buy pop-corn if she stood there. She bought some. She
tried to do the thing she was expected to do--so she wouldn't be
noticed.

Then the people came pushing out from the theater. They did it just as
they did it in the other towns. A new town was only the same town in a
different place; and all of it was a world she was as out of as if it
were passing before her in a picture. All of it except that one thing
that was all she had left! She had come so far to have it tonight. She
_wouldn't_ be cheated. She crossed the street, and as the last people
were coming out of the theater she went in.

A man, yawning, was doing something to a light. He must belong to the
place. His back was to her, and she stood there trying to get brave
enough to speak. It had never been easy for her to open conversations
with strangers. For so many years it was Howie who had seemed to connect
her with the world. And suddenly she thought of how sorry Howie would be
to see her waiting around in this dismal place after every one else had
gone, trying to speak to a strange man about a thing that man wouldn't
at all understand. How well Howie would understand it! He would say, "Go
on home, Laura." "Don't do this, sweetheart." Almost as if he had said
it, she turned away. But she turned back. This was her wedding
anniversary.

She went up to the man. "You didn't give all of the picture tonight, did
you?" Her voice was sharp; it mustn't tremble.

He looked round at her in astonishment. He kept looking her up and down
as if to make her out. Her trembling hands clutched the bag of pop-corn
and some of it spilled. She let it all fall and put one hand to her
mouth.

A man came down from upstairs. "Lady here says you didn't give the whole
show tonight," said the first man.

The young man on the stairs paused in astonishment. He, too, looked
Laura up and down. She took a step backward.

"What was left out wasn't of any importance, lady," said the man,
looking at her, not unkindly, but puzzled.

"I think it was!" she contended in a high, sharp voice. They both stared
at her. As she realized that this could happen, saw how slight was her
hold on the one thing she had, she went on, desperately, "You haven't
any right to do this! It's--it's _cheating_."

They looked then, not at her, but at each other--as the sane counsel
together in the presence of what is outside their world. Oh, she knew
that look! She had seen her brother and his wife doing it when