g of the union. If I
don't come back it'll be because that geezer's sworn out a warrant."

He opened the front door and paused. She knew he was looking at her.
Then the door closed and she heard him go down the steps.

Saxon was stunned. She did not think. She did not know what to think.
The whole thing was incomprehensible, incredible. She lay back in the
chair, her eyes closed, her mind almost a blank, crushed by a leaden
feeling that the end had come to everything.

The voices of children playing in the street aroused her. Night had
fallen. She groped her way to a lamp and lighted it. In the kitchen she
stared, lips trembling, at the pitiful, half prepared meal. The fire had
gone out. The water had boiled away from the potatoes. When she lifted
the lid, a burnt smell arose. Methodically she scraped and cleaned the
pot, put things in order, and peeled and sliced the potatoes for next
day's frying. And just as methodically she went to bed. Her lack of
nervousness, her placidity, was abnormal, so abnormal that she closed
her eyes and was almost immediately asleep. Nor did she awaken till the
sunshine was streaming into the room.

It was the first night she and Billy had slept apart. She was amazed
that she had not lain awake worrying about him. She lay with eyes wide
open, scarcely thinking, until pain in her arm attracted her attention.
It was where Billy had gripped her. On examination she found the bruised
flesh fearfully black and blue. She was astonished, not by the spiritual
fact that such bruise had been administered by the one she loved most in
the world, but by the sheer physical fact that an instant's pressure had
inflicted so much damage. The strength of a man was a terrible thing.
Quite impersonally, she found herself wondering if Charley Long were as
strong as Billy.

It was not until she dressed and built the fire that she began to
think about more immediate things. Billy had not returned. Then he was
arrested. What was she to do?--leave him in jail, go away, and start
life afresh? Of course it was impossible to go on living with a man
who had behaved as he had. But then, came another thought, WAS it
impossible? After all, he was her husband. FOR BETTER OR WORSE--the
phrase reiterated itself, a monotonous accompaniment to her thoughts,
at the back of her consciousness. To leave him was to surrender. She
carried the matter before the tribunal of her mother's memory. No; Daisy
would never have surrender