ay. This is Tuesday."

"Oh!" Another bang. Then: '"Night, Mother!"

"Good night, dear." Creaking sounds, then a long, comfortable sigh
of complete relaxation.

Emma McChesney went on with her brushing. She brushed her hair
with the usual number of swift even strokes, from the top of the
shining head to the waist. She braided her hair into two plaits,
Gretchen fashion. Millions of scanty-locked women would have given
all they possessed to look as Emma McChesney looked standing there
in kimono and gown. She nicked out the light. Then she, too,
relaxed upon her pillow with a little sigh. Quiet fell on the
little apartment. The street noises came up to her, now roaring,
now growing faint. Emma McChesney lay there sleepless. She lay
flat, hands clasped across her breast, her braids spread out on
the pillow. In the darkness of the room the years rolled before
her in panorama: her girlhood, her marriage, her unhappiness,
Jock, the divorce, the struggle for work, those ten years on the
road. Those ten years on the road! How she had hated them--and
loved them. The stuffy trains, the jarring sleepers, the bare
little hotel bedrooms, the bad food, the irregular hours, the
loneliness, the hard work, the disappointments, the temptations.
Yes but the fascination of it, the dear friends she had made, the
great human lesson of it all! And all for Jock. That Jock might
have good schools, good clothes, good books, good surroundings,
happy times. Why, Jock had been the reason for it all! She had
swallowed insult because of Jock. She had borne the drudgery
because of Jock. She had resisted temptation, smiled under
hardship, worked, fought, saved, succeeded, all because of Jock.
And now this pivot about which her whole life had revolved was to
be pulled up, wrenched away.

Over Emma McChesney, lying there in the dark, there swept one of
those unreasoning night-fears. The fear of living. The fear of
life. A straining of the eyeballs in the dark. The pounding of
heart-beats.

She sat up in bed. Her hands went to her face. Her cheeks were
burning and her eyes smarted. She felt that she must see Jock. At
once. Just to be near him. To touch him. To take him in her arms,
with his head in the hollow of her breast, as she used to when he
was a baby. Why, he had been a baby only yesterday. And now he was
a man. Big enough to stand alone, to live alone, to do without
her.

Emma McChesney flung aside the covers and sprang out of bed. She
th