THE SNAKE Pit
by
Mary Jane WARD


BUCCANEER BOOKS, INC.

Copyright 1983 by Buccaneer Books, Inc.  International Standard Book
Number: 0-89966-260For ordering information, contact:

BUCCANEER BOOKS, Inc.  Box 168, Cutchogue, N.Y. 11935

THE SNAKE PIT.

CHAPTER ONE.

"Do you hear voices?"  he asked.

You think I am deaf?  "Of course," she said.  "I hear yours."  It was
hard to keep on being civil.  She was tired and he had been asking
questions such a long time, days and days of incredibly naive
questions.

Now he was explaining that she misunderstood; he did not mean real
voices.  Fantastic.  He was speaking, he said, of voices that were not
real and yet they were voices he expected her to hear.  He seemed
determined that she should hear them.  He was something of a pest, this
man, but she could think of no decent way to get rid of him.  You could
tell he meant well and so you tried to play the game with him, as if
with a fanciful child.

"You can make water say anything," she said.  That should appeal to the
childish fancy that leaped from pebble to pebble, dancing in the sun,
giggling in the sparkle.

And now the water rushed from the quiet pool of his voice to a
stone-cluttered bed uneasy for fishes.  The song of the brook soared to
a rapid soprano and his voice was changing him into a small boy.
Dreadful.  She tried not to look, but at last her eyes turned
irresistibly and, with horror, saw him a girl.  She had suspected him
of magic and now she knew.

For once he was not asking questions; he was letting gibberish flow
from his lips and you would have far more difficulty making sense from
it than you would have in imagining words from a genuine stream.
Suppose it was not he.

She turned her head.  He had a peculiar habit of crouching behind you.
Was he in the bushes?  And just who was he?  You met so many people and
they came and went before you got them sorted out properly.  A moment
ago he was here and speaking seriously of voices that were not real
voices and you knew he would be sad if he discovered that you did not
know his name.  Never mind.  The sun is the chief thing.

The sunshine was a warm almost hot bath of thick gold.  There had been
no intermediate period, no saying.  But it really is getting warmer.
You were freezing and then you were

warm.  Does it happen that way in New York too?  New York has so many
things over Chicago; I hate for it to have Chicago's ability to make a
twinkling change from winter to summer.  Maybe I am back in Chicago.

But no.  He asked where I was and how pleased he was when I said New
York.  He said fine, fine.  I said I was in Chicago recently for a
visit and he said fine, fine.  It was as if he was the teacher and I,
the student, had given the correct answer to a complicated problem.
Yes, he did not ask for information.  He was testing me, though God
knows why.

He was gone now, at least he was out of sight, out hunting voices that
are not voices, poor man, and on the bench was a young woman.  She was
a pretty girl.  Her light curly hair stuck to her forehead in baby
rings and her lashes were thick.  She might be beautiful if she was not
so pale.  If I knew her I would suggest liver; perhaps she hates it as
much as I do.  Robert likes it.  I should fix it for him oftener.  I
can eat the bacon.  I could suggest shots.  Expensive, though, and she
looks poor.  Only a very poor girl would go to a public park in a
hoover apron.  For that hoover?  No, that would be collars.

Dear Emily Post: Is it proper to go out park-sitting in a hoover apron?
Answer: This is a custom entirely unknown to me, but if it is the
general practice in your community it would be well not to be
conspicuous.  I assume the hoover apron is always fresh and that you
would not lap the clean side over the soiled side and attempt in that
way to maintain a false front.

Complacently enjoying her advice column in the Virginia Quarterly, the
Virginia-Drawn-and Quarterlied, Virginia-the wit looked down at her own
garment.  Not this old rag.  Virginia Stuart Cunningham, Mr.  Robert P.
Cunningham to you and Miss Stuart to a minute section of the reading
public-the section of literary persons who get their books free....
This young writer from the very proper and intelligent city of
Evanston, Illinois, where intelligence is second to nothing but
propriety.... Look, Ginger, you wouldn't wear this old thing out to the
park, even a New York park.

What was I thinking when I dashed out?  I must have been in a rush, but
then why sit in the sun?  She wore this wreck of a dress only when
doing the most revolting of household tasks and she certainly had
learned by now that you cannot go out on New York streets looking any
old way.  You were always running into someone from Evanston.  Funny
how you could go down to the Loop at home and never see a

soul but just step out of your New York apartment and the city swarmed
with Evanstonians done up in their most proper and intelligent
costumes.

However, the fair girl on the bench was not an Evanston person.  She
was not anyone you had ever seen before.  You had not been introduced,
but she appeared to be talking to you.  This city full of people who
talked to you at the drop of a hat knocked your hat off.  Even so,
Virginia Stuart Cunningham was not the type to pick up strangers in the
park.  Oh, these New York parks.  What next?

Yesterday or the day before, I saw a cat on a leash.  He was walking
along as sedately as a Doberman.  Probably they had not let him know he
was a cat.  Like Margaret.  Margaret, when I called kittykittykitty....
"Stop that, Virginia," she said.  "He doesn't know he's a cat."  And
the day of the cat on the leash there was a dog in a little plaid coat
and he had a plaid cap like Sherlock Holmes' and he was carrying a pipe
in his mouth.  They had not got him to smoke it, though.  Good for him.
And good for Mag's cat.  That one not only caught on to being a cat, he
also had kittens.  And Mag always so careful to call him He and she
even named him Coolidge.  After the kittens Robert said she should have
taught him to choose to run.  Family fun, not funny to anyone but
family.  I've seen them all recently.  No reason to feel this way.
Think about that pipe-carrying dog or you'll begin to bellow.

The poor beast hung its head but marching behind him in oozing pride
were a man and woman.... No dogs in this park.  You wouldn't know you
were in New York, the place all bad dogs go when they die.  And spend
eternity wearing damn fool coats and caps and carrying pipes.

She stirred her shoe tips in the dust that lay thick on the path and
secretly, not to disturb Miss Hoover, began to look for her groceries
and her pocketbook.  It was possible that she had not gone to the store
yet but not possible that she had come away from home without her
purse.

Her eyes were acting up.  From the sun.  The park might be familiar but
the sun flattened the colors and blurred the shapes.  It was as if she
hadn't her glasses on.

She put her hands up to her eyes and her glasses were not there.  "Is
there any danger of her ever losing her sight?"  Mother asked the
doctor.  You were ten then.  "Well," said the old coot of a doctor,
"well, I don't-think so."  For years you felt as if you were committing
a crime when you read anything that was not Required.  And reading was
the only thing

you cared much for.  Well, softball.  Yes.  What ever became of all
those kids.  I wonder.  Let me see... David is a priest, Fred runs a
laundry, Kate teaches school... Did Edgar end up in jail?  Mother said
he would.  He was a good ball player, though.  So was I, in spite of
the bum eyes.

Then as you grew older the lenses were changed less frequently and now
that you had reached a great age you bought new lenses simply because
the old ones had become scratched.  Somewhere you read about the
possibility of the middle-age far sight correcting the youthful near
sight  Then you are not middle-aged, dearie; still you can't see a foot
in front of your face.  What are you doing going around without your
glasses?  Trying to be pretty?

Didn't wear them much in college.  Not at a school where there were
four or five girls to each boy.  I always had more dates than time,
though.  From going without glasses?  Sitting here on this bench she
could think of six girls who never wore glasses and who never had
dates, except for the political kind got through fraternity blackmail.
It is a fine thing for an almost middle-aged woman to sit in the sun
and feel smug about having a lot of dates in college.  Where are my
glasses?

Where was her pocketbook?  Where--this was the real question that
gnawed through the artificial frivolity--where exactly was she?

It was hazardous for her to go out alone, even with her glasses.  She
had learned how to get to Wanamaker's and she could find her way to
Bleecker Street where the vegetables were cheap and she seldom went
many blocks out of the way to reach the French bakery for baba au rhum,
so wonderful, with just a touch of nastiness to make you appreciate the
wonder.  That nasty taste, said Robert, was rum, but that could not be.
The medicinal flavor was something they had not been able to overcome
yet.  Each time she bought the cake she thought now this time they will
have got rid of the bad taste.  Robert had another explanation that had
to do with water poured from stewed flypaper.  Quite fresh, unused
flypaper, he insisted.  But enough of this.  You will have to ask the
way home.

She hoped Miss Hoover was not a New Yorker.  They never know anything.
Oh, they know how to get there themselves but blessed if they can tell
you.  They take a crack at it in

their own language.  Remember the time the taxi man took us to Pearl
Street when we had so distinctly asked for Pell.  They and their pell
earrings and their store cheese.  Half a pound of American cheese, I
said, and the grocer said he hadn't any.  Well, what do you call that?
I pointed to the cheese he was leaning on.  That?  he said, why, that's
store cheese.... A few days later I asked this same wiseacre for
cottage cheese and he said he had never heard of it.  Standing there
practically up to his elbows in it.  But no, that was pot cheese. Well,
where I come from, I said, they call it cottage cheese.  He asked where
I came from and I said Evanston, Illinois, and he said he had never
heard of it and then I betrayed the Athens of the Middle West and said
it is a suburb of Chicago.  You musta been glad to get away from them
gangsters, he said.  And when I got home and opened up the carton of
cheese it was less than three-quarters full.

If she would just stop talking a minute.  A New Yorker all right, this
Miss Hoover.  Can't understand a word she says.  Pardon me, but could
you tell me how to get...?

How to get to where?  Where?

The sun is too warm.  Am I going to throw up?  Where is the apartment?
We have lived so many places.  Robert and I. The family and I. After
Margaret was born we didn't move so often, but there have been many
many places for Robert and me.  He lived in the same house all his life
until he married.

Since they had been in New York she and Robert had lived in three or
four or four or five places.  She could say exactly if she put her mind
to it.  Maybe it was six.  It was not that she did not know, it was the
sun.  She would be able to say their present address as soon as she
recovered from this touch of nausea.  Even the most familiar things can
slip from your head momentarily.  You always know where you live.  Once
someone telephoned Mother and asked her address and Mother said,
"Excuse me a moment, but there's something on the stove."  She went to
the front porch and read the house number and came back to the
telephone and said, "There.  Now what was it you wanted?"  Yes, anyone
could forget his address for an instant.  Nothing to get excited about,
but it would be convenient to have the front porch along--and your
glasses to read the number.  But my glasses are here somewhere.  A
person who puts glasses on before getting out of bed is not likely to
leave the house without them.

Maybe I am waiting for Robert.  He has told me to wait.

I almost remember him saying, Now you wait here and I'll be right
back.

She pushed her hair from her forehead, no baby rings for this hair.
Being without glasses made you feel as if your brain could not
function.  Her thoughts seemed as blurred as her vision.  She sat up
straight.  She must not become ill.

When she lowered her hands she saw that they were trembling.  I am
afraid.  I wonder why.  I am terribly, terribly afraid.

my name.  In any conversational clatter the sound of your name will
ring out and even though you have a common name you cannot help
pricking up your ears.  Miss Hoover, you assumed, was speaking of the
state.  She did not know you.  The state of Virginia.  Carry me back.
Gran's quavering voice, Carry me back to ole Vuhgjnny... and tears
rolling down her soft, carefully creamed and powdered cheeks.
Sentimental as all get out about her native state, but when Mother gave
her money for a good long visit there she said she guessed she had
better things to do with her money.  "Vuhginny, of all places," she
said.  "Why, I married your father to get away from there, didn't I?"

It was lucky for Virginia Stuart that her grandmother was not always so
frank.  Otherwise the first Stuart girl would have been Pernissa,
Gran's name.  Patent medicine.  "She was set on having you named for
her," said Mother, "and we sure enough thought we were going to have
to.  But then we got the idea of making a big fuss about her home state
and first thing we knew she was bragging all over about how she had
named you Virginia."

"Virginia," said the girl on the bench, "Virginia, I said when was it
you worked on a newspaper?"

Someone gave me a pin once, a wood carving that said Virginia and I
wore it for about two minutes.  Before I got ten steps from the door a
man said, "Hi, Virginia," and a second later another was yelling,
"Morning, Ginny."  But I am not wearing that pin now.

Question to be answered.  On a newspaper, not for.  Miss Hoover one of
the profession?  "I never worked for a paper," said Virginia.  Never
having been paid for her work, she was darned if she would say on.
"Just reviewing.  Books and tickets none of the regulars wanted.  For a
while I did

edit a short-story feature.  Without pay, of course.  For prizes I
gave my review copies."

That was a lot of talking for a hot day.  She was too tired to talk.
This dress indicated that she had been working hard in the
apartment.... That short-story feature was a laugh.  Town where
literature was more popular than bridge, town where the minute you had
something published literary ladies swarmed to offer chances to
collaborate.  Fine offers.  You do the writing.

Miss Hoover said to tell her about the short-story feature.  She was as
persistent as that man.  Is he in the bushes?  "Well, the town was full
of women who wanted to write.  When they had time.  What they wanted
most of all was someone to take down their ideas and whip them into
shape.  They talked about how the money meant nothing to them and the
thousands the Post paid out and if they just had a private secretary.
Very few of them bothered to send anything to the newspaper.  I usually
had to fill the space.  Used different by-lines, of course."

"I can't get over it," said Miss Hoover.  "You are so young."

"I'm not so young," said Virginia.  "I'm...."  How old am I?  What year
is this?  What month?  Her birthday was in the summer; had it come and
gone?  Quickly she selected an age that was substantial and
uncontroversial.  "I'm thirty five," she said.

Miss Hoover sucked her breath in and said that wasn't old, not really
old.  The way she said it you knew she was astounded to learn that she
had been talking to a thirty-five year-old just as if that antique was
a regular person.

"Thank you," said Virginia.  Though why you were obliged to thank
people who said you did not look your age was something she did not
understand.

"I'm twenty-five myself," whispered Miss Hoover.

"I never would have thought it," said Virginia dutifully.

"I'm afraid I show it," said the girl.  "Now," she sighed.  "But I'm
not going to worry about it.... When I read Afternoon of a Faun I never
dreamed I would meet the author.  And here, of all places."

This was the first time Virginia had met a stranger who had read
something of hers.  As a rule new people had never heard of you.  If it
came out that you were a writer they always offered to read something
you had written, that is, they said they certainly would like to but
they were afraid they were pretty busy and anyhow they didn't exactly
go

in for novels.  They rather went in for the serious stuff, you know.
They always read the Reader's Digest.

Virginia, though tired, was set to listen to Miss Hoover's praises.
They would be brief.  Then would come the payoff.  Any writer knows he
has to pay for his compliments.  As soon as he has said, Why, thank
you, that's very generous of you, the other person clears his throat
and dives into his own writing experiences.  Miss Hoover did not wait
for the gratitude.  Her compliments about Afternoon of a Faun, Virginia
Stuart's heart blood, were condensed into a statement that the book was
about the length of the projected Hoover opus.  It could not fail to be
a hit.  Virginia had listened to this sort of talk often enough to know
when to cluck.  She would, she supposed, go home with a thick
manuscript written in longhand.  For a frank and honest opinion.  I can
take it, so don't try to pull your punches--if you honestly don't think
it is good.  But I have spent years on it, you know, well months
anyhow, I have such a little time.  It's all based on fact, by the way.
I understand there's a rage for historical novels.  Personally I loathe
them, but I thought a novel based on my grandfather's diaries.... If
you have any comments just jot them on the margins. It's such a
nuisance not to be a typist.  Maybe you could tell me someone who might
be willing to type my book.  I suppose you... Naturally I'll be glad to
pay for it, after the book is published.  And by the way, if you think
of a title, something catchy, you know, that they can use in the
movie.

Take me home, find my glasses and I'll read the fictionized histories
of all your second cousins.  If I had my glasses I could walk directly
to the apartment.  It is not seeing that makes me believe I am not
thinking.  Without my glasses things look so different; hardly look at
all.

In connection with the word apartment she thought of the word house and
then of a large house where many young people milled around and talked
at the top of their lungs.  They argued and they sang and they laughed.
God in heaven, do we still live with all those young people somewhere
outside of Manhattan?  This I am not enduring.

She closed her eyes.  No, we went from there.  They were too noisy and
too young and too always.  "You are lovely tonight, Virginia," the tall
one kept saying.  He was twenty.  At first I thought it was marvelous
to have a young, very handsome boy telling me every night that I was
lovely but after a while I wanted to slap his face.  Isn't that
shameful?  We unco-operated and went back to Manhattan.  I am
positive

of that.  Yes, I remember that as soon as we got back to ourselves,
all the co-operators came to see us and the tall boy said I was lovely
and his great black eyes were swimming.  I called it a conquest, but
Robert said it was a mother complex.  Somewhere not far from here--I
would not go far in this dress--we have a little apartment.  It has to
be little.  The money was getting low, and anyhow, Robert said, This
time there won't be any extra room for running a hotel for the city of
Evanston.  But just where is that little apartment?

The thing was to wait until Miss Hoover came to a breathing space.  Her
first theme in English at high school.  A. Everything A. College.
Everything A--well, not science or math, but everything that counted.
Virginia clucked.  Job on a newspaper.  Virginia clucked.  Reporting
job gave no time for the real writing and there was no money without
the job.  "Do you wonder I ended up here?"  asked Miss Hoover.

That gave you the cold chills, a girl ending up as a bum on a park
bench.  "Don't be discouraged," said Virginia.  "Obviously you have
talent or you never would have got the job in the first place."

Miss Hoover shook her head.  "It's being here that gets me."

"You mustn't feel that way about it," said Virginia.

"I'd a lot rather feel that way about it than think it's something in
the family," said Miss Hoover.

The sentence had no meaning.  No wonder the girl had lost her job.  It
was going to be difficult to get adequate directions from her.  She
seemed not quite... There you go.  Pretend to be so social-minded but
the minute you rub elbows with someone who has lost her job you think
it must be her own fault and that she isn't quite all there.

"Look," said Virginia.  She was going to ask Miss Hoover to dinner. She
didn't want her but you had to prove to yourself that you were
practically as well as theoretically social- minded.  Robert would not
mind as soon as he was told that the girl was down and out.  He isn't
wild about women who talk as much as Miss Hoover does but he is very
good about people who are down and out.  "Look...."

A new voice interrupted.  It was a shrill voice.  No water, deep or
shallow.  It was a sharp knife that cut you away from the sun.  The
creeping fear returned.  Like cold wet sheets it wound around and
around your body and made you its prisoner.

CHAPTER TWO.

"All right, ladies."

You had awakened from a bad dream and almost torn yourself from the
memory; the dream itself was obscured by depression which would remain
until you were fully awake.  But you had no chance.  The sharp voice
ordered you back into the horror.  What am I thinking?  The voice has
nothing to do with me.

However, it had something to do with Miss Hoover.  The girl sprang from
the bench and pulled at Virginia.  "Hurry," she said.  "Hurry."

Blobs rose from other benches and gathered into a large smear.  "What's
the matter?"  asked Virginia.

"Please," said Miss Hoover.  She said please, but she gave Virginia no
alternative and the pallor was deceptive; there was no anemia in the
tug that stood Virginia up, nor in the grasp that urged her across the
lawn.  A group of women in faded cotton comprised that dull smear of
color.  "What's the matter?"  asked Virginia.  A fire?  A riot?

Miss Hoover paid no attention.  The women were scrambling into a
two-abreast line.  There was a determined sort of frenzy in the way
they shoved.  It was as if they were little children who had learned
the urgency of responding to the bell but who hadn't as yet discovered
how to form a neat line.  "Where are they going?"  said Virginia.  "Why
do we have to stand with them?"

"Sh," whispered Miss Hoover.  "You mustn't talk.  It's against the
rules."

Leave it to a chatterbox to put down a rule against talking.  It was
rather funny.  The whole thing was rather funny.  Only rather.  It will
be really funny when I tell Robert Things that were not amusing when
they were happening could be made very funny when you told Robert.  He
laughed and laughed.  Sometimes she wondered if he laughed entirely at
what she said; sometimes when she was having especial success she
caught a look in his eyes that made her wonder if he might be laughing
at the way she told it and not it.  And there were all those queer
women, she would say to him, and this girl who had picked me up kept
insisting that we had to stand in line.  It was a zoo, you know.  At
first I

didn't notice the cage but then I saw it and I smelled the animals.

There seemed to be no animals in the cage just now.  There was a
blue-and-white something but it looked more like a person.  "All right,
ladies," said the blue-and-white something.  There, that will make him
laugh.  Not having my glasses, I'll say, I assumed the thing was an
animal and my goodness when it spoke.... The door to the cage was open
and the blue-and-white creature appeared to expect them to enter.  A
tour?

"Virginia," said Miss Hoover, "you've got to come."  She looked about
to weep.  "It's no use, you know.  Keep it up and they'll just put you
back."

Recess was over and now if you go P in deportment you would be put
back.  How silly.  Miss Hoover was absurd but inasmuch as she seemed on
the edge of hysteria you had to humor her.  A few more minutes would
not spoil the dinner and anyhow you had to get your bearings and your
glasses.  How had you come to be mixed up in a tour?  Undoubtedly one
of those government things.  Adult education.  See your city.  Study
conditions.

"Enjoy the sun, Virginia?"

Blue-and-white had solidified into a large woman dressed to look like a
nurse.  Oh, these New York zoos.  It is a peculiar city, not really
American.  The potage not melted.  "Yes, thank you," said Virginia. 
How does she know my name?  Strange she calls me Virginia instead of
Mrs. Cunningham.  Fresh.  What do I call her?  Kiddo?

