The Independent

BEGGARS

(Continued from Two)

without, long enough.

Now that you're earning, are you going to be niggardly with me? Don't you dare ask me what I do with my money!' He made no answer, his face bored and scornful. She had been thinking that when he came in she would try to talk to him, but now the moment was passed. He undressed and got into bed, and said in his quick irritable way: 'Either turn out the light or go somewhere else. I'm tired.' 'From working?' she asked, and then regretted swiftly. That was too much like that other time—that other pain.

Will did not answer, but turned his back and flung his arm, in the blue pajama sleeve, up over his eyes. Ernestine put out the lights except the small lamp at her side of the bed, and sat on the bed for a while, her feet drawn up and her arms clasped around her knees, thinking her mind turning this way and that, her heart full of pain.

'Will?' she said at last gently, but he did not answer. She went around and stood beside him, looking down at him. He was asleep. His eyes and brow were hidden by the fold of his arm, but his mobile, sensitive, excited mouth was in repose. Where had she seen that droop before? It was Elaine's. It was the gentle enduring fold of her mouth, when she had been little and sick so much, and had borne it all with such remarkable patience. Will's mouth was like that. Not in cut or form but in the line of its expression.

Will was bearing something. He was sick. He was enduring. Ernestine felt herself lost in a dark wood. Fiercely, passionately, she burned in herself her personal resentment and pain. She must find a way out for all of them. If she could see what to do! If something would show her the way!

(To be continued next week)