashes, ashes, not dais