The group did not loiter.  Nothing to see.  The guide made no remarks
about the cage.  She said to step along, ladies.  She spoke as if they
had to do what she said.  For all her calling them ladies she hadn't
very good manners.  Maybe it was the last tour of the day and she was
tired of having to recite her piece over and over.  Or maybe she had a
pull, daughter or cousin of an alderman, and could get away with
anything.

You expected to find cages inside the building, but there was none.
Inside was a large room with wicker furniture, the sort typical of
public waiting rooms not yet advanced to chromium.  The smell of the
zoo was unmistakable, and so the animals were not far off.  You would
know that musky, fetid straw smell anywhere.

The room was oblong and the floor was covered with brown linoleum that
looked very clean.  No gum wrappers or cigarette ends.  The walls were
painted a dark brown to

the height of a tall man and then a lighter brown up to the tan
ceiling.  At the narrow windows were st ringlike curtains that were
brown or dirty, maybe both.

"You want to get anything?"  asked Miss Hoover.  She spoke aloud now as
if a ban had been lifted.

"I'd like my bag," said Virginia.

"You stay here and don't move," said Miss Hoover.  She pushed Virginia
down into a wicker settee.  "I'll get it when I get mine."

There were no cushions on the settee.  Virginia picked at its scaling
paint and thought how fortunate it was that Miss Hoover knew where the
pocketbook was.  If I weren't so tired I would be glad to take her
home.  But we have been having so much company.... Anyhow I take back
what I thought about her not being quite all there.  She is very sweet
and I would be lost without her.

"Grace, you wait your turn," came the razor voice of the guide.  Most
of the women were now crowding around blue and-white.

"I am," said Miss Hoover.  "I am simply trying to get Virginia's bag
for her.  Really, Miss Hart...."

Two names.  Miss Hoover is Grace.  The guide is Miss Hart.  Looks more
like a wildebeest.

In a few minutes Miss Hoover, no, you must call her Grace from now on,
came back.  She handed over a bag Virginia had not expected.  It was
the small overnight bag Mother had given her.  It was a bit small for a
practical overnight bag but it was enormous for a pocketbook.  I must
look a fool, carrying that thing.  "Thank you so much."

She was going to apologize for having such a queer sort of purse when
she noticed that Grace was carrying a Dobbs hatbox.  It was a nice
hatbox, but Grace did not look as if she had been hat shopping.  When
she opened the box you saw no hat; it was full of the miscellany you
carry in your purse, except, Virginia guessed, money.  Grace must have
pawned her pocketbook and now she carried everything she owned around
in a hatbox and lived on park benches and went on city tours just for
something to do or maybe for a chance to get under a roof.  How
dreadful.  It would make a good story but I could never bear to write
it.  And look at that woman over there, with a shoebox.  Perhaps this
was a picnic.  That would explain why I brought this bag.  We have
taken it to the beach several times.  It isn't like me to have got
mixed up in this sort of affair.  I suppose it is for a Cause.  New
York is so full of Causes.

Squinting at the women she decided her True Trotskyite Friend must
have got her into this.  It would be like Helene.  She was always
saying if they would just have open minds.  Robert and Virginia tried. 
They went to a True Trotskyite banquet once.  Photographers were there
and popping pictures and once when one pointed his camera at Virginia
she turned her head and saw that behind her was a huge sign, Defend the
Soviet Union.  Oh!  This was at a time when you didn't say Russia aloud
in Evanston and she thought suppose our pictures get into the Chicago
Tribune and we are elected to Mrs.  Dilling's club.  How dreadful
Mother and Dad will feel.  And all during 'this the speakers were
yipping about defending the Soviet and how we must abolish Stalin.
Helene said this was logical to anyone who had an open mind.  Well, now
she's got me into some sort of True Trotskyite picnic.  Robert will
have fits.

"Do you want to go to the washroom?"  asked Grace.

"No, thanks," said Virginia.  Her glasses would be in the bag.  No
thanks, no park restroom for me.  I'll find my glasses and hurry
home.

She unzipped her bag and began to rummage for the glasses.  Someone had
been into the bag.  She never would have left it in such a mess.  She
started to say something about this to Grace but then decided not to.
Grace would think she suspected one of the comrades.  Like Helene,
Grace would insist that everyone who was under the Heel of Capitalistic
Oppression was as virtuous as the field lilies.  Helene suspected only
those who had money and this was very amusing because Helene had quite
a lot of money herself, money she was using to bring on the
Revolution.

But thoughts of Helene and her very special kind of revolution, a
strictly invitational affair, were interrupted by the discovery of a
large box of powder.  Now you do not take a large box of powder to a
picnic; you take a compact.  Nor would you take a large comb and a
hairbrush.  Don't tell me I've got into an overnight project.

It was so difficult to think.  The sun did things to you.  She should
have known better than to sit in it so long.  Remember the girl back
home who had a sunstroke and was really very strange for a long
time.... Pack of letters.  Why take a pack of letters around with you?
She picked up the letters, forty or fifty tied into a bundle with a bit
of darning cotton.  Mrs.  Robert P. Cunningham.  Robert's writing.  Why
does he write when he sees me every day of the world?

"Don't look at them," said Grace.  "Put them back.  They'll

take them from you if you don't watch out--like they won't let him
write any more because you cry every time you get one."

"I can't imagine anyone crying over Robert's letters," said Virginia
stiffly.  Somehow she and this Grace had got rather more intimate than
she cared to get with someone she had barely met.  She thrust the
letters deep into the bag.  First thing you knew, the girl would be
wanting to read them.  "Robert writes a very amusing letter.  People
always say so."

Our address will be on the letters.  When she isn't looking I'll take
them out and then I'll ask her how to get there.  And when I see Helene
I'll tell her I did not think much of her rally-in-the-zoo.  I
understand why you gave me your ticket, I'll say to her.

"Never mind," said Grace.  She patted Virginia.  "Never mind," she
said.  "It won't be much longer."

When the women who had accepted Miss Hart's invitation to the washroom
returned to the large room where Virginia and Grace waited, there was a
good deal of pacing up and down.  There was little conversation.  The
room had the restless, railroad-station feel.

"What are we waiting for?"  asked Virginia.

"You'll be transferred before you know it," said Grace.

"I can't imagine anything here happening after I know it," said
Virginia.  "Are there to be speeches?"

"After all," said Grace, "you have come a long way in a very short
time."

"I have never said New York transportation wasn't wonderful," said
Virginia.  "But I do hate the subway."

"You couldn't get here on the subway.  You know that."

"My dear, what I know about the subway...."  Virginia laughed a little
to cover up her ignorance of how they had come to this place. Chartered
bus, no doubt.  Financed by Helene in memory of The Old Man.

"You mustn't be discouraged."

Nothing like getting encouragement from someone who had not yet started
a novel.  Like Cassie.  I tried to impress her.  I rewrite and rewrite,
I said.  It takes me two years to write a novel, I said.  And Cassie
was sympathetic and she said it would take her a long time too and that
she bet she would have to rewrite.  Later on, she said, you may get on
to k and make some money on your writing!

Now Paula is different.  Paula is pleased by my not making any money.
It proves that you are too good, she says.  Oh, it is fine to listen to
Paula, but I can't help wondering if Cassie is nearer the truth.

"I have worked hard," she said now to Grace, "but I have never been
ambitious.  I write for fun."  What are you going to do while I paint?
Robert asked when I said he would paint while we stayed in Paris.  Will
you paint too?  he asked.  No, I said, maybe I'll write a book.  Well,
he said, I don't see why you couldn't write a book here.  Not quite all
of the American writers are doing it in Paris.  "I thought Robert was
making fun of me and so I had to start to write, to show him.  That's
really how I got started."

"All right," said Grace, "if you don't want to talk about it."

"But I am talking about it.  As soon as I started writing I knew that
was what I wanted.  I had thought I wanted to go to Paris or somewhere
for a year but when I started writing I knew that was it.  About a
month after he asked what I would do in Paris I told him I had to have
a typewriter.  A typewriter, he said.  Why?  You never write letters
and anyhow you don't know how to type.  Well, I can teach myself, I
said. I'm writing a book, I said, and when you are writing a book you
want it to look like a book, not like a letter or a diary.... Writing a
book? he said.  What about?  It's not about anything, I said.  It's a
novel.... We were poor then.  I mean, we thought we were.  Really we
were quite rich, but you never know it until afterwards.  I had bought
a piano 'and a vacuum and some other things on the installment plan and
that made Robert nervous.  Robert, I said, you know how my handwriting
is.  I always got the worst marks in the class in Palmer Method.... Was
Grace listening?  Why bother to tell all this to a stranger?  a long
time ago we went to a party where there was a man who had studied
handwriting for a hobby and the hostess made him perform.  When he got
to me I wrote a sentence and my name in my best Palmer Method and he
looked at it and said this and that about my character, the sort of
thing you could say about anyone, just to look at them.  Then he
lowered his voice so that no one but me could hear and he said, "I
think that someone very close to you has died."

This was about three years after Gordon.

"Cheer up," said Grace.  "You'll be transferred soon."

All this about transferring.  Do you have to go to that

terrible place where people run wildly from one train to another,
place where I got stuck once without a nickel?  Left the dress shop
with five cents and that seemed all right; get anywhere in New York for
a nickel--wonderful transportation-Chicago ought to be ashamed.  Had to
transfer at this rabbit warren and they wanted another nickel from
me.... "I wasn't going to tell you," said Grace, "but I'm being
transferred."

"I hope you have a nickel."

"What did you say?"

"Just a family joke," said Virginia.

"I'm going next door," said Grace.  "Maybe I'll leave from there.  I
thought you had to go to One first but he said there is no rule about
it.  He explained it to me."

And then Virginia knew where she was.  It was some sort of training
school for underprivileged and delinquent girls and she had come to
study Conditions.  I must be doing a novel with Social Significance.
All these new friends of ours always pestering me about why don't I
write something that has Social Significance.  I wish Robert had put
his foot down.  I get enthusiastic about something but it wears off.  I
wish he wouldn't take me seriously.  Like that about Paris, my God,
we'd be there now if they'd not got messed up in a war.  Wonder we were
not there and caught in it.  If Robert had decided just a little sooner
to make the break.... "Supper, ladies!"

"Before long," said Grace, as she got up from the settee, "I'll be out
shifting for myself--wondering where the next meal's coming from,
maybe."

"You must feel free to come to our house any time," said Virginia.  You
had to watch out in New York when you said something like that.  At
home you said to call you up some time when you meant you didn't care
if you never saw them again and you were perfectly safe; they didn't
care if they never saw you again and they said oh, you must call me.
But here in New York you said to call you up some time and they did;
you said to drop over for dinner some time and they said they were free
tomorrow and what time should they come.  But it was a relief to
discover that Grace was getting her meals here at the industrial
school.  Undoubtedly she slept here too and surely they would find her
a job when she had finished the course.

"It would be funny if I looked back and wished for some of the slop
they serve here, wouldn't it?"  said the girl.

"The bread is good," said Virginia.  She had been taught to say
something kind, if possible.  That was Gran.  There is always some
little good thing, Gran always said.  Like all great talkers, Gran
wanted to cramp everyone else's style.  If there is anything I dearly
love, she used to say, it is a good listener.... I wonder why I
mentioned bread.  I must have been thinking of that twenty-five-cent
kind that infuriates Robert.  He thinks nothing of losing a quarter but
just let me spend twenty-five cents on a loaf of bread and he says what
are we coming to.

"Man cannot live by bread alone," said Grace.  "And I am not being
funny."

"No," agreed Virginia, "you aren't."  I'll order a steak and let Helene
pay for it.  Even if this isn't a Trotskyite, pardon me, True
Trotskyite picnic I am certain that Helene is in some way responsible.
I had forgotten that Robert isn't coming home to dinner tonight but of
course he isn't.  I would not be staying here otherwise.  His new
schedule is so baffling.  I better say medium rare because if you say
rare you often get it raw.

She and Grace went to where the women were lining up.  "No pushing,
ladies," said Miss Hart.  She spoke as if they and she were separated
by a thick wall.  "Ladies.  We'll wait until this pushing stops."

The pushing stopped.  Miss Hart took the key that swung from a long
chain at her waist.  She unlocked the door.  She opened the door and
they marched into a hall that was curiously familiar.  The floor was
brown linoleum and the walls had that same institution combination of
paint.  The floor sloped gradually and something about the bobbing
heads of the women who marched in front made Virginia think of horses.
"Rosa Bonheur," she said.

"I see what you mean," said Grace.

"No talking, ladies!"  said Miss Hart.

She treates the women as if they were criminals.

Criminals?  That is it.  The key.  The locked door.  That cage like
porch through which we entered the building.  One of our friends has
roped me into doing a prison novel.  That would be Gus.  Being a
newspaperman he could manage to get me in, I suppose.  But I will not
go through with it.  I don't care how many notes I have taken, after
dinner I am going home.

They halted at a door that was guarded by another woman fixed up to
look like a nurse.  This one waited until there was respectful silence
and then she unlocked the door.  The

feeling was that you were about to go into a chapel to view the
remains of a great saint.

The new guide had a board and clipped to the board was a sheet of
paper.  As the women filed past her she made checks on the paper. There
will be a special notation after my name: writer, here to observe.

The new guide, no, you must think of them as guards now that you knew
this was jail, was rather nice-looking.  She was not pretty, but she
had a sweet face and that was a change from Miss Wildebeest Hart.

"Cut the shoving, ladies," said the sweet-faced one out of the corner
of her daintily rouged mouth.

The dining room was not so large as the waiting room but it was oblong
and painted In the same dull way.  There were four rows and in each row
were four tables and at each table were six chairs.

"No," said Grace, when Virginia very naturally accompanied her to a
table.  "Please, Virginia, don't make any trouble.  You have to go to
your own table."

Make trouble?  My own table?  Virginia shrugged.  Grace definitely
needed a psychiatrist.  It would be kind to tell her, might save her
much trouble later on.  But how can you suggest to a person that she go
to a psychiatrist?  People go to a psychiatrist as secretly as they go
to an abortionist.

At the moment it was best to humor Grace.  If she didn't want you to
sit with her, very well.  Perhaps she thought she would be stuck with
the check.  I'll have to sign for my dinner, come to think of it.
Someone cleaned my bag of money.  I wouldn't mind the money so much if
they had left my glasses.... Here was a vacant chair.  As Virginia
hesitated beside it a woman shoved her roughly.  "Get away from my
chair, you," said the woman.

"I beg your pardon," said Virginia.  "I didn't know it was yours."

"I'm reporting you the next time," said the woman fiercely.  "Watch out
or you'll be sorry."

The more I watch, the sorrier I am.  Well, you didn't care to dine at
that table.  She went to another one but here again she paused at the
wrong chair.  Another woman, quite as outraged as the first but not
shoving, bawled for Miss Hart.  "Miss Hart!  Virginia will not take her
own place.  She is on the wrong side again."

"I'm sorry," said Virginia.  "I didn't see the seating chart.  Not
having my glasses...."

"Alibi Al," said the woman.  "Glasses yet."

Miss Hart had not heard, or had not cared to interfere.  Virginia got
around to the other side of the table where she took the remaining
empty chair.  Nobody objected.  The woman at her left even smiled.
"Hello hello hello," she said.  "Hello, Virginia."

"Hello," said Virginia.

"Hello," said the woman.  "Hell's low and heaven's high."

"Huh," said the Alibi Al woman, "that's what you think.  If you knew
what I know, you would laugh on the other side of your face."

"Not being two-faced like some I could mention," said the cheerful
woman, "I say hello again."

"No talking, ladies," shouted Miss Hart.

"You see," said the gloomy one.  The other two women opposite said
nothing.  The woman at Virginia's right breathed hard through an
aristocratic nose.

Where were the waiters?  There were no menus.  I would have preferred
the European Plan, but in a prison even a visitor can't expect de-luxe
service.

Then Miss Hart and the other blue-and-white one came with a steam
wagon.  They put two bowls on each table.  One bowl held what looked
like a stew and the other was a mess of sliced beets fixed in a rigid
gelatinous sauce as bright and inedible-looking as store cherry pie.
The instant the stew touched the table, the woman on Virginia's right,
the Nose, began to remove chunks of meat from the bowl.  She selected
the pieces with finicking care.  During this process the woman on the
left kept saying to save some for Virginia.  It was thoughtful of her
but also embarrassing.  Really, you should treat me as one of you.

Finally Virginia's champion took the bowl from the Nose and Virginia
leaned back.  The Champion was going to serve her plate for her.  How
kind.

But the Champion, once she had prized the bowl from the Nose's fingers,
served herself.  Then she passed the bowl across the table.  "Save some
for Virginia," she said to each of the three women on the other side of
the table.

Eventually the bowl came to Virginia.  There was perhaps a full
tablespoon of pale gravy left in it.  In the gravy were a piece of
potato, two slices of carrot and seven peas.  Virginia counted them to
make them last longer.  The flavor of the gravy suggested that the meat
had been sheep.

The leave-some-for-Virginia procedure was repeated with the beets.
"Never mind," said Virginia.  "I don't care much for them."  She
thought she said this aloud, but no one paid any attention.  The Nose
stirred her beets into her magnificent portion of stew.  She did an
excellent job of blending the brown and the red and then she took a
piece of bread from the plate in the center of the table.  She ate the
bread.  She did not eat even a thread of the meat or a droplet of the
raspberry-shaded sauce she had labored to achieve.

Virginia took a piece of bread.  She was not quick enough to get in on
the butter.  Several of the women ate the butter as if the little
squares were candies.  The bread, as Virginia had said, was good.  I
must be sure to tell Robert the bread is good.  It will cheer him up.
She had no idea why, but she felt as if Robert needed cheering up. Why?
He was happy.  He had wanted to stay in New York and they had stayed. 
Only this morning, or another morning not long ago, he was saying,
wasn't it wonderful to be in New York.

Queer how far away it seemed.  Queer she felt as if not so long ago she
had been lying in a coffin and Robert had been standing near, weeping.
Crazy dream.  For a minute she toyed with the idea that she had died.
She had read a book like that once.  For a long time the character
couldn't figure out where he was and then it developed that he was dead
and in heaven.  This place, however, this place of the zoo smell and
the locked doors could not be heaven and Virginia's church had
renounced hell some years ago.

My trouble is the need of a good meal.  Even another piece of bread....
She reached and was successful.

"Leave some for the Countess," said the Champion.

"By all means," said Virginia.  To show that she had caught on to the
playful spirit of the thing she stuffed the bread into her mouth as
fast as she could.  There were two good bites left when the crust was
snatched from her.

"Thank you, dear."

She turned and saw a great black hulk.  The old woman looked exactly
the way a countess should look.  She was fat and dressed in rusty silk
that went down to her heels.  Her hair was built into a beehive of
yellowish white and the hand that had taken the bread was grimy.  There
was an expression of affability on the large flabby face.  "Thank you
one and thank you all," she said.

She held the bread in a basket made of her jutting bosom and one of her
hands.  After going the rounds of the tables

she waddled to one of the narrow windows and threw the bread out.

"Why does she do that?"  asked Virginia.  I could have eaten it.

"Questions yet," commented the cross one.

"For the birds," said the Champion.  "They are her little children.
Save your spoon."

The dishes were being sent at a great rate down to the end of the
table.  Dessert.  Virginia hoped it would be substantial.  Apple pie a
la mode.  She helped slide the dishes on and Miss Hart came and put
them on her wagon.  Then she gave each diner a dear little aluminum
pan.  Virginia hadn't much time to see what was in her pan.  She hoped
it was lemon custard; she had never been fond of lemon custard.

The Champion swept the pan from her, emptied the custard into her own
pan.  "There you are," she said, as she returned Virginia's dish.

Virginia started to say something sarcastic, but then she noticed the
Champion's eyes.  "Thank you," she said.  She said it sincerely because
she realized that her champion wished her well and labored, though
obscurely, to that end.

"That's all right," said the woman.  "I've got children of my own." Her
words were thickened by custard but there were tears in her eyes and
Virginia was ashamed of herself.

It is vulgar to be so concerned about your stomach.  Especially when
you can have anything you want as soon as you reach home.  These poor
women are stuck here until they get their diplomas or until they have
served their time or whatever it is they are here about.  It isn't
right to spy on them.  I cannot believe they are hardened criminals...
Well, that one directly across--she might be a lifer.  I wonder if I
have jotted down the jargon.  The wrong language would make the book a
phony.  Let me see, you say rap for sentence?  Or rap for what you did
to earn the sentence?

What crime would Grace have committed?  Libel?  Dared you ask her?  But
she might be here for an investigation.  They do such sneaking things
to get their stories.  I won't.  I'll tell the person who put me up to
this that I will not do it.  I will not betray these poor women.  Why,
they give up their bread, the only decent part of their meal, to feed
the birds.  More than likely nothing more than sparrows.

"All right, ladies," shouted Miss Hart.

That would be something a modern penologist had thought up, that
calling them ladies.  Call them ladies and they will act like ladies. I
should think somewhat better food might

be more encouraging but of course that would cost money.  It costs no
money for Miss Hart to blat out Ladies,

Find a telephone and call Robert.  Look, darling, I'll say, it wasn't
such a hot idea.  You were right.  I don't want to do that sort of
book.  And listen, honey, stop at Gristede's and pick up a steak before
you come for me.  I've been watching them eat and it's given me a
terrific appetite.  And, honey, get some of that twenty-five-cent
bread, will you?  Just this once.

IV.

They lined up in front of the dining-room door.  When the door was
unlocked they marched out.  Miss Cut-the Shoving was checking on her
board.  To see if any of them had died of the meal?

