her voice asking, faint in the
distance, far off from where she had flung herself against that door.

"Why yes, why not? Not very recently he said, some time ago. We had
quite a talk about it afterwards. It must be something you've
forgotten," said Eugenia. She took up a card from the table and fanned
herself as she spoke, her eyes not quitting Marise's face. "It's going
to be as hot as it was yesterday," she said with resignation. "Doesn't
it make you long for a dusky, high-ceilinged Roman room with a cool,
red-tiled floor, and somebody out in the street shouting through your
closed shutters, 'Ricotta! Ricotta!'" she asked lightly.

Marise looked at her blankly. She wished she could lean forward and
touch Eugenia to make sure she was really standing there. What was it
she had been saying? She could not have understood a word of it. It was
impossible that it should be what it seemed to mean,--impossible!

A door somewhere in the house opened and shut, and steps approached. The
two women turned their eyes towards the hall-door. Old Mrs. Powers
walked in unceremoniously, her gingham dress dusty, her lean face deeply
flushed by the heat, a tin pan in her hands, covered with a
blue-and-white checked cloth.

"I thought maybe you'd relish some fresh doughnuts as well as anything,"
she said briskly, with no preliminary of greeting.

Something about the atmosphere of the room struck her oddly for all the
composed faces and quiet postures of the two occupants. She brought out
as near an apology for intruding, as her phraseless upbringing would
permit her. "I didn't see Agnes in the kitchen as I come through, so I
come right along, to find somebody," she said, a little abashed.

Marise was incapable of speaking to her, but she made a silent gesture
of thanks, and, moving forward, took the pan from the older woman's
hand.

Mrs. Powers went on, "If 'twouldn't bother you, could you put them in
your jar now, and let me take the pan back with me? We hain't got any
too many dishes, you know."

Marise went out to the pantry with the older woman, feeling with
astonishment the floor hard and firm under her feet as usual, the walls
upright about her. Only something at the back of her throat contracted
to a knot, relaxed, contracted, with a singular, disagreeable,
involuntary regularity.

"You look down sick, Mis' Crittenden," said Mrs. Powers with a
respectful admiration for the suitability of this appearance. "And there
ain't n