dreadful
spasm of intuition.

It was all so quick. In the flash of her flung-open door, as her head
in its amber cloud leaned out, Getaway, bending almost double over
the upper banister, his lips in his narrow face back to show a white
terribleness of strain that lingered in the memory, hurled out an arm
suddenly toward two men mounting the steps of the flight below him.

There was a shot then, and on the lower flight one of the men, with
an immediate red mouth opening slowly in his neck, slid downstairs
backward, face up.

Suddenly, from a crouching position beside her door, the second
figure shot forward now, with ready and perfect aim at the
already-beginning-to-be-nerveless figure of Getaway hanging over the
banister with the smoking pistol.

By the reaching out of her right hand Marylin could have deflected that
perfect aim. In fact, her arm sprang toward just that reflex act, then
stayed itself with the jerk of one solid body avoiding collision with
another.

So much quicker than it takes in the telling there marched across
Marylin's sickened eyes this frieze: Her father trailing dead from the
underslinging of a freight car. That moment when a uniform had stepped
in from the fire escape across the bolt of Brussels lace; her
mother's scream, like a plunge into the heart of a rapier.
Uniforms--contemplating. On street corners. Opposite houses. Those four
fingers peeping over each of her father's shoulders in the courtroom.
Getaway! His foxlike face leaner. Meaner. Black mask. Electric chair.
Volts. Ugh--volts! God--you know--best--help--

When the shot came that sent Getaway pitching forward down the
third-floor flight she was on her own room floor in a long and merciful
faint. Marylin had not reached out.

* * * * *

Time passed. Whole rows of days of buttonholes down pleats that were
often groped at through tears. Heavy tears like magnifying glasses. And
then, with that gorgeous and unassailable resiliency of youth, lighter
tears. Fewer tears. Few tears. No tears.

Under the cretonne curtain, though, the blue mercerized frock hung
unworn, and in its dark drawer remained the petticoat with its rill of
lace. But one night, with a little catch in her throat (it was the last
of her sobs), she took out the sport hat, and for no definite reason
began to turn the jockey rosette to the side where the sun had not faded
it.

These were quiet evenings in her small room. All the ce