They marched up the brown hall and stopped at the door at the end of
it.  Miss Hart unlocked the door and they went into the waiting room.
They crossed that room and paused at another door.  Miss Hart unlocked
the door.  They went into another hall.  They stopped at another door.
When it was unlocked they went into a room that was stunningly
different.

It was a large light room.  There was tile on the floor, tiny octagonal
pieces of tile charmingly fitted together and so white and clean.  The
walls had the two-color paint job but they seemed more cheerful.  It
was a lovely room.  Virginia studied the floor as if it was an
exceptional mosaic and she thought suddenly of her beautiful Kelim rug
and had then to suppress a ridiculous and unexpected sob.  Don't be a
baby.  Suppose you had to stay here.

If I had to remain in this prison I would choose this room, she
thought.  But presently her enthusiasm waned.  There were four booths.
The women stood and waited for their turn.  Anyhow, that was the idea.
Your turn wasn't necessarily when you thought.  It depended a good deal
on where Miss Hart was.  The pushing was done quietly and with no hard
feeling.  Virginia changed from line to line but it was no use; none of
the booths had a door.

When at last it was her uncontested turn she discovered that an even
more vital accessory was missing.  There was no wooden seat and the old
joke about not falling in was in this case no joke.  But she forgot how
frightful this was when she saw there was no toilet paper, no toilet
tissue as you would call it in Evanston.  There wasn't even an empty

container.  Nor any holes to indicate that there had ever been a
dispenser.  She was about to call to her neighbor, but then she
remembered the cleansing tissue in her handbag.

When she left the booth she peered at the walls of the other three.
None of them had paper.  This must be reported.

As a rule she held back and let others do the reporting but now she was
angry and she went to Miss Hart to say what is the idea of not
providing these women with toilet paper.  When she reached Miss Hart
she saw that the woman was providing toilet paper.  Miss Hart was the
dispenser.  If you required paper you asked her for it in advance and
she doled it out to you.  She was the judge of how much you needed.  It
was a curious and humiliating procedure.  Hadn't they gone deep enough
into a woman's privacy when they removed the doors from the booths?

You had to admit, though, that the floors were cleaner than the floors
of any public washrooms you had ever had the misfortune to be in.  The
usual public toilet is strewn with paper and of course that must
exasperate the cleaning women.  The system here seemed a bit drastic,
though.

"Virginia," said Grace, "could I bum another cigarette?  I'm ashamed of
the way I'm always asking you but..."

"Don't be silly," said Virginia.  She opened her bag.  "Here are
cigarettes but I haven't any matches."

"That's what I like about you," said Grace.  "No matter what, you
always have a joke."  "I'd rather have a light just now," said
Virginia. What a nuisance it is to be one of these unconscious wits. 
You have always to pretend you meant to be funny and that you see the
point.

"That's rich," said Grace.  She laughed as she took three cigarettes
from the pack.  "Come on."

They and the other women clustered around Miss Hart.  Miss Hart had
exchanged the toilet paper for a handful of kitchen matches.  When she
struck a match the women tried to get four or more lights from it.  Did
they think three could bring them worse luck than they already had?
When they had got their lights they sat down to enjoy their smokes.  It
was cozy.  There was a chair and Miss Hart sat on it and watched.  The
others sat on the nice white floor and leaned back against the brown
wall.  It was something like being at a studio party, except that now
and then the hostess would scream for them to watch their ashes. "Watch
your ashes, ladies!"

"Make me one of your cute little ashtrays," said Grace.

Virginia reached into the rats nest of her bag and found a piece of
paper.  She tore the paper in two and she made a cone of each piece.
She tore a latch to hold each cone together and this seemed to be what
Grace had wanted.  When she had given one of the cones to her friend
she noticed that Miss Hart was looking at her with affection.  Perhaps
Miss Hart had to scrub the floor.

The smoking was a chain proposition.  You were allowed three cigarettes
but only one light.  When Virginia had lit a fresh cigarette from her
stub she dropped the butt into the cone and gave it a quick squeeze.
You did this expertly and neither you nor the cone became scorched.
Vaguely you remembered times when you hadn't had any paper, when you
had had to put a cigarette out in the palm of your hand.  You could
spit into your hand first.  I must have dreamed this nonsense.

Miss Hart got up.  When she had gone from the washroom one lady, the
daredevil of the group, perched on the chair for a moment, but she was
back on the floor when Miss Hart returned.

The guard was shoving a sort of rack that dress shops use for Special
Values.  Swinging from the rack were white sacks.  Miss Hart put the
rack in the center of the room and the ladies stopped smoking and began
to undress.  Virginia started toward Miss Hart to ask where a telephone
was but somehow she didn't go through with it.  She had a feeling that
she was not a free agent and that she had to stay overnight.  This was
absurd.  She was no criminal and no one could keep her shut up.  All
she had to do was say she was leaving; she would not have to say it if
she knew the way out, or if she had one of those keys.

"Forty-three," said Grace.  "You've got to remember it.  I don't know
what you'll do when I leave.  You never remember your number."

Forty-three.  The hangers on the rack were numbered.  I am forty-three.
She found the hanger and took it from the rack.  The white sack was
supposed to represent a nightgown.  It was enormous and made of
material suitable for tents.  The number forty-three was stamped on the
garment as a sort of trim.  The neck was deep and wide and the sleeves
were butterfly.

The system was simple.  You hung your clothes on the hanger and put
your shoes under the place numbered forty three.  Remembering athlete's
foot Virginia hurriedly put her shoes back on.  No one had bedroom
slippers but she noticed

that several of the women used their shoes.  The majority, however,
braved fungus.

There were four washbowls and you waited in line to brush your teeth
and wash your face.  Virginia found soap in her bag and so could ignore
the questionable piece that lay beside the bowl.  Next to her a woman
sat in the washbowl to give herself an intimate bath.  Virginia rushed
through her washing just in case the plumbing should collapse.  She
supposed they wouldn't blame her but it was as well to be in another
part of the room.

"Meditation, ladies," announced Miss Hart.

This was too much.  You would not join them in evening prayers.
Virginia had nothing against prayers, but she did not care to be
included.  She was extremely tired.  The others could run along and
pray if they wished.

But the ubiquitous, mind-reading Grace spoke up.  "You've got to take
medication, Virginia.  You have got to take it as long as you are on
the list."

"Medication?  I thought she said meditation."

"Sue," said Grace, "you take Virginia to medication.  I'm not on the
list any more."

"Sure," said a woman who was almost fat enough for the prison gown.
"Come on."  She had a Dutch bob, always the favorite of square-faced,
dark, fat women.  She looked as if she might make trouble if you didn't
come on, and although Virginia felt she would almost rather meditate
than medicate, she came on.

They and several other women went through the hall to a room they
called the office.  At a desk was a woman in white uniform and cap,
just as if she was an R.N. She was serving something in lily cups

Sue graciously let Virginia go ahead but fortunately she was not the
first in the line and so was able to watch the procedure.  The guard
poured something into a lily cup and the prisoner drank it down.  While
the victim choked and sputtered the guard refilled the cup from another
pitcher and this was drunk gratefully.  One woman just ahead of
Virginia knocked the cup from the guard's hand, but the white uniform
simply filled another cup and said, "You drink this."  The prisoner
drank it.

And so did Virginia drink what was handed to her.  It was a worse drink
then she had expected.  "This beats Martin's gin," she gasped.  The
guard wouldn't know who Martin was or how he had made such awful gin
during prohibition

days, but the remark was wrenched from your stinging throat.

"Virginia," said the guard as you drank the water chaser, "you are a
card."

"What is that stuff?"  Virginia asked Grace when she met her in the
hall a moment later.

"Formaldehyde," said Grace.

"Jesus," said Virginia.  If she hadn't been so weary she would have
gone to the washroom and put her finger down her throat.

She and Grace went to a sort of dormitory.  Grace got into one of the
cots and Virginia got into the one next to Grace's.  No one threw her
out and so it must have been the right cot.  She had put her bag under
the bed but now she leaned over and dragged it out.  It was getting too
dark to read but she did not intend to try.  She slipped one of
Robert's letters from the packet and put it under her pillow and then
she felt safer.  They are doing their best, but it will take more than
formaldehyde.

Outside of the dormitory someone was screaming.  The dormitory, like
the toilet booths, had no door, so you heard things easily.  Drowsily
Virginia imagined running down the hall to rescue the screamer.  But
then there was quiet.

"Grace?"

"Yes."

"How long have we been here?"

"You mean here in Three?"

"No, just here in general."

"I came in January.  You came around the first of February."

February?  I thought it was summer.  "What month is this?"

"August."

Just like that.  August.  February to August.  No use trying to fool
yourself now about this being a survey in the interests of an Important
Novel by a Proletarian Writer.

Was my crime so great?

"Good morning, ladies."

Who had got into the room?  Stealthily she groped for Robert.  I must
put my hand over his mouth so he won't speak out.  But the bed was
narrow and she was alone.  The room was dark but she saw pale shapes
rising up.  One of

the shapes said her name and then she remembered that she was not at
home.  February to August.

"Yes," she said.  She got out of the cot, fumbled for the bag under the
bed and then put on her shoes.

"Hurry up."

"I am."  Always the command to hurry and you hurried nowhere, you
arrived nowhere.  The shoes were cold and clammy and they squished up
and down when you walked.

After she had followed Grace into the hall she remembered the letter
and so she went back and took it from under the pillow.  When she
returned to the hall Grace had vanished but there were other ghosts
'that rushed in the dimness.  It was far too dark to be morning and she
wondered if this might be a fire drill.

She followed the shapes into the washroom.  Although it was the same
room it had been moved to the other end of the hall.  She would not
give them the satisfaction of commenting on the change.  She found her
hanger and began to dress.

"Virginia!  You don't take breakfast this morning."

Then why not let me stay in bed, fool?  She turned and there was
another guard, not Miss Hart, a smaller one but with a big voice.  Not
that I took dinner last night, but thank you just the same for saving
me the bother of the trip.  "All right," she said.  Perhaps Robert is
coming to take me away.  She continued to dress.

Now this one that was not Miss Hart came over to her and took her by
the shoulders and shook her.  "You put your clothes right back on that
hanger."  This guard had puffy cheeks and her rouge was in purple
splotches and her hair was scooped into a black-silk net and she looked
as if she had been up all night.  "You know you go for shock.  Hurry up
or you'll be late."

It was quaint of the guard to think you had to go elsewhere for a
shock.  But Virginia put her clothes back on the hanger and again got
into the grotesque nightgown.

"You'll have to concentrate," whispered Grace.  "It makes her so mad
when you forget.  And it counts against you."

"Where am I going?"

"For shock.  You remember."

Do I?  I remember it no more than I remember the house where I was born
and the little window.  Going for shock.  An odd, foreign expression.
Sensation seekers go to be shocked; I never heard anyone say go for
shock, as if it was a commodity like the morning milk.

Presently she and the guard were the only ones left in the washroom.
The guard handed her a gray terrycloth robe.  "Put this on," she said.
"Put your nightgown back on the hanger.  Hurry up."

In the hall the guard turned her over to another one in blue and white,
one who hadn't put on any rouge this morning.  Virginia and the pale
one went through the large room and they reached the outer corridor in
time to trail along with the last of the breakfast ladies, but they did
not go into the dining room with the breakfast ladies.

As they turned at a door just beyond the dining room door Virginia
noticed a third door.  It had gold letters on it.  It looked familiar
but she was unable to make out the letters.  The pale one unlocked the
door she had selected and they went into a cement stair-well and
started to climb.  After several nights the pale one unlocked another
door and they went into another brown corridor.  The pale one escorted
her to a small room and left her there.  All of this was done without
any comment.  Well, I don't feel like talking before I've had my coffee
either.

There were wooden benches around the walls of the small room and there
were two windows.  Virginia tried to open one of the windows and was
surprised to find that she could.  The window opened down the center to
make two slits.  They might as well have had bars.  It was beginning to
get light.  The sky had a sick, lemon cast at the horizon.

Three robed women were ushered in.  One of them sat down; the other two
stood in the center of the room.  No one said anything.

After a while a guard came and took one of the robed women away.  There
was pink in the sky now.  The pink was turning to red when another
woman was taken away.  It was nearly light when Virginia was taken.

She was taken down the hall to a little room and the moment she saw
that room she knew she had been shocked previously and that she did not
care for another helping.  The room smelled like her old electric egg
beater and there was a dull red glass eye in the wall.  "I think I'll
go back down stairs," she said.

"You go right on in," said the guard.

"Good morning, Virginia."  This was quite a different voice.  It was so
pleasant that it was silly.  It dripped the sort of cheery good will
that is hard to take any morning, especially a morning when you have a
formaldehyde hangover.

"Good morning," said Virginia in a tone which she meant to indicate
that she wished not to discuss it further.

There was a high table, like an operating table, and she knew she was
supposed to get up on it.  She got on it and the woman with the silly
voice fussed around her.  This woman was in an R.N. uniform and the
room had somewhat the appearance of an operating room.  I'd forgotten I
was to 'have an operation.  You don't eat before an operation, of
course.  I should have remembered.  I wonder what I am being opperated
on for.  What haven't I had removed?  I believe I still have my gall
bladder.

"Well, Jeannie.  And how is Jeannie this morning?"

It was he, the Indefatigable Examiner, come out from the bushes.  He
was wearing a white coat.  He had blue eyes and a hawkish nose and a
very slender face and his hair was fair and curly, like Grace's, only
shorter.

"And did you enjoy being outside in the park yesterday?"  He said this
with a heavy accent that you had never been able to place.  It wasn't
German, French, Italian or Scandinavian.  Polish, perhaps.  He began to
talk at great rate but you could tell he didn't care if you translated
or replied.  He and the silly woman were busy with their hands.
Evidently it was to be a local anesthetic.

They put a wedge under her back.  It was most uncomfortable.  It forced
her back into an unnatural position.  She looked at the dull glass eye
that was set into the wall and she knew that soon it would glow and
that she would not see the glow.  They were going to electrocute her,
not operate upon her.  Even now the woman was applying a sort of
foul-smelling cold paste to your temples.  What had you done?  You
couldn't have killed anyone and what other crime is there which exacts
so severe a penalty?  Could they electrocute you for having voted for
Norman Thomas?  Many people had said the country was going to come to
that sort of dictatorship but you hadn't believed it would ever reach
this extreme.  Dare they kill me without a trial?  I demand to see a
lawyer.  And he--he always talking about hearing voices and never
hearing mine... He, pretending to be so solicitous of me and not even
knowing my name, calling me Jeannie.  If I say I demand a lawyer they
have to do something.  It has to do with habeas corpus, something in
the Constitution.  But they and their smooth talk, they intend to make
a corpus of me--they and their good mornings and how are you.

Now the woman was putting clamps on your head, on

the paste-smeared temples and here came another one, another
nurse-garbed woman and she leaned on your feet as if in a minute you
might rise up from the table and strike the ceiling.  Your hands tied
down, your legs held down.  Three against one and the one entangled in
machinery.  She opened her mouth to call for a lawyer and the silly
woman thrust a gag into it and said, "Thank you, dear," and the foreign
devil with the angelic smile and the beautiful voice gave a
conspiratorial nod.  Soon it would be over.  In a way you were glad.

CHAPTER THREE.

She was walking down a sloping hallway.  At the head of the procession
bobbed a white cap.  When the cap stopped moving the women stood still.
They were standing near a door that had gold letters but when they
turned they entered another door.

"Come along, Virginia," said the White Cap.  "This way."

"But that's my door," said Virginia.

"He's not there now.  Come on.  Come on, ladies.  Make it snappy.  We
haven't got all day."

Why not?  What comes next?  I have all day.  He said so.  He said I had
nothing to worry about, no meetings to attend, no parties to give, no
house guests coming.  But I have been in this room before.  It is a
dining room.  It is where we eat.  I am wise.  I know things.

But do I know the plan of the tables?  If you select the wrong chair
something awful happens.  Oh, wisdom, guide my feet.

She shut her eyes and when she opened them she was beside a chair and a
woman was saying hello.  The woman continued to say hello and soon she
was saying to save some for Virginia.  Yes, this was familiar.

The bowls swam past.  "No, no, please," said Virginia.  "Please.  I
don't want any."

"Sh," whispered the woman at her left.  "I'll take care of you."

And when the bowls came to Virginia she remembered that it was an
axiom.  To get the others to eat you said to save some for Virginia.  A
proverb, a law.  Your share of the process was to take what was left
and they were kind and left only enough to soil your plate.  You spread
the dabs to

make them look like the last bits you hadn't been able to finish and
thus you avoided punishment.  The kind woman at your left had arranged
this.

The woman on the right was not eating.  She was stirring a plateful of
food around and around.  A wave of nausea washed through Virginia and
she took a piece of bread and crumbled it into her plate.

Across the table a brown-eyed girl smiled.  "I am Margaret," she
said.

It was a shock to hear Mag's name.  "Margaret?"

"I just came today.  From Four."

"I'll remember your name.  It is my sister's."  Virginia bent her head
to hide the tears that were starting from her eyes.  She cleared her
throat and blew her nose on the paper napkin.  "I've not seen her for a
while.  Silly of me, but we've always been quite close."

"No talking, ladies," called out the woman who was pushing a cart
toward their table.

When the plates were collected the waitress gave each of the women a
pan of something that quivered.  I would rather die than eat it.  But
then the woman at the left took the disgusting stuff and dumped it into
her pan.  "Oh, thank you," said Virginia.  "You're the best friend I
have here."

"Don't mention it," said the Champion.  She turned.  "You are late,
Countess, but I saved it."  She opened her napkin and displayed a
collection of bread scraps.

"Thank you, dear," said the collector.  "They appreciate your
kindness."

Virginia wanted to ask who they were but she had a feeling she had
asked the question before and she did not want the Champion to become
impatient Without that one's good will you would have to do your own
eating.  They served execrable food here and like all bad cooks,
expected you to eat heartily.  They became vindictive if you did not
eat.  They mashed the food into a mush, pushing it up your nose.  No, I
have dreamed that.  That could never happen.

Across the aisle was a beautiful girl.  Of course without your glasses
you couldn't tell from here but you had seen her close up and you knew
she was beautiful and that her name was Rosa.  Rosa had cried in the
washroom.  Someone had broken her bottle of perfume.  She kept saying
that her brothers gave it to her and that it cost five dollars.

Now Rosa pushed her chair back.  She stood up and started to make a
speech.  I wonder if I'm to make one.  He said not to worry about
having to make any more speeches;

he said I never would have to make another one.  But if there are
speeches I am sure I am one of the speakers.  If I could only remember
my subject.  I must listen carefully when they introduce me.  Rosa is
the chairman.

But this is awkward.  Rosa was speaking in Italian.  Virginia did not
understand Italian but she could recognize it.  And knowing that Rosa
was an Italian helped.

The girl spoke brilliantly and she used magnificent gestures.  She
raised a fist and beat her chest.  Almost at once you caught on that
she was imitating Mussolini.

The two white-capped waitresses didn't reach the speaker right away.
They scurried around their steam wagon and ran into each other.  One of
them knocked a stack of plates from the cart and they stopped to pick
them up.  The plates did not break.  They were metal.  They made a
frightful clatter and Rosa had to raise her voice.  Rosa was not simply
imitating Mussolini, for the time being she was Mussolini.  Everyone
was much impressed and they frowned at the waitresses.  The Nose, the
aristocrat who dined at Virginia's right, tapped impatiently on the
table and said, "Quiet, you fools."

When the waitresses reached the speaker they did not apologize for
their rudeness.  Great strapping women that they were, they laid hands
on the delicate Rosa and took her from the dining room so rapidly that
you were not certain if they carried her or walked her.

For the first time in history we are alone.  Now my speech.  Ladies!
Now is our chance to organize.  Unless we organize we are lost.  Are we
going to continue to accept this oppression?  United we have great
strength.  Let us organize.  Can we sit here and let them do God knows
what to Comrade Rosa?  They broke her bottle of perfume and pretended
one of us did it.  Next, they will be blaming us for the poor quality
of the food.... (You have to work a joke in somewhere.) But all joking
aside, ladies, do we not owe it to those who will come after us to....
The speech was clear in her mind.  It was somewhat adapted from Helene
but she felt that in general it was not communistic.  She prepared to
rise.  Before she was on her feet, one of the waitresses stormed into
the room.  "All right, ladies," she squalled.

There was no conversation in the washroom.  The women sat on the floor
and smoked and when the White Cap said

to watch their ashes, they watched the White Cap.  I would be afraid
if I were that one, but I suppose she carries a gun.  Packs a gat, she
would say.  She is a tough one.

The tough one smiled.  She was smiling at Virginia.  Virginia looked
down at the paper cone she was using for an ash tray and then she
remembered that the White Cap was Miss Hart.  I have done her the favor
of watching my ashes and the ashes of others, she can do me a favor
now.  "Miss Hart?"

"Yes, Virginia."

"I wonder if I might have my glasses."

"Glasses?"  Miss Hart wrinkled her brow.

"Eyeglasses.  Spectacles."

"I didn't know you wore glasses.  You haven't had any since you've been
here in Three."

"I have never been without them before," said Virginia.  "I always have
two pairs, in case one should break.  I am very nearsighted."  And
without them I can never figure out how to escape, my friend.

"Why don't you ask Miss Graves?  Go to the office now, if you like. She
might know something about them."

Virginia left the washroom and after a while she found a room that had
a desk in it and she supposed this might be called an office.  "Miss
Graves?"  she said to the woman who was sitting at the desk.

"Well, Virginia, what can I do for you?"

