rror to see that Tommy's mood could
change as abruptly and terrifyingly cold ...

Tommy, her son. Tommy, no longer boisterous and eager, but sitting in a
corner with his legs drawn up, a faraway look in his eyes. Tommy seeming
to look right through her, into space. Tommy and Jim exchanging silent
understanding glances. Tommy roaming through the cottage, staring at his
toys with frowning disapproval. Tommy drawing back when she tried to
touch him.

_Tommy, Tommy, come back to me!_ How often she had cried out in her
heart when that coldness came between them.

Tommy drawing strange figures on the floor with a piece of colored
chalk, then erasing them quickly before she could see them, refusing to
let her enter his secret child's world.

Tommy picking up the cat and stroking its fur mechanically, while he
stared out through the kitchen window at rusty blackbirds on the
wing ...

"This is the address you gave me, lady. Sixty-seven Vine Street," the
cab driver was saying.

Sally shivered, remembering her husband's voice on the phone,
remembering where she was ... "_Come to the office, Sally! Hurry,
hurry--or it will be too late!_"

Too late for what? Too late to recapture a happiness she had never
possessed?

"This is it, lady!" the cab driver insisted. "Do you want me to wait?"

"No," Sally said, fumbling for her change purse. She descended from the
taxi, paid the driver and hurried across the pavement to the big office
building with its mirroring frontage of plate glass and black onyx
tiles.

The firm's name was on the directory board in the lobby, white on black
in beautifully embossed lettering. White for hope, and black for
despair, mourning ...

The elevator opened and closed and Sally was whisked up eight stories
behind a man in a checkered suit.

"Eighth floor!" Sally whispered, in sudden alarm. The elevator jolted to
an abrupt halt and the operator swung about to glare at her.

"You should have told me when you got on, Miss!" he complained.

"Sorry," Sally muttered, stumbling out into the corridor. How horrible
it must be to go to business every day, she thought wildly. To sit in an
office, to thumb through papers, to bark orders, to be a machine.

Sally stood very still for an instant, startled, feeling her sanity
threatened by the very absurdity of the thought. People who worked in
offices could turn for escape to a cottage in the sunset's glow, when
they were set free by the moving hands of a