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It was after dinner. In the end Ma Mandle slammed out of the house, hatless. Her old legs were trembling. Her hands shook. It was a hot June night. She felt as if she were burning up. In her frantic mind there was even thought of self-destruction. There were thousands of motor cars streaming by. The glare of their lamps and the smell of the gasoline blinded and stifled her. Once, at a crossing, she almost stumbled in front of an on-rushing car. The curses of the startled driver sounded in her terrified ears after she had made the opposite curb in a frantic bound. She walked on and on for what seemed to her to be a long time, with plodding, heavy step. She was not conscious of being tired. She came to a park bench and sat down, feeling very abused, and lonely and agonized. This was what she had come to in her old days. It was for this you bore children, and brought them up and sacrificed for them. How right they were–Mrs. Lamb, Mrs. Brunswick, and Mrs. Wormser. Useless. Unconsidered. In the way.

By degrees she grew calmer. Her brain cooled as her fevered old body lost the heat of anger. Lil had looked kind of sick. Perhaps … and how worried Hugo had looked….

Feeling suddenly impelled she got up from the bench and started toward home. Her walk, which had seemed interminable, had really lasted scarcely more than half an hour. She had sat in the park scarcely fifteen minutes. Altogether her flight had been, perhaps, an hour in duration.

She had her latchkey in her pocket. She opened the door softly. The place was in darkness. Voices from the front bedroom, and the sound of someone sobbing, as though spent. Old lady Mandle’s face hardened again. The door of the front bedroom was closed. Plotting against her! She crouched there in the hall, listening. Lil’s voice, hoarse with sobs.

“I’ve tried and tried. But she hates me. Nothing I do suits her. If it wasn’t for the baby coming sometimes I think I’d–“

“You’re just nervous and excited, Lil. It’ll come out all right. She’s an old lady–“

“I know it. I know it. I’ve said that a million times in the last year and a half. But that doesn’t excuse everything, does it? Is that any reason why she should spoil our lives? It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair!”

“Sh! Don’t cry like that, dear. Don’t! You’ll only make yourself sick.”

Her sobs again, racking, choking, and the gentle murmur of his soothing endearments. Then, unexpectedly, a little, high-pitched laugh through the tears.

“No, I’m not hysterical. I–it just struck me funny. I was just wondering if I might be like that. When I grow old, and my son marries, maybe I’ll think everything his wife does is wrong. I suppose if we love them too much we really harm them. I suppose–“

“Oh, it’s going to be a son, is it?”

“Yes.”

Another silence. Then: “Come, dear. Bathe your poor eyes. You’re all worn out from crying. Why, sweetheart, I don’t believe I ever saw you cry before.”

“I know it. I feel better now. I wish crying could make it all right. I’m sorry. She’s so old, dear. That’s the trouble. They live in the past and they expect us to live in the past with them. You were a good son to her, Hughie. That’s why you make such a wonderful husband. Too good, maybe. You’ve spoiled us both, and now we both want all of you.”

Hugo was silent a moment. He was not a quick-thinking man. “A husband belongs to his wife,” he said then, simply. “He’s his mother’s son by accident of birth. But he’s his wife’s husband by choice, and deliberately.”

But she laughed again at that. “It isn’t as easy as that, sweetheart. If it was there’d be no jokes in the funny papers. My poor boy! And just now, too, when you’re so worried about business.”