There were two pitchers on the desk.  White-enamel pitchers.  There was
a package of paper cups.  One of those pitchers contained water, the
other held poison.

"You want your nightcap now?"  asked Miss Graves.

That was supposed to be a joke and so Virginia forced her lips into a
curve.  "I wonder if I could have my glasses.  I'm very uncomfortable
without them."

"Glasses?  I didn't know you wore glasses."

"They have to be somewhere around.  Robert--my husband wouldn't let me
be without them."  Yes, but what can Robert do for a person who is in
the clutches of the Law?  He had got the reprieve, that much was
certain.  They had not completed the electrocution.  You were
unconscious when the papers came.  It had been a close call.

"I'll inquire at the main office," said Miss Graves.  "Not all of your
things were sent to this ward.  I'll make a note of it."

"Thank you," said Virginia.  "I really think if I'm without them much
longer I'll go crazy."

Grampa said she ought to be shut up he didn't mean it.  He only meant
he wished she would keep out of his way.

How, how can Robert endure it?

When she got into her cot she realized that she had neglected something
very important.  Robert must get a divorce.  It was possible in some
states.  Any good lawyer could manage it for him.  He must be the way
the Jacksons are about Don.  Mrs.  Jackson told me last time I was home
that she doesn't see Don any more.  He doesn't know me now and it just
does me up and finally Mr.  Jackson put his foot down and said I
couldn't go to visit him any more.  I try to think of him as dead and
he is.  My real boy is dead.  He's happy.  Yes, he's happy.  They take
good care of him and he's happy.

Lying there in the fading light Virginia remembered Don Jackson, the
way he was before.  He was older than she but she remembered him
dearly.  Such a nice-looking boy and so smart in school.  They said,
when it happened to him, that he was too smart, that it happened to
people who were too smart.  Was that any consolation?  Could you say to
yourself that you were too smart?

You were never any quiz kid, Virginia.  Don't add delusions of grandeur
to whatever it is you already have.

For about two years, said Mrs.  Jackson, he knew us.  I never went
through such a time.  It was much worse for us then, really, though of
course then we still had hopes.  Will I know Robert for about two years
and then...?  He must get a divorce right away.  I might live to be
eighty.  Look at Gran and Grampa.  I might not be lucky enough to take
after the Stuarts who died young, and anyhow a lot of them lived to be
seventy or so.

"Grace...."

But Grace had gone away.  She had been happy about leaving and she had
said it wouldn't be long before she would be back at work on her
newspaper.  They had promised to hold her job for her, she said.

Does it mean I might get well?  I know someone who did.  Mary Someone.
Silly Mary, they call her.  Harmless graduate of an institution, but
they call her Silly Mary.  I would rather be Silly Virginia shut up
than Silly Virginia at large.  Robert, Robert, Robert.  Happier there
than he would be at home, said Mrs.  Jackson, even if we could take
proper care of him.  Better off with his own kind.

Someone was talking.  Is this a voice the Examiner desired me to hear?
Last night, I'll say to him, last night in the dormitory I heard your
voices.

"They can't do it to me," said the voice.  "I'll get the Law on them.
I've got friends.  They better watch out how they treat me."

"Shut up," said another voice.  "Shut up and go to sleep."

"You can't talk to me like that," said the first voice.  "I'll have the
Law on you.  I got friends.  You watch your mouth when you talk to
me."

And then someone began to weep.  Virginia decided these were not the
voices he sought.  She was reminded, by the weeping, of an article she
had read.  It was an article about a place like this.  No, not a place
like this.  The writer had pretended to be speaking for all such places
but his description would never fit this one.  When I read the article
I was glad.  I was thinking about Don.  The writer made it sound
fascinating.  A group of interesting people living in dream worlds.
Every one of the people he wrote about was engaged in something
important.  There were men who thought themselves great lawyers and
they were busy writing, or thinking about writing, briefs 'that would
make history; there were men who thought themselves financial wizards
with millions and billions of dollars under their control; women who
thought themselves famous beauties; women who thought themselves
historical or mythical characters.  Everything in the way of comfort
was provided these dreamers and they hadn't a worry in the world.  The
author made a gentle joke about his envy of their lot.  They dwell in
dreams, he wrote.

"There are also nightmares," said Virginia.  She had spoken aloud.  I
spoke aloud and not to anyone within hearing.  I am one of them.

Here in this bare dormitory that had no door, here on the narrow cot,
clothed in a numbered nightgown, she lay with women who were insane and
she was one of them.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Mrs.  Robert P. Cunningham, Juniperhill Hospital.  It was there on the
envelopes, in Robert's writing.  All you had had to do was look, which
was of course why you had not looked.  Though you had known without
looking, it was far harder when you knew and looked at the same time.
You

were horrified and ashamed, as if it was something you had done on
purpose.

She tried to dig out her memory but it was swathed in wet gray chiffon
that stuck to the very part she wanted most to examine.  You needed to
get inside of your head and clean the place up.  It was easy enough to
remember things that had happened a long time ago, even a year ago.  It
was about a year ago that we moved to a suburb.  Without much effort
she recalled the names of the young people with whom she and Robert had
lived for several months.  I remember the kitten that used to ride on
the trail of my housecoat every morning when I went down to get
breakfast.

It was a co-operative house, set up according to rules and regulations.
Everyone had a chore.  Robert was superintendent and I was cook.  As
cook I was queen.  The others gaped and marveled at the most simple
achievements.

This was after Robert had taken a job, just after he had decided it was
time to call the vacation over.  Virginia had assumed they would go
back home at the end of the long vacation, but Robert wanted to stay.
She was fond of New York but it wasn't the same when Robert was
working.  That was why Robert accepted the invitation to the
cooperative.  "Then you won't be alone," he said.

No, she was never alone in that big old house.  It was a house rule
that when your bedroom door was closed you were safe but always, no
matter how loudly she pounded her typewriter, someone tapped at the
door.  Ginny, are you too busy to let me come in a minute?  Something I
want to show you.  Something I have to ask you.... No one takes a
writer's business seriously.  It is something to be done at odd moments
when there is nothing else.

It wasn't so much that she was eager to be at her work; it was mostly
that she could not endure always being at a party.  The co-operative
was an endless house party.  Although the members were all employed
there was always at least one who was having a day off, a week off, an
hour off.  Ginny, I suddenly remembered that you might be left alone
today and so I brought my work home.... They were all so young.  I
hadn't known until then that Robert and I had stopped being young. They
were always talking, laughing, singing, dancing.  They were always
quoting.  Their erudition was appalling.  Though they seemed never to
read, their supply of brilliant quotations was endless.  They spoke
patronizingly of the authors whose vocabularies they used casually, and
for all Virginia knew, correctly.  They

were sorry for Virginia and said it was too bad she couldn't do a
novel with Social Significance.  They themselves would do surveys and
essays when they found time; they would write documents which would
bring the world into cooperation-when they had time.  But there was
time for laughter, time for song.  It was marvelous for three days.

It may have been marvelous for Robert a bit longer.  He was seldom
there.  His job was a conglomeration of days and nights and split
shifts, but before long he said he wondered if he and Virginia exactly
fitted in.  He and she agreed, though perhaps with less enthusiasm than
they had had before, that if they were to live with anyone it would be
with these young people who were so bright and so loving.  "But it's
the sort of thing you keep thinking you should go home from," said
Robert, "and then you realize that you are home."

Virginia's mother had been writing frantically.  She did not understand
why they were staying in the East; someone had told her that
co-operative house was almost entirely Jewish--not that she minded but
she did wish Virginia wouldn't tell other people things and not tell
her; it was such a shock to hear things like that from other people;
only the other day someone had asked her if it was true that there were
Negroes in the house also.  At least you can come home for a visit, she
wrote.  You absolutely must come home for a visit.  If Robert can't
come you must come without him.

"You should go," said Robert.  "It will give you a rest from these
maniacs and then we'll see."

He said she must have a new coat.  She shopped and shopped and finally
she found a good bargain.  She adored a bargain.  She never really
liked a dress or a coat or a hat that hadn't had a price marked out and
a lower one added.  The new coat was a silvery shade of green and the
collar was real beaver.  It was a very small collar but it was real
beaver.  When her mother saw the coat she said it was the kind that
absolutely had to have a matching hat.  She took Virginia to her
milliner and had a hat made and it cost more than the coat had cost.

Virginia planned to stay in Evanston two weeks but she was too tired.
Every time she got on the bathroom scales she weighed less.  And she
was having trouble sleeping.  This wasn't entirely new trouble but she
thought when she got back into a regular routine it would be different.
So she returned to New York and when Robert met her he said they

were moving back to Manhattan.  "We'll take such a small apartment
that we can't have any company from home," he said.

I can't remember that little apartment, but I know we found it.  We
moved from the co-operative house to a little apartment in Greenwich
Village.  Strange not to be able to remember your home.  You are coming
near.  Grace said February.

We decided not to have the furniture sent on.  Just the rugs and dishes
and silver.  We bought furniture.  We bought a large studio bed and I
made a cover for it and that was our davenport.  We had a terrace and a
wood-burning fireplace: I remember that we had them but I can't
visualize them.

On our wedding anniversary Robert gave me a muff.  January twentieth.
You came in February, said Grace.  On the twentieth of January I was
with Robert and he gave me a dear little round ball of beaver and I
made him tell me how much it cost.  "You and Mother!"  I said to him.
He had paid more for the muff than I had paid for the coat.

And thinking we were nearing the end of our money I had shopped myself
limp for furniture and got the apartment fixed up on next to nothing.
Such a practical man.  That is what they always say about Robert.  My,
they say, it's a good thing Virginia Stuart married a practical man.
She hasn't got a grain of sense.

As soon as the apartment was finished she got down to her book and
worked eight hours a day.  Sometimes these work days were at night,
when Robert was working.  One week ins schedule was one way and the
next week it was another way.  She never got it through her head.  She
tried to mat chins schedule but she was never able to sleep in the
daytime. She was beginning to be unable to sleep at any time.

They had become involved in a number of organizations.  Robert was on
numerous ways-and-means committees and she was on committees of fine
arts and program and things like that.  Through their organization work
they met very interesting people, writers, painters, musicians,
teachers, social workers, newspaper people and so on.  They entertained
a good deal and went many places.  Robert assured her they weren't
spending much more than he was making.

For the first time in her life she began to wonder what the tired
housewife would like to read.

It had been weeks since she had had a full night's sleep.  She kept
telling herself it made no difference.  She would

 make it up eventually.  Get tired enough and you would sleep.  Some
days she was so tired that she couldn't work; she sat or lay and looked
into space.  She was never sleepy.

Robert was beginning to worry about her.  He kept saying she should go
to a doctor, that she was too thin, that she didn't eat the right sort
of food.  He said why not knock off writing for a while.  He was not in
the least concerned about what the tired housewives of America were
buying for their reading material.

She hadn't told him about not sleeping.  Sometimes she thought she must
imagine the sleepless nights.  You could not lie awake all night.  An
hour or so, yes, but not all night.  All night, night after night.  It
was impossible.  Something would happen.  What?  You would fall asleep.
What else?

She counted sheep.  She pretended she was molasses being poured out of
a brown jug, poured from a brown jug into a thick stream that was
inching slowly toward February, February, February.... It was February
then that morning at five when I got up from bed and took the little
beaver muff to the bathroom to look at.  In the concealed pocket was a
matching set, a coin purse, a compact and a lipstick.  I wanted to weep
when I saw how beautifully the pieces were made.  Had I known he was
going to take that much money out of the bank I would have made him
give it to me for curtains.

I crept back into the bedroom that was also the living room.  On the
desk was the manuscript of my new book.  It was the next-to-the-last
draft and I was working it over in pencil.  Even if the tired
housewives did not become enthusiastic I felt sure it would do a little
something for the bank account.  To be poor in New York, though living
was far cheaper there, seemed a more wretched prospect than poverty in
Evanston.  At home I wouldn't have cared about the housewives and then-
literary taste; I would have been laughing with Paula at Cassie.
Cassie--now I was trying to be Cassie.

The alarm rang and I hurried back to the big room.  I slipped the
manuscript under the bed so he wouldn't know I had been working.

"You up already?"  he asked.

I knew then that I would have to tell him, that it was time.  "I didn't
sleep very well," I said.  I was dizzy and I had to catch hold of the
chest of drawers.  I remember it.  It had a pink-marble top.  "Robert,"
I said, "I think there is something the matter with my head."

 No matter how often she went back she was unable to get beyond that
time which had not been time but past, way past the time.  It was
impossible to imagine what had happened; you had nothing to go on.  You
had heard so much about Don Jackson but you had never heard exactly
what had happened just before he was taken away.  You hadn't even
wondered.  Poor Don lost his mind, people said, and they had to take
him away.  At first they thought he would get over it but he never did.
Poor chap.

Before, just before it happened, did he say he thought there was
something the matter with his head?  Did he have that moment's warning?
Mary Lamb.  She and Charles making the sad journey.  She had ample
warning--eventually.  Perhaps I had also; perhaps the not sleeping was
my warning but I did not recognize it.

I sleep now.  I would sleep longer if they let me, if they didn't come
and roust me out before dawn.  I sleep, but there is still something
the matter with my head.  So it is more than a matter of insomnia.

She was sitting in a wicker chair and she had been sitting there since
lunch or dinner as they called it here and she was willing to keep on
sitting.  She was always tired.  But Miss Hart came over to her.  "How
would you like to use the polisher, Virginia?"  she asked.

Polisher?  Virginia had no desire to use a polisher, but obviously the
question required an affirmative answer.  Miss Hart, you knew, approved
of you.  It had something to do with not dropping ashes on a white-tile
floor.  And so now Miss Hart was going to let you use a polisher.

It was a thing that had a long handle and at the end of the handle was
a heavy weight wrapped in gray blanket material.  The idea was to push
the polisher slowly over the linoleum.  This was considered a
privilege.

Whenever anyone took the polisher away from Virginia she was grateful.
For days Miss Hart's chief concern was to give Virginia exclusive right
to the polisher.  When the nurse was occupied elsewhere some patient
would snatch the long handle from Virginia, but as soon as the nurse
returned she would shout, "You give that polisher back to Virginia,"
and the wretched task would be resumed.  Virginia had never had any
strength in her arms and in order to make any progress at all she had
to push more with her stomach than

with her arms.  It would have been a splendid reducing exercise for
anyone needing reduction.

Some of the women, she noticed, had regular duties.  Some of them
mopped the halls and dormitories.  They had buckets with wringer
attachments and they had a collection of mops.  And there were women
who worked of a morning at making beds.  The scrubbing and bed-making
were finished soon after breakfast but the polishing was never ended.
It was tempting to believe the woman who boasted that she used the
polisher all night long, every night.

Miss Hart complimented Virginia extravagantly.  "The best little
polisher we ever had."  Oh, the nurse was devoted to Virginia;
sometimes she crossed the washroom to light Virginia's cigarette and
sometimes she gave her toilet paper without being asked.

Next thing they will promote me to bed-making and then I will be in a
fix.  I can never learn to turn a hospital corner.  Sorry, I'll say
when they give me the assignment, but I never could turn a hospital
corner.

She looked at the slippery floor and giggled at her pun.  The sound of
the faint laughter startled her.  She looked around apprehensively to
see if anyone had noticed the alien sound.

There had been days, outside, when she had longed to make her mind
blank.  It wasn't that she had ever had tremendous problems--that might
have been stimulating--but sometimes she had wished she might stop
thinking about the committee agenda, about the Evanstonians who had to
be taken to see Battery Park and the Empire State Building, and about
how long you can continue to spend more than your income.  Here at
Juniper Hill she got her wish and she learned that having a blank mind
while awake is a terrifying experience.  She would be sitting in the
large room--they called it the dayroom--and it would be early morning
and then suddenly it would be time to go to bed.  What had happened
between mornning and night?  She would not be able to remember having
gone to the dining room but she would know she had been there twice
since breakfast; she would not remember having shoved the polisher but
she would know she undoubtedly had been shoving it.  Being teacher's
pet, she never had a day free of polishing.

Being teacher's pet was a sorrow she hadn't had to contend with in
school.  Although she had been a good child she hadn't looked it.  The
hair was responsible.  A child with red hair automatically was
considered a devil.  Often she had laughed at her mother's stories
about what a false reputation the older Stuart girl had got, but the
laughter was never entirely mirthful.  A favorite story was about
Virginia's first stage appearance.  She was six years old.  At a signal
she and a dozen other first graders marched to the stage and stood in a
row while other children, more favored by nature and teacher, did
tricks.  Mrs.  Stuart, not in the least dampened by the walk-on role,
was in the audience and probably dreaming of a theatrical future.
Virginia had on a new white ruffled dress with a wide blue sash and
around her head was a blue satin ribbon with a rosette just above each
ear.  The color was an unfortunate choice as it made the straight
fringed bob look far redder than it actually was, but, once reconciled
to the hair, Mrs.  Stuart stubbornly played up to it.

"That's Virginia Stuart, that one with the red hair and the blue
ear-bobs," the admiring mother heard someone say.  "You know, Margaret
Stuart's child.  She's the meanest kid in town."  "And I turned
around," Mother would say, "and I saw it was Madge Anderson, a sorority
sister of mine!  I gave her one look and I never spoke to her again."

Virginia would laugh.  Everyone would laugh, but Virginia knew they
were thinking Madge Anderson had been penalized for stating what must
have been common knowledge.

The only really wicked thing she could ever remember doing was putting
a large angleworm down the back of an enemy.  Her hatred for this girl
was based on jealousy.  The girl had braces on her legs and Virginia
coveted those braces.  Later it was tooth braces that she coveted.  It
seemed to her that all the top-flight children had braces on their
teeth.  She used to watch Libby snap her braces in and out of her mouth
in a most affected way and she would long to be rich like Libby and
have braces.  Her mother's telling her that she didn't need braces did
not fool her one instant.  All the rich kids had braces.

At first glasses gave her a swank feeling and she made a great to-do
about polishing them and waving them around under the noses of children
who hadn't glasses.  But glasses soon came to be a nuisance, albeit a
very essential nuisance.

Several years before she and Robert came to New York for the long
vacation there was a fad back home for curing

poor eyes by exercises.  There was a man in Chicago who made a
specialty of this and Virginia went to him.  It was very expensive. You
sat in a darkened room and watched a series of lights flash about. The
doctor--he called himself a doctor and maybe he was--said it was a
matter of time.  He was all in favor of her going without her glasses
but of course she never could have found his office without them.  All
she got out of the exercises was a chain of headaches that came to an
end shortly after the course was finished, but several of her friends
discarded their glasses and for quite some time went around looking as
if from mouse-holes.

They promised to give me my glasses.  Days ago.

"I wonder if I might get my glasses soon," she said to Miss Hart.
"Glasses?"  said Miss Hart.

Again Virginia went through the weary story of how she had worn glasses
since childhood and how dependent she was upon them.  Miss Hart was
fascinated.  She had a friend who had worn glasses a long time.  She
asked why Virginia hadn't mentioned the matter before.  Sometimes it
was difficult at Juniperhill to remember which were the sick ones.

Miss Hart boomed for her to come along to the office.  They went to the
office and a moment later Virginia had her glasses.  "You see," said
the nurse, "all you have to do is ask.  Don't be shy."

Virginia put the glasses on and the walls of the room whirled.  "Oh,
but these aren't mine," she said.

"Got your name on them."

Yes, there on one shaft, on a bit of adhesive was V. Cunningham in fine
black printing.

"Try them again," said Miss Hart.  "Maybe being without them so long.
But if they aren't right you mustn't wear them."

Virginia put the glasses on again.  "Oh, they are fine," she said
quickly.  She pretended they felt fine.  "I suppose Huxley is right,
though.  At least partly."

"Huxley?"  Miss Hart was arranging papers into a pile.  She had a
passion for neatness and no doubt everything about her person was
scrupulously clean.  She was, however, one of those dark-skinned
individuals who always look slightly dirty.

"Not Julian," said Virginia.  "Though you would expect it to be him,
wouldn't you?"  Yes, a nurse would think of Julian Huxley first.  "But
Aldous had poor eyes and became interested in...."

"I know you are glad to have them back," said Miss Hart.

"Come on back to the dayroom.  Let me leave a minute and the place is
a--mess."  The oily skin reddened.  "I forgot to tell you that you're
going to Petey this afternoon," she said quickly.  "Isn't that
swell?"

And who is Petey?  My doctor?  Miss Hart is great on calling everyone
by first name but would she dare call my doctor by first name, even
behind his back?  At least she might say Peter.

In the dayroom the floor tilted but did not revolve.  There were no
blurred edges now.  Already your eyes were responding to the old
discipline.  You knew that if you saw a good eye man at once you would
be able to get weaker lenses.  Maybe I should mention this to Petey
this afternoon, before the adjustment to the strong lenses is complete.
 I can't call the man Petey and I cannot remember his last name.

And in the past you had thought half blindness a burden.  At
Juniperhill it was a blessing.  How ugly the dayroom was.  How much
browner and plainer.  How hideous the curtains were and how dreadfully
the paint was checking from the wicker.  You could see that the
furniture had once been green and deep under the green was yellow.  But
the inanimate part of the dayroom was beautiful in comparison to the
ladies.

You bathed twice a week.  You lined up for the showers.  There were two
stalls for the forty or fifty women who lived in Ward Three and in
order to speed things up you were told to soap yourself before you got
under the water.  You reached a hand into the spray and caught enough
moisture for a lather and in that way you could spend your bath time in
rinsing.  You might almost get completely rinsed before the nurse would
tell you to get out.  Virginia had not, as yet, ever had a shower stall
to herself even for a moment but she understood that this could happen.
It was indeed rarely that she had only one other woman in her bath.

