marble top of a wash-stand, pushed back
her hair with both hands, and sat down on the bed-edge, heavily breathing
from a run through deserted night's streets.

"I gotta talk to you, Burkhardt--now--to-night."

"Now's no time, Hanna. Come to bed."

"Things can't go on like this, John."

He lay back slowly.

"Maybe you're right, Hanna. I been layin' up here and thinkin' the same
myself. What's to be done?"

"I've got to the end of my rope."

"With so much that God has given us, Hanna--health and prosperity--it's a
sin before Him that unhappiness should take root in this home."

"If you're smart, you won't try to feed me up on gospel to-night!"

"I'm willin' to meet you, Hanna, on any proposition you say. How'd it be
to move down to Schaefer's boardin'-house for the winter, where it'll be
a little recreation for you evenings, or say we take a trip down to
Cincinnati for a week. I--"

"Oh no," she said, looking away from him and her throat throbbing. "Oh no,
you don't! Them things might have meant something to me once, but you've
come too late with 'em. For eight years I been eatin' out my heart with
'em. Now you couldn't pay me to live at Schaefer's. I had to beg too long
for it. Cincinnati! Why, its New-Year's Eve is about as lively as a real
town's Monday morning. Oh no, you don't! Oh no!"

"Come on to bed, Hanna. You'll catch cold. Your breath's freezin'."

"I'm goin'--away, for good--that's where--I'm goin'!"

Her words threatened to come out on a sob, but she stayed it, the back of
her hand to her mouth.

Her gaze was riveted, and would not move, from a little curtain above the
wash-stand, a guard against splashing crudely embroidered in a little
hand-in-hand boy and girl.

"You--you're sayin' a good many hasty things to-night, Hanna."

"Maybe."

He plucked at a gray-wool knot in the coverlet.

"Mighty hasty things."

She turned, then, plunging her hands into the great suds of feather bed,
the whole thrust of her body toward him.

"'Hasty'! Is eight years hasty? Is eight years of buried-alive hasty? I'm
goin', John Burkhardt; this time I'm goin' sure--sure as my name is Hanna
Long."

"Goin' where, Hanna?"

"Goin' where each day ain't like a clod of mud on my coffin. Goin' where
there's a chance for a woman like me to get a look-in on life before she's
as skinny a hex at twenty-seven as old lady Scog--as--like this town's full
of. I'm goin' to make my own livin' in my own way, and I'd like t