Once a week was fine-comb night.  You squatted at Miss Hart's feet and
she went through your hair with a fine comb.  Beside her on a stool was
an enameled pan of some clear fluid that you hoped was a strong
antiseptic.  She dipped the comb in that pan.  The same comb was used
on everyone.  She combed you quickly and efficiently, if roughly, and
that was that.

These two processes, the showers and the fine combing, were the only
organized efforts in the direction of personal cleanliness.  Otherwise
you were on your own.  You did not have to wash or comb at any other
time unless you chose.

As far as Virginia could tell, all of the ladies chose.  The four wash
basins and the strip of mirror above them did not give much chance,
though.  When the way was less crowded you washed your pants and bra
and stockings.  You hung your washing on your private hanger and if it
was not quite dry in the morning, well, there was nothing else to
wear.

In the little black bag Virginia had make-up materials and bobbie pins
but she seldom had enough time at the mirror to fix herself properly
and there was no mirror in her bag.  Not many of the ladies did
anything about make-up, not many of them did work on their hair.  Rosa,
the Italian girl, had spent much time on her curls.  What had they done
with Rosa?  Virginia had overheard someone say that Rosa had been sent
to pack but she did not believe this.  You wouldn't be sent home when
you were worse.  '"That's silly," she had said.  She had turned around
to join in the conversation about Rosa.  "They wouldn't do that.  You
have to get well before you can go home."

The women who had been discussing Rosa stared at Virginia.  They must
have been very sick.  For a while after that incident Virginia felt
much better; at least she knew she was not so sick as two of the
patients.

She had learned a good deal.  She had learned that this was not an
insane asylum; it was a mental hospital.  The ladies had not lost their
minds; they had had nervous breakdowns.  This last was a surprise.  You
had thought only the wealthy and the very brilliant had nervous
breakdowns.  It was impossible to imagine that any of these ladies had
ever been either.

She felt shy in her glasses, as if the other women could see her for
the first time now.  Some of them looked at her but most of them paid
no attention.  A lady who was shoving the polisher gave her a
touch-me-if-you-dare look and Virginia said, "You are welcome to it."
The lady was too far from her to hear, but your glasses made you feel
as if she was in your lap.  It was like looking through binoculars.

You were sickeningly reminded of drawings you had seen in a large book
on the history of insanity.  Once Virginia wrote a short novel about a
man who had a nervous breakdown and after she had finished the book she
thought it might be a good idea to read up on the subject.  She really
hadn't thought of this herself.  Someone had said how in the world
would you know anything about such a subject and did you do an awful
lot of research.  So after the book was finished she did some research.
There really was no time before.  She read maybe a dozen books on the
subject and she

decided that a thirteenth opinion might get by.  Her book was not
published but the reason given was the bad length and, as writers
always believe what is pleasant to believe, she believed that the
length of her breakdown book was the only thing bad about it.

Her hero's breakdown was artistic and private.  He did not go to an
institution.  Never having been inside of that sort of place Virginia
felt she could not invent such a background.  So her man went about his
business and had his breakdown inside of himself and of course,
brokendown, was a far more attractive person than he had been before.
It was a romantic book.  She knew this when she was writing it.  What
she did not know until she came to Juniperhill was that the dozen
scholarly volumes she had read on the subject were also very
romantic.

Looking at the ladies of Ward Three she was again conscious of the
terrible odor that always clung to the place.  The room was very clean
and so the smell must come from the ladies.  They did not look so very
dirty but on the other hand they did not look so very clean.  How could
they?  If there was any laundry service Virginia had never heard about
it.  She did not know how long it had been since she and Grace had sat
in the park or how long before that she had worn this old dress but she
did know that the dress had not been washed since that day in the park
and that it certainly had not been clean then.  She had worn it every
day since then.  She had tried to wash off several spots she had got
when the Nose in the dining room had flicked gravy at her but the dress
needed more than a sponging; it needed throwing away.  All of the
ladies needed washing and ironing and something done to their hair
instead of fine combing.  Why fine combing?  Was Miss Hart hunting
something when she ran that comb through your hair?  something Robert
said.  It was queer the way she often would remember something he had
said recently. She could not remember that he had ever been here. 
"It's one of the best in the country," he had said.  "I wrote home to
Charles first." Charles was their doctor at home and also their good
friend.  Charles had said Juniperhill was absolutely one of the best. 
Also, doctors Robert had consulted in New York had said it was one of
the best, if not the best.

Slowly she looked around the room.  "It may be the very best butter,"
she said, "but it won't lubricate the works."

"Were you speaking to me?"  asked a lady who was standing near by.

"No," said Virginia.  "I'm afraid I was talking to myself."

"A bad habit," said the lady.  "Miss Hart says you are going to P. T.
with us this afternoon."

She had said this as if it were two initials.  Parent Teacher
Association?  But I am neither a parent nor a teacher.  "Yes," she
said.  I'll have to write to Hortense.  I'll have to tell her she's not
the only one who goes to P. T. A. Only here in the East, I'll write, we
just say P. T. Hortense was always writing about the P. T. A. now that
Scootie was in school.  He had become a problem child.  In nursery
school he learned to call everyone damn stinks and now, in first grade,
he complained about having to dance with the old bags from second grade
when he went to dancing class.  Hortense was doing something about this
in P. T. A. She was working on getting a certain teacher fired and a
certain Bad Influence sent to another school.  Well, I'll write to her
about the meeting this afternoon, I won't need to say just where it was
held.

What is Robert telling people?  That I have gone away for a little
rest?  I am not getting any letters, not even from Robert.  And when
has he ever come to see me?

At first we went to see him regularly but after a while the doctors
decided it only upset him.  Then, later on of course, he didn't know us
and so there was no use.

Progressive myopia was what you had wrong with your eyes.  Was your
head trouble progressive?  Head trouble.  She tried to think of
scientific words.  There was dementia praecox, but that sounded too
young.  Precocious.  There was maniac something but you were pretty
sure you were not a maniac.  There was schizophrenia.  That was a
beautiful word, as a photograph slightly out of focus sometimes is very
lovely.  It means split personality.  When I wrote my book I said that
was what my man had.  He didn't think he was Napoleon or anything like
that but he was aware of being two decided personalities, one very
proper and righteous and the other something of a rake.

But that can't be my trouble.  I am just me, Virginia Stuart
Cunningham.  There is only one of me and it is having a hard enough
time thinking for one, let alone splitting into two.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Now the gold letters stood out in a clear string of consonants.  The
letters, she knew, comprised her doctor's name.  Russian, perhaps.
Senja, Virginia's pupil, had explained that it was impossible to turn a
Russian name into English.  She said she had changed her name to the
nearest German equivalent and then turned that into English.  Of course
Virginia knew this was not true.  Senja lived in constant fear of being
caught by the Bolsheviks.  She had escaped from a Russian prison where,
she told Virginia, she sat a long time with lice.  She never told how
her escape was managed but Virginia was certain of one thing the name
Senja used was nowhere near the one she was born to.

Not long ago, well, some time during the first of the New York period,
Virginia told Helene, the True Trotskyite, some of Senja's experiences.
Helene said it was all bosh, that Senja had invented the whole thing.
Helene knew everything about the Revolution.  From books and from being
a True Trotskyite, a party that was the left wing split of a left wing
split.  Helene was an authority; she had met The Old Man once and for a
long time afterwards had not washed the hand that had touched his.
Virginia could have believed that she had never washed that hand again.
Helene was an interesting person to have known; it was nicer to have
known her than to know her.  Until she graduated from college she was
like everyone else.  She was born and reared in Evanston, and her
family was the sort that sheltered its girls.  They had plenty of
money, not a great lot, but plenty.  However, Mr.  Bodford, Helene's
father, had a sister who did have a great lot of money and this sister
was fond of Helene.  When she died she left everything she had to
Helene and the young heiress immediately turned communist and fled
Evanston.  Now she lived in a ramshackle Village building and ran the
infant split.  She had joined, worked in and resigned or been fired
from a half dozen parties before she organized one of her own.  The
True Trot skyites were not to be confused with the Untrue.

The self-appointed custodian of the creed of The Old Man had a long
dark apartment that was stuffed with oriental rugs and antique
furniture from her aunt's beautiful old Evanston house; it was also
stuffed with cockroaches.  In addition to the

cockroaches Helene housed a varying number of True Believers.  Her
money, to her great disgust, was done up in a trust fund and she would
not be able to get at the principal until she overthrew the
government.

Virginia promised herself that she would memorize the doctor's name and
ask Helene how to pronounce it.  I'll be seeing Helene before long.
Yes, once you had your glasses and got a good look at this hospital you
knew it was impossible to remain here.

I suppose I have been in his office many times.  It has a black couch.
The leather is fastened down into deep dimples.  I used to lie there
while he skulked somewhere behind and asked questions.  Silly
questions.  But Robert said Charles said the doctor with the odd name
was one of the best.  Oh, Charles and his amiability.  As far as
Charles was concerned everything was just lovely.  I went to see him
when I was home on that visit and he said I was wonderfully well.  You
can't, of course, have a veryingh opinion of someone you went to school
with.  Dr.  Thompson?  you said.  Charles Thompson?  He can't be much
good.  Why, we were in kindergarten together.  Robert, however, was not
in kindergarten with Charles and so thought he was good.

It was dreadful what glasses did in the dining room.  For the first
time Virginia noticed that four of her table companions lacked
important teeth.  The Nose was anything but regal-looking now; she was
a haggle-toothed blonde whose hair was black at the roots and whose
face was latticed with dirt-filled wrinkles.  The Champion wasn't so
ugly but she had the look of a person who isn't right in the head.
"Hello hello hello," she said to Virginia.

Directly across was the new one, the one named Margaret.  She grinned
at Virginia and asked did she remember the time Bobby caught the
rabbit.

Virginia knew a collection of Bobbys and sometimes, in a teasing mood,
called her husband Bobby.  She did not, however, know any
rabbit-catcher Bobby, at any rate notincommon with brown-eyed Margaret.
"Mmm," she said.

Margaret accepted the sound as an affirmative answer and continued to
speak of Bobby and the rabbit until Miss Hart issued a No Talking
Ladies.

When the unpalatable meal was finished Margaret waited for her in the
aisle.  "You are my sister, aren't you?"  she whispered anxiously. "You
said so."

Virginia was ashamed of the revulsion that was in her

"No," she said as kindly as she could.  "I said my sister's name is
Margaret.  You and my sister have the same name."

"You said," whimpered Margaret.  "You said."

"Well," said Virginia, "perhaps for the time being we are sisters of a
sort.  Yes, there is a sort of relationship."

Margaret perked up.  "I knew," she said.  "I recognized you right away
even though you have been dead so many years."

It was no use to talk to these women; they were crazy.  Virginia
stalked back to the washroom determined never to speak to any of them
again, but in a moment two or three of the ladies were asking her for
cigarettes and she was doling out her last.

She not only was out of cigarettes now, she was out of cleansing
tissues.  But Miss Hart gave her a deal of toilet paper without being
asked; Miss Hart gave her more than she gave the other ladies; Miss
Hart made no effort to hide her preference for V. Cunningham.  This
afternoon at P. T. meeting I'll make a motion; I'll move that toilet
paper be provided in each booth.  If they will not pass the motion at
least they will be forced to discuss it.

"Not smoking?"  asked the nurse chummily.

"I'm out."

Miss Hart clacked her tongue and said it was a pity she hadn't saved
any for herself.  "I'll be taking the store orders tonight right after
supper," she said.  "You can order some more then."

"That's right," said Virginia, as if she knew all about store orders.

In the dayroom, while waiting for the P. T. meeting, she ran into
difficulty in connection with her black bag.  She had had that bag with
her almost continually and never had any trouble about it, but this
afternoon one of the ladies decided Virginia was a doctor.  This
aroused the interest of another lady and then another.  The three hung
on Virginia and called her Doctor and begged to know when they would be
allowed to go home.  When she said she was not a doctor they pointed to
her little black bag.  It did look like a doctor's bag.

The incident reminded her of the time she had told Gordon she was
thinking of being a doctor.  She didn't like to recall this because
Gordon had laughed at her.  He had thrown back his head and howled.

She was not in the habit of comparing Gordon and Robert.  Such
comparisons were as wicked as they were futile.  She had a vague memory
that the doctor here had asked her to make such a comparison and again
she felt the dimples of

the leather couch.  "Gordon died a very long time ago," she had said.
"He was a wonderful young man and I was very much in love with him. But
you don't love a dead man, if that's what you are driving at.  You can
remember that you did love him but you delude yourself if you think it
can continue as before."

Gordon laughed when I said I was thinking of studying medicine.  Robert
would not have laughed.  No, Robert always takes me seriously.  He
would have started to figure out ways and means to send me to medical
school.  It would have been good if Gordon could have had a bit of
Robert and Robert a bit of Gordon.  Gordon might have taken her a
little more seriously and Robert a little less seriously.  That Paris
business.  She had just been talking, the way you talk about what you
would do if you suddenly got a million dollars.  How astounded I was
when he said it would have to be New York instead of Paris.  I had
forgotten my chatter about a year's holiday.

"How did you ever browbeat Robert into it?"  Mother asked when she
found out that Robert was throwing up his job so that we might go off
to New York for a year or so.

"It's his idea," I said.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Virginia," she said.  "A steady
ambitious young man like Robert.  What will the Cunningham's think?"

That was Mother.  She was always in a dither about what the Cunninghams
were going to think.  "I'm so embarrassed about all this that I can
hardly look Mrs.  Cunningham in the face," she said later on.  "When
Robert worked so hard and saved up all that money and got such nice
promotions and now you take him off and plan to fritter everything
away."

When the Stuarts told Robert not to pay any attention to their foolish
daughter, Robert said Virginia had taught him to enjoy life.  They had
enough money to knock off for a year and so why not?

Before she met Robert, Gordon told Virginia about him.  Robert was one
of Gordon's closest friends.  "There's something so substantial about
Bob Cunningham," he said.  "You know where you stand with him.  He's a
lot of fun but at the same time he's old business."

Excuse me, my beloved Gordon, while I laugh.

If Gordon's shade could tell what she was thinking she hoped it would
not mind learning that she was attracted to Robert from the start.  It
wasn't love at first sight, as it had been in the case of her and
Gordon, but it was strong attraction.

So strong that she decided at once that Bob must marry a dear friend
of hers, Isabel Dawson.  She arranged a double date and Bob and Isabel
seemed to take to each other.  Gordon, who was convinced that Isabel
was a half wit became disturbed.  Oh, Gordon, if you could only see
Isabel now.

Robert and Isabel went around together a good deal but when Gordon,
very worried, spoke to Robert about it Robert said there was nothing
serious.  He said Isabel was awfully cute and a very good dancer and
all but--but he guessed he'd wait until he found someone like
Virginia.

"Were you in love with me then?"  asked Virginia once, not long after
they were married.

How shocked Robert had looked.  "Of course not," he said.  "You were
Gordon's girl.  I really was quite smitten with Isabel but I didn't
dare let him know."

After flunking out of two colleges Isabel Dawson settled down to study
law at a third and now was partner in a good firm in Chicago.  When she
came to dinner she would clap Robert on the back and say, "How's my old
flame?"  and Robert would blench for fear that she would kiss him.
Which she always did.

"You used not to mind," Virginia would say after her friend had gone.
"Have you forgotten how quite smitten you were?"

Manlike, Robert would say the only reason he had ever gone with Isabel
was to please Virginia.  "Besides," he would add plaintively, "she's
changed."

If Isabel Dawson could turn out to be a lawyer I most certainly could
have been a doctor.  Virginia looked down at the little black bag.
Thank heaven she had never mentioned her medical ambition to Robert or
sure enough that bag would be brimming with scalpels right now.  I
never would have stuck to my writing if he hadn't kept telling me how
good I was.

Unaccountably she thought of a conversation she had overheard years ago
in the ladies' retiring room of the Country Club.  She was in one of
the booths, trying to pin a broken shoulder strap.  Her slip was very
plain and so she had hidden away for the repair work.

She was about finished when she heard someone say Robert's name and
then hers.  "Isn't Robert Cunningham here tonight with that Virginia
Stuart?"  said a voice.  The accent on the that advised you to remain
in the booth.

"He married her," said another voice.

"So her engagement to Gordon Timberlake fell through.  I knew it
would."

"But, darling, didn't you know?  He died."

"My God."

"Yes, isn't it awful?  He was so good-looking.  It was while you were
abroad, I guess."

"I don't know why no one ever told me.  Honestly, you'd think I didn't
have any friends.  Did Bob think he had to marry her just because he
and Gordon were pals?"

"It looks like it."  "I never could see her.  Of all the girls Gordon
might have had.  Me, for instance.  Oh, sure, I admit it.  My God, I
can't believe he's dead.  How did it happen?"

"I don't know.  Some terrible disease, I guess."

"And she up and married Bob.  Poor Bob."

"Well, it was a couple of years later.  Maybe more.  I never knew her
very well."

"Heavens, neither did I. But I used to run around with Gordon's cousin
some and you should have heard her on the subject."

"Well, I guess there's nothing wrong with her."

"My dear, I know for a fact that she stayed all night at the Zee Zee
house."

"Oh gee, I don't believe that.  I've never liked her especially, sort
of a cold fish, but..."

"Gordon's cousin told me."

What did you do in a case like this, rush out and say you damned liar,
I'll sue you for slander?

"And besides..."

"Watch it.  Someone coming... Darling, I just love your dress.  Pink is
divine on you."

"My dear, do you think so really?  Personally I think it makes me look
like a hag...."

There had been no use for Virginia to try to figure out which of the
numerous pink dresses it might have been.  She stayed in the booth
until everyone had left the dressing room.  It was a large party and
pink was popular just then.  If she had been putting this episode in a
book she would have recognized that girl's voice some time or other and
then polished her off beautifully.  However, she never had the least
idea who the person might have been.  Perhaps what burned her up most
was that Zee Zee was a very second-rate fraternity.  If Gordon's
cousin, a little rat who had tried her level best to catch him for
herself, had had to invent such a story, she might at least have made
it the Beta house.

"Peee Teee, ladies!"  shouted Miss Hart.

The call shook Virginia from a pleasant dream in which she was telling
off a girl in a pink evening dress.  Hurry, hurry.  She ran over to the
nurse who was surrounded by clamoring ladies.

Miss Hart clapped her hands.  She could make more noise with her voice
than with her hands, but when she was especially excited she clapped.
"Quiet, ladies," she roared.  Then she read from a paper and said that
only those whose names she had read were to go to Petey.  The instant
she finished this pronouncement there was a frantic howl and her
assistant, Miss Forderly or some such name, came slapping her white
shoes on the linoleum.  Virginia, cautious when wearing her glasses,
stepped to one side.  Brown-eyed Margaret was shrieking that her mother
had said she could go anywhere her big sister went, but Miss Forderly
dragged her off and soon the honored ladies filed into the corridor.

They went past the dining room and the doctor's office to a door that
led to the stairwell.  Was this Petey a trick, a new way to get them up
to that electrical place?  But you always had an empty stomach for
that, and it was always in the morning.  When they said you were not to
take breakfast it meant you were to go for shock.  That is a
professional phrase.  Shock treatment.  Something rather new in the
treatment of mental illness.  You see I know a great deal about these
things when I set my mind to it.

Instead of going up they went down and then they went out of doors.
Virginia's heart beat faster.  They were going out of the hospital for
the meeting.  I should have worn a hat.  I look a mess.  But so do the
others look a mess.  But what will the real people think of us?  Will
they take our votes seriously?

Off on the horizon were hills and between the hospital and the hills
were fields and woods.  This was country.  There was no sign of the
city anywhere.  Of course Virginia had often looked from the narrow
windows, but without her glasses the view might have been anything from
Times Square to the Skokie marshes.  Often of an afternoon the ladies
were allowed to go out to their cage but the cage gave onto a sort of
park that was surrounded by high red buildings.  How had they spirited
you out of town?  Did Robert know?  Those letters.  Yes, he had
known.

There wasn't much time for admiring the landscape.  Miss Hart turned
to the left and soon they were back among the red cliffs.  "They have a
lot of buildings," Virginia said tentatively to her marching partner.

"Hundreds," said her partner.

They turned again and went into a one-story building that had no cages.
Just inside the door they were met by a gray haired woman who was
wearing a black bloomer suit, long black cotton stockings and black gym
shoes.  She looked like a physical education teacher of the Twenties
and her hair was cut in what in the Twenties would have been considered
a smart boyish bob.  There were several other groups of ladies in this
foyer and several other nurses.

"Well," said Bloomers to Miss Hart, "I thought you weren't coming."

Miss Hart grunted and then she and the other nurses went away and
Bloomers took the ladies into a large gymnasium.  The floor was marked
with black painted lines and there were basketball hoops at either end
and over to one side was a volleyball net.

"Fall in," said Bloomers.

"Fall in what?"  gasped Virginia's partner.

"Line, I imagine," said Virginia.  How very clever I am.  P. T. It
stands for Physical Training.  But this was a letdown when you had
thought you were going to a meeting where you would make a radical
motion and get even with Hortense and her old P. T. A. Virginia had
managed to avoid most of the physical training offered in high school
and college.  She had had an old fashioned doctor.  He wore a morning
coat and a white carnation and he thought exercise, beyond strolling in
the park, unthinkable for young ladies.  Charles Thompson would have
had you going out for football, but Charles was still in school himself
in those days and hadn't a word to say.  Oh, Charles, even then, had
words to say, but no M.D. to back them up.  Anyhow, the old doctor
wrote out papers to demand that you be excused from physical
training.

You had to take the swimming examination, though.  In order to graduate
from college you had to swim the length and breadth of the pool--just
what this had to do with a degree in Liberal Arts Virginia never knew.
But she managed it.  She used a breast stroke part of the time and part
of the time a sideways version of the dog paddle.  She kept her head
high out of the water and the swimming instructor moaned while she took
her examination.  But he had to pass

her.  The rule simply stated that you had to swim the length and
breadth of the pool without stopping.  It said absolutely nothing about
the style to be employed.  "It's a crime, that's what it is," said the
instructor when he checked Virginia's card.  But at least she had
passed her own examination.  A friend of hers had taken the test seven
times, each time under a different name and bathing cap.  You had to
get a date for her in return.  Virginia had tried to get a date for
this professional test-passer but finally had decided it would be
easier to take the test herself.

"Ten--shun!"  said Bloomers snappily.

Virginia stuck her stomach out.  It must be Therapy instead of
Training.  This being a hospital.  She was so engrossed in working this
out that she missed the command to squat and was spoken to personally
by Bloomers.

They squatted, hands on hips, ho; they stood up, hands outstretched,
ho; they leaned over and touched the floor without bending their knees,
ho ho, and more or less copied what Bloomers was doing.

Bloomers seemed to be having a grand time.  The old girl was nimble and
expected the ladies to go through the tricks quickly.  Virginia wished
she had Senja's nerve.

One summer Senja got it into her head that she must learn to swim.  She
had had a dream about being chased into Lake Michigan by the Bolsheviks
and so she and Virginia went to take swimming lessons from a woman who
once had been champion at that horrid stroke, the Australian Crawl. The
teacher probably knew no other stroke because she was determined that
her pupils should master the crawl.  She lined them up at the shallow
end and had them wave their arms and make fish mouths.  She had them
cling to the side of the pool and kick their legs.  Senja endured this
until the middle of the second lesson.  That was when the teacher told
them to put their heads under the water.  "Ya ole be etch screamed
Senja then.  "Ya ga ta hal!"

Virginia was Senja's language teacher for over two years.  By the end
of the second year Senja could make herself fairly well understood,
which was a shame inasmuch as her vocabulary contained much that
Virginia had never taught her.  You had to be grateful for the few
times when Senja had failed to make herself clear, though.  Virginia
would never forget the time her Russian pupil told a floorwalker he was
a bastard.  "Look, ya buster," she said to him.  When her volatile
attention was captured by a display on a nearby counter the floor man
giggled to Virginia that it had been a long time

since anyone called him Buster.  "At first I thought she was sore, but
then when she called me Buster.... What great charm these Russian women
have."

It was impossible to make much headway with Senja after that.  Senja
used the floor man as an example of how you have to treat the lower
classes.  Properly kicked around, she said, they are willing and
obliging.

Now Bloomers had had enough.  During the last exercise her enthusiasm
had sounded mechanical.  Now she said wearily that they would skate or
play volleyball.  They could choose.  "If you choose to skate, remember
to stay on this side of the gym.  All right, Volleyball Ladies."

Not being a volleyball lady Virginia stayed with the skaters.  They
went to a large box and hauled out roller skates.  You had to sit on
the floor to put your skates on and as there was only one key the
volleyball game was under way before the first skater wobbled out to
the rink.

Virginia did not wobble; she was an expert.  She had not been on skates
since she was fourteen, but she did not fall down She was the only
skating lady who did not fall down.

"You skate well," said Bloomers when P. T. was over.

The teacher looked bushed and Virginia was sorry for her.  Back in the
Twenties she had probably taught at a good school and now in her old
age she was driven to teaching crazy ladies.  "I skated a lot when I
was a child," said Virginia.

"One never forgets," said Bloomers.

"No," said Virginia.  "Like riding a bicycle."  This is the first time
in my whole life that I have had a chance to say this first.

"That's right," said Bloomers.  "It is a good deal like riding a
bicycle, that is, the sense of balance...."

Miss Hart and the other nurses had come.  "Well, Virginia," said Miss
Hart, "how did it go?"

"I'll be stiff tomorrow, I expect," said Virginia.

"Nothing like exercise," said Miss Hart happily.  Then she changed her
expression.  "Ward Three Ladies!"

The Ward Three patients gathered around their nurse.  The treat was
over.

The smell of Ward Three, after you had been out in the open, was
overpowering.  When they stepped into the day room Virginia identified
the smell.  Paraldehyde.  One romantic book she read while doing
research into mental ailments stated that the stench of paraldehyde has
vanished from our mental institutions.  I remember I wondered what
paraldehyde was and I looked it up and it said hypnotic, a hypnotic.

So it is paraldehyde and not formaldehyde.  Grace knew a lot, but she
did not know that.  I have worked it out for myself from the sound and
from the stench and also from the memory.  I am therefore not so sick
as Grace was when she left us.  I am therefore ready to be transferred,
more than that, I am ready to go home.  What is the matter with that
doctor who is one of the best?  Months since I saw him.

"Miss Hart," she said, after she had given her store order, that is,
after she had said yes, she would like some more cigarettes, "when am I
going to see my doctor again?"

"Wouldn't you like to order some candy too?  You have a five-dollar
credit at the store," said the nurse.  "Have you heard the news?
There's going to be a movie tomorrow night and you're on the list."

"I never will be missed."

"What?"

"Oh, I was just thinking about that Gilbert and Sullivan thing about
having him on the list and so on."

"Say, I'd forgotten that show," said Miss Hart, "HitchyKoo.  My
goodness, I was just a child then, of course."

"Of course," said Virginia.  "You think it won't be long before I get
to see my doctor again?"

"Aren't you feeling well?  It's probably just from Petey."

"There are some things I want to ask him."

"Can't they wait until next week?  You saw him just the day before
yesterday, you know."

Another patient pushed up to Miss Hart to give a store order.  Virginia
went off to a corner and sat down.  She tried to think, but the gray
chiffon wound closer.

By noon the next day the word about the movies had got around, and some
of the ladies whom Virginia had considered hopeless spoke sensibly
about the coming adventure.  Virginia and a woman who appeared to know
nothing at all were the only ones who showed no enthusiasm, but when
Virginia thought about a movie she thought about going with Robert. She
never went without him.

It developed, when the time eventually came, that not everyone was
invited.  More ladies were honored than had been

included in the P. T. expedition, but fifteen or so were dosed up with
paraldehyde and put to bed.  Virginia would not have minded going to
bed but it was something, of course, to get out of the paraldehyde.

The theater-bent marched away.  No slicking up had been indulged in and
Virginia decided that the show was to be given on the hospital grounds.
The campus.

They went to a building near the gymnasium.  It was a pleasant evening.
The sun was nearing the horizon and the gold-red light made the distant
hills pretty.... The theater was a great hall that had a stage at one
end.  There were many rows of folding chairs and nurses were stationed
at intervals to direct traffic.  When the women were seated half of the
hall was filled.  Then came men.

Virginia had got used to knowing that many women were in this hospital
but she had not thought about it having men patients.  The long lines
of shuffling men made her throat hurt; she wondered if Don Jackson
might be among them.  She had never thought before about what
institution he was in; it could be this one, couldn't it?  I doubt if I
would recognize him.

Perhaps the reason the men roused her pity even more than the women did
was that they did not look nearly so bad.  This is something to
remember when you are sorry for men on account of their dull way of
dressing.  When they lose their minds they look less lost than women.
They looked like ordinary men, not spruce, but most of them could have
got by in a crowd.  Not a woman in the audience could have got by in
any crowd other than the one she was in now.  A woman without a
pocketbook or a compact or a pair of gloves or a hat or even a
handkerchief is a lost soul.  Miss Hart had seen to it that her charges
had stowed away their bags and boxes before coming to the theater and
apparently the other nurses had taken the same precaution.  The ladies
had nothing to do with themselves.  No hats to take off, no nice
hair-dos to pat, no handkerchiefs to flutter.... It was odd to be in a
room with a thousand or more insane persons.  The audience was far
quieter than the usual audience of a thousand normal people.

When the room was darkened the picture began.  Virginia did not bother
to follow it.  It must have been a comedy; the audience laughed
frequently and sometimes there was applause.  In case a nurse might be
watching for her reaction Virginia laughed when the others laughed and
she clapped when the others clapped.  The faces on the screen were
familiar but she could not think of the actors' names.  Hardly an
abnormal state for me, I never could remember their names.

Now and then someone would stand up and shout but otherwise there was
no more audience disturbance than you would find in any theater of this
size.  Less, really.  There was no popcorn eating and no cellophane
rattling; there was no running back and forth to the rest rooms and no
wandering about for better seats.

The picture was short.  The lights were turned on and the nurses began
to guide their charges out of the room.  The show was over.  The men
remained seated while the ladies filed out.

The sun had set.  It was night.  Virginia breathed deeply.  This was
the first time she had been outside at night in many many months.  She
looked beyond the blackness of the buildings and saw that there were
stars.

"Wasn't it a cute show?"  said Miss Fredericks when they were back in
the washroom.  Miss Hart had vanished somewhere along the line and of
course, even so, she had put in more time tonight than she was supposed
to.  Ordinary nights, she went off duty at seven, after the ladies were
in bed.  But tonight Miss Fredericks, the night head nurse, had to put
them to bed.  "Wasn't it a scream, ladies?"

And the stars had been shining for the first time since last February.
You can go along for weeks maybe months without thinking about the
stars.  They are there, on clear nights, and you can look at them if
you want to.  Sometimes you may notice them and say there is the Big
Dipper.  You may, if you are not in a hurry, hunt for the Pleiades; but
you do not think much about the stars.  They are always there.  Look at
them when you have a moment.

Until you contracted an illness that caused you to be shut up like a
criminal.

They took the night away from you then.  They drugged you and put you
to bed before dark.  But inadvertently, in connection with giving you a
movie, they had also given you a glimpse of genuine stars.  For perhaps
two minutes you walked under the star-pierced sky.

"And how did you like the show, Virginia?"  asked Miss Fredericks.
Ordinarily this nurse had very little truck with the ladies.  She was
the one who got them started of a morning, but of a morning she was not
affable or willing to delay the routine for the sake of a little
conversation.

"Fine, thank you."

"I thought it was terribly cute," said Miss Fredericks.  "Medication,
ladies!"

Virginia went with the other Medication Ladies and drank her share of
the hypnotic that made them smell like badly tended lions and then she
went to her dormitory.  She was the only one of her dormitory who had
been allowed to attend the movie.  Her roommates slept on their cots.

She turned down the covers of her cot and got into bed.  You can bury
your aching throat in the flat pillow and you can stuff the rough sheet
into your mouth.  You can beat your fists on the hard mattress and none
of this will disturb the paraldehyde sleepers.  And even as you weep
you know it will be only a few minutes before you will sink into the
paraldehyde emptiness.

CHAPTER SIX.

When she saw Miss Hart coming, Virginia took the polisher from Gladys.
Gladys was one of the three who thought Virginia the doctor; this had
been useful in the matter of the polisher.  "Certainly, Doctor," said
Gladys.

Virginia was hard at work when Miss Hart reached her.  "But not today,"
said Miss Hart.  "Gladys, you take the polisher.  Virginia, have you
forgotten what day it is?"

Of course Virginia had forgotten.  She had no idea what day of the week
it was, what week of the month, what month of what year.  She tried to
explain this to the nurse.

"It isn't so much a matter of forgetting as it is of not knowing.  When
your memory is all tied up and separated from the rest of you, you
don't forget.  In order to forget you have first to remember, don't
you, even though briefly?"

"Don't give me the fancy talk," laughed Miss Hart.  She took Virginia
by the hand.  "We better get ready now.  I might not have the time
later on."

Virginia understood how that could be.  Time was different here;
sometimes it was long and sometimes it was short and sometimes--this
was disconcerting--it was not at all.  In real life you had been able
to count on time; you might feel you hadn't enough of it, but it was
always there, nicely parceled out in seconds and minutes and hours.
Each day had twenty-four hours and you were able to depend on tomorrow.
As with the stars it was something you took for granted.  But here,
here in the world of Juniper Hill a day might consist of weeks, of
hours, of a minute, or frighteningly, of not even a second.

The nurse led her to a door she had never seen before.  Naturally.  The
door was not there before.  Just as the washroom was at one end of the
corridor one day and at the other end the next day.  Entirely new doors
were created in order to insure perpetual confusion.  You fancied them
saying, Look, the ladies are getting on to the Ward; last night
Virginia found the washroom without half trying; time for change,
gentlemen.

Miss Hart unlocked the new door--they were careful always to have the
same lock.  The new door opened into a small room that was lined with
dresses and cupboards.  In the center of the room was an ironing board.
I can never iron all those dresses.  I simply cannot do it.  I am going
to have to explain to this woman what a favor is.  Ironing is not a
favor, I'll say.  At least not for me, nurse.

"What do you want to wear today?"  asked Miss Hart.

Virginia stared at the racks.  She recognized several of the garments.
Of course they were not really her own clothes; the hospital had made
duplicates to fool her.  "It doesn't make any difference," she said.
Would all this be reported in the chart?  Watch what you say.

"It's cooler today."  The nurse made her mouth look profound.  "I think
the gray suit."

"It's awfully tight," said Virginia.  "A friend gave it to me and she's
only a twelve.  I always meant to have it altered."

Miss Hart had taken the suit from its hanger.  As in the real world,
the person offering the choice had already made the decision.  Virginia
took off her dress and the nurse put the skirt on her and zipped it up
so quickly that it closed all the way.  Virginia had never been able to
do this.  What strength the nurse had!

The white-silk blouse, also a gift, was too large now and the
jacket--you could have been pregnant in it.

"There," said Miss Hart.  "That's just dandy.  Now hand me your
comb."

This reminded Virginia that the black bag must be discarded.  She told
Miss Hart about the ladies who were accusing her of being a doctor and
Miss Hart shook her head and said what next.  "Never a dull moment,"
she said.  She must have had a peculiar life before coming to Juniper
where all moments were insufferably dull.  "You might put the things
you have to have every day in that candy box you wouldn't

let me throw out.  No sense in lugging that around anyhow.  Good thing
you made me save the box."

"Yes," said Virginia, although she remembered nothing about a candy
box.  "I thought it might come in handy."

When the nurse was shuffling around in the bag for the essentials for
the candy box, she came upon Robert's letters.  Virginia failed to
restrain a cry, but the nurse said gently, really gently, that the
letters would be safe in the bag.  "Anyhow, it's better to see him than
the letters isn't it?"

It was an unnecessary jab for which the gentleness had not prepared
you.  Virginia turned her head to hide her tears.  To keep from going
to pieces she thought of names to call the nurse.

"There," said Miss Hart, the pig of a dog.  "Where is the rouge?  A
little rouge and then..."  She rubbed the small puff on Virginia's
cheeks and then stepped off a way to inspect her creation.  "You look
swell," she said.

Then she told Virginia to go back to the dayroom and that seemed to be
that.  Virginia sat in the dayroom and waited for something to happen
and after a while Miss Hart called Dinner Ladies.  Virginia wondered if
she was supposed to go to the dining room with the others.  Except that
she lacked hat and bag and gloves, she was dressed for the street.

"Come on Virginia.  Don't keep the ladies waiting."

All dressed up and nowhere to go.  As they passed the gold lettered
door she thought perhaps that was where she was going, but Miss Hart
gave her a little push toward the dining room.

The Champion immediately noticed the change in costume.  She broke into
her series of hellos.  "Well, where do you think you are going?"  she
asked.  She had bright eyes and appeared to be a little too alert.

"I don't know," said Virginia.  Nothing too alert about me.  No little
bright eyes here.

The Champion nodded.  "Staff," she said.  "They always fix you up for
Staff.  They had me wear my good green dress that I paid nineteen
dollars for reduced from forty-seven fifty, but it didn't do any
good."

"This suit cost a lot," said Virginia.  "A rich friend of mine bought
it and then decided it didn't become her."

"You had that suit on the day Bobby caught the rabbit," said Margaret,
"I remember it like it was yesterday."

"No talking, ladies," bawled Miss Hart.

Perhaps it was the suit.  The Nose, although she stirred her plate of
food as usual, changed her routine.  When she

had finished blending the mixture she threw it on the floor.

Miss Hart came running.  "Oh, you bad, bad girl, Hazel," she said.
"Just for that you can't have any dessert."

The Nose began to sob bitterly.

When dessert came Virginia clung to her little pan and the Champion
could not get it away from her.  "No, not today," said Virginia.  Then
she slid the pan over to the Nose.  "There.  Stop crying."

The Nose stopped the ghastly racket.  She picked up the pan and threw
it on the floor.  At once several ladies, including the devoted
Margaret, announced that Virginia was responsible.

Again Miss Hart came running.  "A dozen times, Virginia, I've told you
not to have anything to do with Hazel."

"I'll clean it up," said Virginia.  "I'm so sorry."

"You'll do nothing of the sort.  Hazel, any more tricks out of you and
you'll go back to pack as sure as you're born."

While the nurse wiped up the mess there was angelic silence, but as
soon as Miss Hart had gone to another part of the room the Nose whirled
around and slapped Virginia's face.

This was too much for Margaret.  She leapt from her chair and came
round the table to defend her temporary sister.  Food, ladies and
chairs flashed helter-skelter past Virginia, but after a few moments
Miss Hart and her assistant quelled the riot.  The ladies, said Miss
Hart, would all be sent to pack if they did not watch out.

Virginia realized by now that this frequently used expression was an
idiom.  It did not mean that you would be sent to pack your suitcase;
it meant you would be sent packing.  I must make a note of this so that
if I sometime have occasion for an Eastern person to tell someone off I
will get the idiom right.  Sir, if you do not cease to pay your
disgusting attentions to my daughter, I shall find it necessary to send
you to pack.  For books issued in the Middle West you would almost have
to make a note: Algy was not staying at the Sherwood's residence.  The
old man meant he would be sent packing.... How would the old man manage
this?  Calling the police?  How would Miss Hart manage to send fifty
ladies packing?  Did she mean she would chase them through the hall
with a whip?  But we use these idiomatic phrases carelessly.  She
doesn't know what she means, except that she is angry.

Back in the dayroom Virginia decided that her change of clothing
represented Dressing Therapy.  D. T. Today was my turn for D. T. This
would have been rather amusing if you

had had a good stiff drink.  Of paraldehyde.  The Juniper Cocktail, as
we call it, we gay ladies of Juniperhill.  A martini, please, we more
sophisticated ones say.  And where, nurse, is the olive?

She went to one of the windows and looked out.  The view from this side
was pleasant, so very pleasant that she fancied she saw Robert below on
the sidewalk.  Better look out of the other side or you will start
imagining all sorts of things and that is bad for a crazy woman....
"Virginia," called Miss Hart.  "He's here."

"Is he?"  The nurse had said you would see the doctor next week and
although you had thought this was still this week you were, as usual,
mistaken.  She went to the nurse and the door was unlocked and the
nurse pushed it open and there was Robert.  Of course it was not
Robert, but they had managed to make it look very much like him.

"Hello," said the man.

"Hello," said Virginia.

"Right on the dot, as usual," said Miss Hart.  "But we've been ready a
long time, haven't we, Virginia?"

"Oh, yes," said Virginia.  She smiled to think they expected to fool
her with so crude a joke.

"Well, go along, you two," said Miss Hart.  "Don't eat so much that you
won't touch your supper, like last time."

Time.  Is it more sensible to alter time to suit your convenience than
to alter your convenience to suit time?  Why don't people on the
outside discover that time is a slave to be shortened or lengthened, to
be banished or borne, to be known or ignored, like last time?

"Mr.  Cunningham, don't let her stuff herself."

"I won't," said the man.  He sounded like Robert, too.  They were
fiendishly thorough.

She found herself looking at the man with admiration.  The creation
demanded certain tribute.

"You have your glasses," he said.  "That's good."

He led her to a small alcove that had been set into the hall since
dinner time.  In the alcove were a few chairs, a settee and a replica
of the Cunningham's picnic hamper.  On the hamper was a fair copy of
the steamer rug Robert had bought in Scotland.

"Do you want to sit down a minute?"  the man asked.

"All right," she said.  Her knees were shaking.

They sat on the settee and she was careful not to get too close to
him.

He nodded toward the gold-lettered door.  "I just now saw Kik for a
few minutes," he said.

"Yes?"  she said politely.

"He says you are so much better."

"Does he?"

"He says it won't be much longer.... I hope you didn't eat much lunch
because I brought another picnic along."

The hamper was very attractive.  She could not help being interested
and anyway it could do no harm to talk to the man.  "What did you
bring?"  she asked.

"You'll see.  Do you feel like going now?  You aren't shaky?"

"Of course not," she said.

"I'm glad you are wearing your suit," he said.  "It's cooler today."

"It's not mine," she said.

"You look better in it than Alice ever did," he said.  How carefully
they had coached him!

"Thank you," she said.  "They have made it larger in some way.  It's
much too large for me."

"Well..."  He cleared his throat.  "Well, we better be getting along.
The days are shorter now and the sun isn't very warm after three
o'clock."  There was something the matter with his throat.  He
coughed.

"Do you have a key?"  she asked when they turned toward the outer
door.

"This door isn't locked."

"That's funny.  It usually is.  They are very careful about doors."

"Did you enjoy the movie?"

"How did you know?"

"Dr.  Kik told me," he said.  At least he was frank about the source of
his information.

"Kik?"  Could all of those letters shrink into one ridiculous little
syllable?  "I didn't see him there."

They walked along and when they came to the turn for the gymnasium they
went the other way.  "Is it all right to do this?"  she asked.

"Absolutely," he said.  "We're just going to the same place."

"Oh," she said.  She was beginning to think maybe he was Robert. Surely
an actor, even a fine actor, wouldn't have been able to make his throat
go bad on account of the too large suit.  She did not understand why
Robert would become emotional over an ill-fitting suit and yet the
clouded voice had somehow shaken her belief in the impostor.

"The stars were wonderful last night," she said.

"It rained in town," he said.

"It did?  It was clear as a bell here.  I looked at the stars on the
way home from the movie."

"The movie was night before last, darling."

"Was it?"

"Yes.  I noticed the stars night before last."

"Then I have lost another day," she said.  "I don't suppose I'll ever
find it."

He was holding her hand the way he had always done, her fingers laced
through his.  "It doesn't make any difference," he said.  "In a
hospital all days are alike and the less you think about them the
better.  This afternoon is all we care about now."

"Are you really Robert?"  she said.  "I have to be sure, you know."

He squeezed her fingers until they ached.  It was odd that he did not
answer her question and even odder that his not answering banished her
last doubt.

"Don't mind me," she said.  "I say things without meaning anything."

"Who doesn't?"  he said.  He had brought her to a tiny park that was
screened from the hospital buildings by tall thick hedges that were
yellow and red with fall.  "Well, here we are.  And no one else. 
That's the advantage of my coming on a week day.  On a Sunday this
place would be jammed."

There were three brick fireplaces, some refuse baskets and several
benches.  Robert spread the steamer rug on the ground.  He opened the
hamper and took out a beautiful little roast chicken.  "Bigger than
last time," he said.

It was one of those glazed birds you see in delicatessens.  They never
look real and so are suitable for an unreal time.  Robert is real, but
I and the time are dreams.  "Tomatoes," he was saying, "for vitamins.
Apple pie and a thermos of coffee.  I remembered the salt this time."

It was a feast.  It was like long ago.  But we never took bought roast
chicken on those picnics of long ago.  "You shouldn't have spent so
much money, Robert."

"I've got plenty."

"How much does it cost to keep me here?"

"Not much," he said.  He looked away from her.

"How much?"  Why did he always think he could avoid telling her how
much?

"It's based on my salary and so it can't be much," he said.  "Don't
give it a second thought."

I shall give it a second and a third thought later on but

now... "There is nothing like a good meal," she said.  "I don't mean
that the food here isn't all light," she added when she noticed the
distress in his eyes, "but it's different without you."

"Don't," he said.  He stood up.  "I think we had better sit on a bench
now.  I'll put the rug around you.  You mustn't catch a cold."

"I wouldn't mind having a cold, double pneumonia or something I could
understand.  You talk about second thoughts.  I have no first thoughts.
What's the matter with me?  Is it a brain tumor?"

"God, no," he said.  "Whatever made you think of that?"

"I don't know," she said.  "I just now thought of it."

"It's a nervous breakdown," he said.

"That doesn't sound bad, does it?"

"It takes time, that's all."

"What do they do for it besides take time?"

"Well, there are those shock treatments.  The electrical ones are
rather new, you know.  Charles writes that he has had several of his
patients take them, people who aren't sick enough to be hospitalized.
He thinks it's the answer."

"Charles and his thinking.  He's always thinking.  I wish he would take
a shock treatment himself.  That would stop him for a while.... How
many have I had?"

"I don't know exactly.  A dozen or so, I think."

"Are they going to give me more?"

"Kik says he will see."

"Is that really the way to pronounce his name?"

"It's the nearest I can come to it," said Robert.  "He sort of spits
and gargles around but it boils down to being something like Kik."

"How much longer is it going to be?"

"He can't say.  We have to be very patient, darling.  It isn't the sort
of thing that can be hurried."

"I want to hurry it.  I want to leave now, this afternoon.  I'll get
well right away if I can leave now."

"Darling," he said, "we have to do what the doctors say.  But it won't
be long.  You just don't think about it.  You just sort of vegetate and
take things easy."

Thinking about the hours she spent laboriously pulling and shoving the
polisher she looked down at the fringe of the steamer rug.  "Have you
ever been in our dayroom?"

"No," he said.  "They don't let visitors in there.  Why?"

She smiled.  "Oh, nothing," she said.  "I just wondered."

Did I imagine the picnic with him?  I remember it clearly but
sometimes you remember a dream clearly.  I remember what we had to eat
and how good everything tasted.  If it was a dream it was the first
dream in which I ever ate and got full.  I remember how he tucked the
rug around me, how he held my hand.... But I no longer can be sure of
things.

This made her wonder if she actually was at Juniperhill.  Perhaps she
was somewhere else; perhaps she was at home in bed and having a long
nightmare.  They say these long involved dreams take only a few
minutes; perhaps the months at Juniperhill are minutes in a night. Look
at the years it took to write down what Earwicker dreamed in one night.
But could you dream something entirely foreign to your experience?  I
have read twelve books about mental hospitals but Juniperhill, real or
dreamed, never appeared in those works. Juniperhill, one of the best in
the country if not the best.  Preserve me from the worst.

People used to say I had an imagination.  Oh, Gin, what an imagination
you have.  They didn't say this so much after they read my writing Why
write about the sordid, they said.  What they meant was why not write
about them as they imagine themselves.  Well, I shall try to remember
Juniperhill for a book and then they will say what an imagination you
have, my dear.  Don't you know that modern mental hospitals aren't at
all like your trumped-up Juniperhill?  Why, the patients are all so
happy and, my dear, they do the darnedest things.  Of course it's
pathetic in a way but it really is a scream, what they say and do,
thinking themselves Napoleon and all.  They have a good roof over their
heads and they don't have to worry about where the next meal is coming
from or who's going to pay the gas bill.  I'd say it is an ideal
existence and here you've gone and made it sound perfectly icky.  Why,
I've always said if anything ever happened to one of my family (it is
interesting that they always have it happening to one of the family or
to a friend, never to themselves) I would put him into an institution
right off the bat and my heavens if I believed your book I'd hesitate.
Everyone knows we don't treat our insane like cattle.  They are so much
happier with their own kind and they just play around like happy little
children all day long.

Could I have dreamed the taste of paraldehyde?

While the nurse was fussing around about putting the

gray suit away she forgot about Virginia's medication and Virginia did
not remind her.  So now she lay awake.  Or, in her dream, she thought
herself awake.  A simple test is to go to the bathroom.  I won't think
about where it is.  If I am at home it will be the adjoining room.

Chancing a genuine or an imaginary case of athlete's foot she padded
barefoot down the hall.  The corridors were never without some light
but after the ladies had retired the lights were dimmed.  Near the
office door Miss Fredericks and another night nurse stood talking. They
did not see Virginia.  She went into the washroom and got a drink of
water.  There was a fountain in the hall but near the nurses.  She
drank from cupped hands and then went back to the dormitory.  She had
counted the doorways and so knew that her dormitory was the fourth from
the washroom.

Before long Miss Hart was saying Good Morning Ladies.  It was a chilly
morning.  If I am dreaming I wish I would wake up enough to get another
cover.

It might have been the next day or the same day or the next week or the
week after that; she might have had another picnic with Robert in the
interval.  You never knew afterwards.  But one day was a special day.
It was not Thursday or yesterday or tomorrow or anything like that; it
was a special day, as if you were crossing the Equator.  At first when
Miss Hart started going on about what day it was Virginia thought
Robert was coming.

"Well, Virginia," said Miss Hart, "this is your Red-Letter Day."

A red-letter day is a holiday and maybe Robert can come an extra time
on a holiday.  "Am I to wear my gray suit?"

"Well," said Miss Hart.  "No, I don't think So.  You won't be out of
the building.  Of course you can't wear that old blue thing.  They
dress so much better there."

"Do they?"  Virginia asked this for the sake of conversation, not
because she doubted that they would not dress better anywhere.

"Yes.  They are quite classy in One.  Quite the finishing school."  The
nurse gave a laugh that sounded malicious.

"One?  You mean Ward One?"

"Why, yes.  Didn't Miss Fredericks tell you?  You're being transferred
to One."

Virginia began to tremble.  "Oh," she said.  "Does my husband know?
Will he be able to find me?"

"Sure.  Dr.  Kik told him.  We're all so happy for you, Virginia."

"It's a promotion then."

"I'll say.  We don't often have anyone skip Two, but Dr.  Kik gave the
order.  You're lucky to have a doctor who takes such a personal
interest in you.  He's really made quite a special case of you, you
know."

"He has?"  If so, why doesn't he come and see me?  Do they have a rule
for doctors, as for husbands?  "I wonder what happens to the ones he
isn't especially interested in."

Miss Hart looked at her.  She seemed about to say something out of
character.  But then she put on her R.N. look and said they must get
ready.  "There is no cut-and-dried rule about patients having to go to
One before they are released... uh, I mean, before they go home.  I
mean, you can go from any of the wards.  But they usually go from One.
It's like a convalescent home."

"I'm not ready for it," Virginia heard herself say.  "And you know it,
Miss Hart."  They were in the cupboard room now.  "I could go home, but
I am not well enough for One."

The nurse stopped packing Virginia's things for a moment but then she
patted a dress down into the large box.  "Nonsense," she said.  "I
suppose you've heard some of the ladies talking...."

"Yes."  I can't remember what they said but there is something terrible
about Ward One.

"You know better than to pay any attention to them.  They're sick. 
Only one or two of them have ever been inside of Ward One."

"You mean some of them go there and then come back?"

"Practically everyone goes home from Ward One," said Miss Hart as if
reading from a book.  "You are not sent to Ward One unless you are
practically ready to go home.  That is understood."  She was using the
loud firm voice you always use when you are not sure of what you are
saying.

"That's good," said Virginia.

"I tell you what," said Miss Hart when they were crossing the dayroom.
"You do everything Miss Davis says.  Don't think about it, just do it.
You'll get along all right."

As soon as she heard the name Virginia knew what was terrible about
Ward One.  Miss Davis.  "Is she the head nurse?"

"And how," muttered Miss Hart.  And then she raised her voice.  The
nurses had a way of acting as if the patients were

unable to hear anything that was not shouted.  Frequently they said
things in normal voices that the ladies were not supposed to hear; if
they had not been nurses you would have said they frequently talked to
themselves.  "A most competent and efficient person, Miss Davis,"
announced Miss Hart.  "One of the finest nurses in the country, if not
the finest."

Virginia and a student nurse, a very young person in blue-and-white
stripes and a white apron without a bib, went down the hall.  They went
past the dining-room door, past the doctor's door, past Robert's door.
They turned corners and finally the student unlocked a door that said,
in black letters, Ward One.  The corridor inside of the door was just
like the corridor of Ward Three.

They went to the office where an all white nurse, a very handsome woman
who was around thirty, was sitting at a desk.  The woman looked at the
student and frowned, as if it made her ill to see the student; she then
looked at Virginia and scowled.  "V.  Cunningham from Three?"

"Yes, Miss Davis" said the student.

Miss Davis lifted her head eyeing her.  "Miss Gold!"  she shouted.

There was the sound of a nurse coming fast.  This was one sound
Juniperhill had in common with an ordinary hospital.  A nurse coming
fast always sounds the same.  It was a sound Virginia connected with
Gordon.  Once in a sailboat a sudden change in the wind brought that
sound and she thought she smelled disinfectant.

"Miss Gold" said Miss Davis to the nurse who had just come into the
office, "this is the new patient from Three.  Dr.  Kik's patient."

Virginia looked at Miss Gold.  Then she looked at the student nurse.
The student seemed terrified.  I don't know why she should be scared.
I'm the one.

"Show her to her room, Miss Gold.  That will be all.  You will wait in
your room until I come."  The head nurse shot this last at V.
Cunningham and then she turned on the student.  "Were you waiting for
something?"

"Oh, no, ma'am.  Will that be all, ma'am?"

"Get back to your duties, please."

Clumsily Virginia and the student pushed through the doorway
together.

"This way," said Miss Gold.

They passed a dozen cubicles.  These doorless alcoves were called
rooms.  Each room had a cot and a table or a chest or

some sort of washstand.  A few of the rooms had what you might, in so
barren a land, call homelike touches.  Here was a photograph and there
a crucifix.

"This is your room," said Miss Gold when they came to the end of the
hall.

There was no linoleum on the floor.  The floor was cement that was
gritty to walk upon.  There was a cot and there was a table.  The cot
was the sort they had in Three, an iron army cot, but it was made up
with far more arithmetical exactness than they had managed in Three.
There was no wrinkle in the gray blanket that served as counterpane.

The room was large enough to turn around in.  You wouldn't have thought
so, but Miss Gold turned around.  "You just wait here until Miss Davis
comes," she said.

"Shall I sit on the bed?"

"I don't think I would," said Miss Gold.  "You can put your box down on
the table, though."

Virginia put the candy box on the table.  After Miss Gold went away she
stepped to the window and looked out.  The view wasn't very good.
Several yards from the window was a blank red-brick wall.

After a while she sat down on the floor; after more of a while she lay
down.  When she awoke, Miss Davis was standing in the doorway and
saying to get up.  "In Ward One," said Miss Davis, "we do not lie on
the floors."

"I was afraid I would muss the bed," said Virginia.

"There is a rest period every afternoon after dinner," said Miss Davis.
"There is ample time for rest.  Ward One has rules that are quite
different from other wards.  We take care of our own rooms, of course,
and make our own beds...."

Virginia looked at the bed and sighed.

"... and keep things picked up.  You will co-operate, of course."

"I can never make a bed look that way."

Miss Davis frowned.  "You will find the ladies in One very serious and
co-operative.  I'll take you to the dayroom now.  You may leave your
box.  Personal belongings are quite safe in One."

"There are some things I may need," said Virginia.  She picked the box
up.  For a moment she thought the nurse would take it from her.  This
woman is a hired person.  I pay her.  If Robert did not pay my way here
we would still be paying her through taxes.  As a public servant she
has no right to treat me this way and I am foolish to be afraid.

Evidently Miss Davis sensed rebellion.  "I trust you will be

co-operative," she said.  "Ladies who are co-operative find Ward One
very pleasant."

"I'll do my best."

"Our ladies do not eat between meals.  If you are afraid to leave your
candy here you may give it to me and I'll put it in the cupboard.  You
will have access to the cupboards just before and just after meals."

"This," said Virginia, "is my pocketbook."  She smiled.  "My overnight
bag.  The candy is quite gone, unfortunately."  The smile had been a
mistake.  The nurse's expression curdled.  Had you come upon Miss Davis
outside you would have said to yourself there is a woman who is not all
there, not entirely normal.  Look at those eyes.  Miss Davis' eyes had
a look you do not mind seeing in the eyes of your cat.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

After so long a time of dark brown Virginia was thrilled by the zinnia
colors of One's dayroom.  The bright cretonne curtains and cushions
might have been hideous in real life but they were beautiful here.  Of
course once you stopped looking at the gay colors you saw the brown
furniture and the brown linoleum; you saw that the essentials were the
same as they were in Three.  Though what is essential?

There was one other person in the large room.  The scarcity of business
in One was encouraging.  The others must have gone home.  Just think,
they come and go so fast that when I arrived at One there was only one
other patient.  The thought was bracing.

"I am Virginia Cunningham," she said to the other patient.  "I've just
come."

The woman was perhaps forty but neither fair nor fat.  She was the kind
you would not know a second time.  Her hair and face were about the
same color and this neutral shade was repeated in her dress.  She
looked at Virginia, at first without interest, but then her eyes took
on warmth.  "I see you have a box of candy," she said graciously.

"I'm sorry," said Virginia, "but it's empty.  I mean, there is no
candy.  I carry my powder and things in it."

The warmth changed to suspicion.  "Where did you come from?"

Out of the nowhere into the here.  "Three."

"No," said the dun-colored woman, "one does not come

from Three.  I myself was in Two less than a week but of course I have
money."

"That must be convenient," said Virginia.  She looked around the room
and saw that there was a piano.  "I didn't notice the piano before. How
nice."

"It is not played without permission.  At present there are no pianists
in the ward."

"Oh.  Well, I play a little."

"Enough to call yourself a pianist?"

"No."

"Then you will not get permission.  There is no use to ask.  The
standards in One are verrying.  I wouldn't be here this morning if I
didn't have a slight cold.  As a rule I am working."

"Of course."

"It's menial work.  They don't seem to understand that I'm not the type
they usually get.  My husband, Mr.  Grier, is very wealthy.  I was in a
number of exclusive hospitals before I came here.  All restricted, of
course.  I came here at the insistence of a very expensive doctor.  My
husband, Mr.  Grier, is very wealthy.  I have more jewels than I can
possibly wear.

"How annoying," said Virginia.

"You, of course, are a charity patient."

"No.  It so happens that my husband, Mr.  Cunningham, is very wealthy."
What the hell.  If you have to be here why not try to get a kick out of
it?  "I too have many jewels.  The diamonds simply weigh me down."

"I have the Hope diamond."

"I have the Hopeless Emerald.  It carries the Cunningham Curse.  You've
probably read of it."

"Mr.  Grier, my husband, considered buying it, but it has a flaw.  You
cannot put an imperfect stone on the most beautiful hands in the
world."  Mrs.  Grier held up her hands.  They were not bad hands; each
had four fingers and a thumb.  "It is a responsibility.  Often I wish I
had just ordinary hands, like yours."

This wasn't much fun.  "When you said you aren't here as a rule did you
mean there are other patients in the ward?"

"Thousands," said Mrs.  Grier, "and all of the lower classes.  Mr.
Grier..."

"Your husband."

"Mr.  Grier, my husband, was saying the last time he was here that he
has never seen so many of the lower classes."

"If you look at it from a certain viewpoint you might find it very
interesting."

"I would not."

"I mean the you one substitutes for one, the general you."

"General who?"

"Oh--Pershing."

"A cousin of mine," said Mrs.  Grier.  "One of the minor branches of
the family."

This went on for some time.  Virginia suspected that Mrs.  Grier knew
she was talking nonsense, but there was no sense to discuss.  They had
been comparing jewels and relatives for about an hour when the other
ladies came.  There were dozens.  Fifty or sixty.  Virginia studied
them as they entered the dayroom.  Taken as a group they appeared to be
normal women.

Most of the newcomers were under middle age and although Virginia tried
to be critical when she scrutinized them they seemed distressingly
well.  It struck her that she and Mrs.  Grier were the only stupid
ladies of Ward One.  And it had been evident that Mrs.  Grier was
reluctant to accept her.  Yes, I don't look as well as she does.  I
need a permanent, a manicure and a good hot bath.

The ladies gathered into little groups and talked.  None of them paid
any attention to Virginia and Mrs.  Grier.  So Virginia got up and went
away from Mrs.  Grier.  She might have been invisible, except that one
or two ladies eyed her candy box.

Miss Gold came to the door.  "Dinner, ladies," she said.

The ladies strolled out of the dayroom and down the hall; there was no
forming in line, no waiting for silence.  In the dining room Virginia
asked Miss Gold where she should sit and Miss Gold said anywhere.  But
it was some time before the new patient could discover a place that was
not reserved and eventually she ended up beside Mrs.  Grier.

The food was somewhat reminiscent of real food.  You had meat that
required cutting and you were provided with a knife.  There was a
salad.  The plates were not metal and you could have your coffee black.
Four of the women at Virginia's table carried on a sprightly
conversation about their morning's work.

"I beg your pardon," said Virginia when there was a pause, "but did you
happen to know a girl named Grace?  I don't know her last name.  She
was fair and quite pretty and she was a newspaperwoman."

"Grace?"  said one of the ladies.  "I don't remember any Grace."

"There was Grace Jenks," said another.

"She said pretty."

"Pardon me."

"Anyhow Grace Jenks wasn't a newspaperwoman."

There was laughter.

"Just what was Grace Jenks?"

"My dear, you're asking?"

It might have been at your club back home.  If Mrs.  Grier had just
kept her face shut you might have forgotten where you were.

After dinner the ladies went to the washroom and those who wished to
smoke and had cigarettes, smoked.  Virginia had a full pack of
cigarettes and was quite popular until they were gone.  She was
dissappointed to see that the lighting system was like Three's.  She
knew that Mrs.  Grier shouldn't be allowed to have matches, but surely
the others could be trusted.

The toilet-paper system was the same here, too.  The washroom was
exactly like Three's, but you hoped the shower stalls were used more
frequently.  The ladies looked as if they bathed often.

After Washroom came Rest.  You could write letters, if you had paper
and pencil; you could take a nap.  You could do anything as long as you
did it in your room and broke no rules.  Virginia sat on the edge of
her bed and prayed she would not wrinkle the blanket.

Later in the dayroom she became acquainted with Lola.  Lola was married
and had dark hair and two very important teeth out and a sweetheart,
not the husband of course, and two children.  She said she was going to
stay at Juniperhill until her husband agreed to let her have a divorce
and the children.  Virginia said she hoped it would work out.  She said
this several times.  Lola was a talker.  She talked until Miss Gold
announced supper and this was a long time after the Oatey Ladies
returned.  Virginia wanted to ask Lola what the Oatey Ladies were but
Lola was engrossed in talking about her sweetheart.  Lola arranged for
them to sit together at supper and the saga of the sweetheart was
continued.  Virginia said she hoped it would work out.

But Lola was generous.  At Washroom Time she gave Virginia one of the
six cigarettes she had taken from Virginia's pack at noon.  But Lola
really was generous; she had forgotten that the cigarettes had once
been Virginia's.

There was no medication in Ward One; there was no bad

smell at all.  The ladies washed carefully before they retired and
there was a good deal of stocking washing.  The nightgowns were the
same old nightgowns, though, and the cot was as hard as the one you had
in Three.  Scratch the surface and you found Juniperhill.

But remember, this is the ward you go home from.  This is the
springboard.  Forget that Lola said she had been here nine months. Nine
months in One, almost two years in Juniper's other wards.  But Lola is
not sick; she is simply waiting for the husband to give in.

That first day was an unreliable sample.  During the first day Virginia
scarcely saw Miss Davis; during subsequent days she scarcely did not
see Miss Davis.  It developed that Ward One had harder and faster rules
than any you had ever encountered.  And the presiding officer had no
intention of relaxing.

The head nurse made it obvious that she thought Dr.  Kik had
overstepped when he put V. Cunningham in One.  It seemed that she set
out deliberately to prove the doctor a fool.  Of course Virginia may
have had a persecution complex, but she was convinced that Miss Davis
went far out of her way to make the wet and dry mop business
confusing.

Virginia's chore, of a morning, had to do with wet and dry mops and a
series of unbelievably heavy buckets with wringer attachments.  It was
forbidden to shove the buckets and next to impossible to lift them. You
were supposed to dip a wet mop into a bucket, through the wringer
thing; then you were to wring it; then you were to mop.  Then you were
to finish off with a dry mop.  The wet and dry mops were different
mops.  A wet mop was a wet mop even when it was dry.  A dry mop was the
mop Virginia mistook for a wet mop.  Whenever Miss Davis approached,
the mop Virginia held turned into being the wrong one.  Miss Davis said
the mops were unmistakable, but Virginia mistook them easily.

But before you began to mop you had to find the equipment.  The
equipment was kept in a utility room and this room was in a different
place each morning.  Virginia would follow the other ladies and hope
they were headed for the utility room.  Sometimes they were.  Some of
the ladies were kind about helping her.  Lola was especially helpful.
Of course when you asked Lola for help you had to listen to a good
deal

about her sweetheart but eventually she told you where the utility
room had got to and which mop was which.

Virginia shoved the buckets along and when she did this Miss Davis
appeared and said was she trying to ruin the linoleum.  Virginia asked
if that was how her room had lost its linoleum and Miss Davis told her
to attend to her own business.

Occasionally Lola had a job off the ward but Virginia stayed on the
ward all the time; she was the only lady who stayed on the ward all the
time; even Mrs.  Grier sometimes went off to a job.  In addition to her
general work on the ward Virginia had to take care of her room.  Miss
Davis said her room always looked like a hog pen  No matter how hard
you scrubbed the rough cement it looked as if it needed a good
scrubbing.  Miss Davis said Virginia's room was a disgrace to the ward
and that she had never had so many dry mops ruined and that Virginia
never put anything back.  Miss Davis said she not only left mops and
buckets all over the place but that she also took other people's mops
and buckets and hid them.  If Virginia had known of a good hiding place
she would have put herself there.

After a week or so Miss Davis and Miss Gold brought a typewriter to
Virginia's room.  "Your doctor," said Miss Davis, "says you may write
for an hour each day.  Put it on the table, Miss Gold."

Miss Gold put the typewriter on the table.

"I'll have to have a chair," said Virginia.

"Naturally."

"And some paper."

"I am fully aware of what is necessary.  You will use the machine only
during Rest Hour.  I suppose you'll make a great racket."

"I don't want to bother anyone," said Virginia.  "I don't have to
write."

"Dr.  Kik says you are to write," said Miss Davis.  "There will be no
argument, please."

And so Virginia wrote.  She wrote that now was the time for all good
men to come to the aid of V. Cunningham.  She wrote that Virginia lay
sleeping in the moonlight, and longed to be on Wolfe's thundering
train.  She wrote a story about the short happy life and changed it
around and had him shoot his wife and she called this story The Short
Happy Life of Mrs.  Francis McComber.  She wrote about the cops rushing
in.  She could not remember why they had rushed and so she

wrote that J. Moncure March wrote a poem and then the cops rushed
in.

It was awful to think of things to write.  If she paused more than a
minute Miss Davis would come to the doorway and ask what the matter
was.  When she heard the nurse's skirts flapping Virginia would hurry
to write that a rose was a rose was a rose alas.

After Rest Hour she would tear her manuscript into small pieces and put
them down the toilet.  Miss Davis never caught her at this but she was
terrified that some day the nurse would discover her in the act and
that from then on all drainage difficulties would be the fault of V.
Cunningham.  It was imperative, however, to destroy the plagiarized and
absurd writing.

One afternoon Miss Davis asked her what she was writing.  Virginia
leaned over the typewriter to hide the story.  Today she was doing a
piece about a woman who sold her hair and a man who sold his watch.  It
was difficult for a person who had never considered fob chains or hair
combs especially desirable to put any pathos into the sacrifices of Jim
and Delia.  "A book," she said to the nurse.

"What kind of a book?"

"A novel."

"Oh," said Miss Davis.  "I understand from Dr.  Kik that you've had
something published."

"A couple of novels."

"I should think you would be interested in serious writing."

"Some people think fiction can be serious."

"There is far too much to be done in the world without storytelling,"
said Miss Davis.  "From my own experience I can assure you that you
will get well sooner if you face reality."

Virginia said nothing.  It had been years since she had let herself get
hot under the collar about fiction.  The last time had been when
Florence Young had said she only read fiction in the summer time.  "Not
that I let myself lie around fallow all summer," said Florence, "but I
mean that there are times in the summer when one simply can't face the
thought of anything important."  Virginia had got very hot under the
collar then.  But suddenly she had cooled off and started laughing and
since then she hadn't bothered about the people who said fiction was
inevitably silly.

"I notice you do not use the touch system," said Miss Davis.

"No, I never learned it."

"Why not?"

"It wasn't given in the pre-college course that I took.  It was
available only for those who were not going to college."

"How impractical."

"Yes.  They have changed it now."

"You could have learned later on."

"I can go rather fast."  "But it's not efficient."

"I've always done all my own typing.  I like to do it, even though I'm
not efficient."

"You know, Virginia," said Miss Davis, "I say this only for your own
good, but when you get a more cooperative attitude you'll be better
off.  I think if you would forget that you have had a little something
published.... After all, it's nothing to be so excited about, is it? It
doesn't set you above the other ladies."

Virginia got up.  "Miss Davis," she said, "do I tell you how to be a
nurse?"

The nurse smiled; she had drawn blood, "As I said, my dear, you lack
the spirit of co-operation.  You really must get rid of your exalted
idea of your importance.... That is, if you want to get well."

She turned away and the starched skirt flapped briskly down the hall.

In a way, the nurse had paid you a compliment.  A nurse, provided she
was sane, would not permit herself to talk that way to an ill person.
Professional dignity would not permit one of the best nurses in the
country, if not the best, to enter into an argument with a mental case.
Virginia clung to the windowsill and looked at the vista of red brick.
It can't be that she hates me personally; she hated me before I came;
it has to be something that lies between her and Dr.  Kik.  But I
refuse to be their football.  I've got to get out of One.

It isn't that I'm afraid she will do me any bodily injury, but I know I
can't take much more and she is very very much more.

For a while we thought he was going to recover, but then--well, he got
worse.... Don, was there a time when you saw, as if at the end of a
dark hallway, the light of the outside, a time when you knew you hung
at a balance and that such a little push, one way or another, would
determine your life?  Did you, at this wavering instant, come up
against a Miss Davis who laughed you, sneered you, chilled you back
into the dark?

The delicacy of one's intellect, one's sanity, when it is

laid open to the specialists.  The tissue quivers as under a knife and
you, only partly anesthetized, see the light of recovery and the dark
of death that is called living, the happy life, the long happy life of
the idiot.  She heard a scream.  That was I who screamed?  A voice?  I?
An insane neighbor?  For a minute the balance was lost.  "Robert," she
said softly.  "Robert Cunningham."  It was one woman's way of
praying.

When he came to visit she did not tell him about her difficulties; she
was ashamed to tell him she could not tell the difference between a dry
wet mop and a wet dry mop.

He spent most of the visit talking about what they would do as soon as
she left Juniperhill.  He said it would be very soon and while he was
there she believed it would be very soon.  He quoted Dr.  Kik.  He had
written home to say they would be there for Thanksgiving.

When Virginia was called to the Ward door Robert was there talking to
the head nurse.  "Who was that old hen?"  he asked when they had sat
down in the visitors' room.

"That is Miss Davis," said Virginia.  "She is very efficient.  And
she's rather beautiful, don't you think?"

"God, no," said Robert.  "She looks like a hard proposition to me.  I
don't like her."

Lola was entertaining today, too.  You wished she could have had her
plate, but you imagined she wasn't very pretty even with her teeth. The
man she was entertaining was startlingly handsome.  It was strange that
such a good-looking man, obviously years younger than Lola, would fall
in love with an unattractive woman who was married.

"That dark-haired one over there is my friend Lola," Virginia whispered
to Robert.  "That's her beau.  She has a husband, too."

Robert grunted.  He was not interested in Lola.  "The hell with Lola,"
he said.  "Listen, darling, Kik said..."

When visiting time was over Miss Davis came to the door.  She called
Lola and then she called Virginia.  Her voice indicated that Lola and
Virginia had been up to no good.

Robert got up and went over to the nurse.  "Did you call Mrs.
Cunningham?"  he asked.

It was a small thing and yet Virginia was sure that Miss Davis was
harder on her from then on.  And perhaps she imagined that her lot was
made harder by Miss Gold saying, in Miss Davis's presence, that Mr.
Cunningham was a keen looking fella.  Imagination, of course.  But the
shaking Miss Davis gave you the next morning over a mop mix-up was not
imaginary.  You were not injured but you were upset to the point of
forgetting.  Before you had time to think you said for the nurse to
kindly take her hands off.

It seemed unlikely that you could graduate from One.  Clearly Miss
Davis was eager to get rid of such a cotton head but you knew she
planned to speed you through the back door.  So you began on a plot of
your own.

One morning V. Cunningham mentioned to Miss Gold that she had a pain in
her side.  Having had appendicitis she knew just where to point.

Miss Gold was immediately roused.  Was it a sharp pain?  Oh, no, said
Virginia, nothing very bad.  She could stand it.  "Just a little
indigestion.  I wouldn't have mentioned it, but I thought you might
give me a laxative."  Ah, innocence.

Miss Gold gasped.  That might be the very worst thing.  She touched
Virginia's appendectomy scar and Virginia said ooh.  "Sorry, but it's a
little tender there.  You didn't really hurt me."

In a half hour Virginia was sitting in Dr.  Kik's office.

"So you have decided to grow another appendix, Jeannie," he said.

"I had to see you," she said.  "It was the only way I could think
of."

"Oh, you are thinking up a book plot."

"No, you know Miss Davis wouldn't have let me come just for the asking.
I had to have a reason and she never would have accepted the real
reason."

"And that is?"

"Dr.  Kik, I can't stay in One.  I just can't."

The doctor raised his eyebrows.  She could not remember ever having
seen him before and yet she felt as if she knew him intimately.  his
eyebrows went up exactly as she had known they would.

"Cannot, Jeannie?"

"I am not up to it," she said.  "I can't remember where things are.  I
get the mops mixed up."

"You are writing."

She shrugged.  "I can't write away from home."

"But you are."

"I'm typing.  She comes and asks me what's wrong if I stop.  It is
true, isn't it, that you can go home from any ward?"

"Yes," he said, "it is true."

"Then I want to be transferred."

"What about the ladies in One?  Do you become friends with them,
yes?"

"Yes.  They are kind to me.  But it's so hard to become friends, really
friends, here.  I'm always thinking about going home, you know.  It's
like making friends in a depot."

"And what does Mr.  Cunningham say about the transfer?"  He had leaned
back and now he sat with his fingertips pressed together.  Probably he
thought he was looking old.  He's no older than I am, maybe younger.

"Robert doesn't know.  You see, he's so pleased about my being there. I
haven't told him how hard it is.  All those women know so much more
than I do.  They never get the mops mixed up and they always know where
the utility room is.  I never was good at making beds and I simply
can't make one to suit.  I don't fit in, Doctor."  There at last was
the truth.  It wasn't Miss Davis, it was that you were not well enough
for Ward One.  "I am not well enough."

"You do not consider yourself well enough for Ward One?"

"I know I'm not well enough.  I forget what I'm supposed to do.  I
forget where my room is.  It isn't that I don't try.  I do.  I really
do."

"Well," he said, "we shall attend to this."

She got up.  "Thank you so much."

He smiled.  "You no longer have the paininthe side?"

"Only in the head," she said.  "And in the neck."

He burst out laughing; for a foreigner he was very quick.  "Jeannie,"
he said, "you must learn discretion."

"I know.  I don't mean it.  Oh, I do mean it but the chief thing is
that I know I'm not well enough.  She's only a small part of it."

"Thank you for coming to me.  It was brave of you."  He held out his
hand.

When she left the student nurse who had acted as her guide, she passed
the office of Ward One.  Miss Davis looked up from the desk.  Virginia
nodded a formal acknowledgment and went on to the dayroom.  Lola was
there.  Lola was very excited.  Her sweetheart was coming to visit. The
husband had been forced to give up his visiting day to the rival.

"But I thought your sweetheart was here last visiting day," said
Virginia.  She had been beginning to realize that Lola was still quite
sick.

"That?"  Lola gave a scornful laugh.  "That was my husband."

Yes, still quite sick.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

"I can't understand it," said Miss Gold.  "I wish I'd never made that
appointment for you to see him.  But I'm afraid of appendicitis.  I had
a girl friend to die of it."

"You did right," said Virginia.  "You can't take chances with a thing
like that."

"But he said it's nothing to worry about?"

"Yes.  It was just one of those things.  I probably imagined it."

"Well, I certainly hate to see you leave One.  You're so nearly well
and writing every day and all.... But don't pay any attention to me.  I
talk too much.  I'm sure you'll be back with us very soon."

"Um," said Virginia.  "I understand you can go home from any ward,
though."

"Oh, sure, sure.  And I know you'll like Mrs.  Fledderson.  I took my
training under her.  She's so, well, not easy, I guess, but she makes
it seem easy."  Miss Gold closed the box that held Virginia's things.
"Well, we can go now.  I got permission to take you.  I don't get to
see Mrs.  Fledderson often.  Funny, with her right down the hall."

Miss Davis was not in the office when they went past it.  "In the
dayroom," said Miss Gold, as if Virginia had asked where the head nurse
was.

"Nursing here must be awfully hard," said Virginia when they were
outside of the ward.  "I should think you'd rather be in a regular
hospital."

"Well, you see I'm engaged to a man here, a patient, I mean.  We were
engaged before he got sick, I mean.  This way I can kind of keep track
of him."

"I'm sorry," said Virginia.  "I hope he is getting better."

Miss Gold sighed.  "It takes so long.  I mean, for some cases.  He's
not like you.  But he'll get well.  I always knew he would and now even
some of the doctors say so."  She took her key chain in her free hand.
"Here we are."

Ward Two.  It looked like Ward Three; it looked like Ward One.  Anyhow
the hallway and the office.  At the office desk was a small gray-haired
nurse.  She jumped up when she saw Miss Gold and Virginia.  "Goldie,"
she said.  "How'd you get away?  You been fired?"

Miss Gold laughed.  "And that's no joke," she said.  "This is Mrs.
Cunningham, Mrs.  Fledderson."

Virginia started to hand over her candy box, but then she realized that
Mrs.  Fledderson's outstretched hand meant something else.

"I'm real glad to have you with us, Mrs.  Cunningham.  Dr.  Kik has
told me about you."

I would give a pretty to know what he said.  Out in the world you would
say, Nothing bad, I hope; and the other person would simper and say,
Well, now, I'm not saying.  But you keep your mouth shut here. 
Remember you can't trust yourself; you might say something and give
yourself away.

"Goldie, you wait till I take her to the dayroom and then we can have a
little visit...."

"Gee, I can't, Fled.  You know how it is."

"Honestly," said Mrs.  Fledderson.  She turned her eyes up to the
ceiling.  "When I think about some things I about pass out."

She and Miss Gold exchanged glances.  Virginia looked at the floor and
pretended not to know what they were talking about.

"Just wait till I tell you the latest," said Miss Gold.

"Honestly, something ought to be done about it."

"I might get appendicitis," said Miss Gold.  "I just now thought of
that.  It might be an idea.  What do you think, Virginia?"

Virginia felt herself blushing.  "I don't know what you mean," she
said.

Miss Gold laughed.  "Gee, was I dumb.  I just now caught on to
something.  Fled, your new one is a schemer.... Kid, I hand it to you.
It's been tried before, the general idea, I mean, but it's never worked
before.  Fleddie, keep an eye on her or she'll talk her way out of here
before you know it."

"Fine," said Mrs.  Fledderson.

After Miss Gold left them they went to the dayroom.  "Of course it's
nothing so grand as One," said Mrs.  Fledderson, "but we get along.  No
one wants to be at Juniperhill.  I don't much want to be here myself.
But if you've got to stay a while you might as well try to make the
best of it and take it easy while you can.  Dr.  Kik says you write."

"Yes," said Virginia, "but I'd rather not do any here, if it's all
right not to."

"Sure, it's all right not to.  I don't see how you could do

any here anyhow.  Wait till you get home.  Well, this is the parlor.
We have a radio, you hear.  Madge, will you turn that radio down a
little?  You want to split our eardrums?"

The ladies of Two were very friendly.  They were not so well groomed
and bright as the ladies in One, but they seemed more relaxed.  Each
morning there was a big to-do about mopping floors and making beds, but
it was rather fun.  People helped you and you helped them.  Mrs.
Fledderson's idea appeared to be to make the work as light a burden as
possible.  Her ward did not begin to look as neat as Miss Davis'.  It
is the sad truth that ladies anywhere will take advantage.

"Kids," the head nurse might say some morning, "I wish you'd give it
the old business today.  One of the big shots coming through and I
don't want to lose my job."

And that morning the kids would go to town on the mopping and polishing
the next day Mrs.  Fledderson would bring around a box of cookies or
something.

"Everyone hates to leave Two," a lady told Virginia.  "When one of us
is sent to One it's like a funeral."

When Robert came he met Mrs.  Fledderson and then he was reconciled to
the change.  He said Dr.  Kik had explained it to him.  "He thought it
was wonderful of you," he said.

"I just couldn't bear that woman another day," said Virginia, "and I
had to think up some way to skin a cat."

"He says you're almost well.  He says you'll be going to Staff soon."

"Where's that?"

"It's just a group of doctors.  They talk to you a little before you go
home.  That's all."

"It sounds terrible," she said.

"Why, it's just a matter of routine," said Robert.  "Dr.  Kik will be
there and he'll take care of everything.  You promise me you won't
worry."

Virginia smiled.  She was having to use that smile a good deal.  Two,
for all its informal atmosphere, was confusing.  There were things to
remember; you were supposed to remember where your bed was and where
the washroom was and things like that.  The nurses didn't get mad if
you forgot; but you could tell they were surprised.  The ladies of Two
were not as bright as buttons and yet, except for Virginia, they always
knew where their beds were and where the

washroom was.  They remembered the general schedule of the day and
they usually knew what day it was.

Virginia couldn't remember anything but her name.  Often she wondered
how she remembered that.  She forgot what ward she was in; she forgot
Mrs.  Fledderson's name; she forgot the names of her new friends; she
forgot Dr.  Kik's name.  Dr.  Kik did not know this.  She called him
Doctor and he was satisfied.  He said she was coming along beautifully
beautifully.

She went with a group of Two ladies to Oatey.  This was O.T."
Occupational Therapy.  The ladies sat in a circle and sewed and
embroidered.  The teacher gave Virginia a towel with a stamped pattern
for cross-stitch.  She told Virginia how to cross-stitch.  Virginia
knew how, or at any rate she had once known how.  She didn't say so.
You couldn't be sure that it was like riding a bicycle.

But when you started out the skill of your childhood returned and you
cross-stitched every bit as well as you had done when you were seven,
and the teacher praised you so highly that one of the ladies, Betsy,
cried and cried.

And the next time Robert came he knew about that towel.  When you
thought about the things Dr.  Kik noted down you didn't know whether to
laugh or to be terrified.  You thought about him trying to say
cross-stitch, but you didn't dare laugh about Dr.  Kik to Robert.
Robert changed his voice when he said the doctor's name.  Robert simply
worshipped that doctor.

"Mrs.  Fledderson says I can take you to the store for a soda," Robert
said, after he had stopped talking about the famous towel.

"But I don't have any coat," said Virginia, "and you said it's cold
outside."

But here came Mrs.  Fledderson with the green coat and the green hat
with the fur cuff.  "You look like a million dollars in that outfit,"
the nurse said, after Robert had helped you into the coat.

A million dollars.  I would rather look like an ordinary woman.  I
would rather have them say you look well, well in that outfit.  "Why,
it is cold.  It must be winter."

"You ought to have your muff," said Robert anxiously.

"Oh no, it's too nice for here.  I can put my hands in my pockets." She
thrust her hands into the coat pockets and in each pocket was a glove;
in one pocket was a crumpled handkerchief.  "Look what's been in here
all the time," she said.  It was like getting into the pockets of a
dead woman.  The

faint perfume of the handkerchief was like the scent from withered
burial wreaths.  "Maybe I ought to bring your muff next time."

"No, I said it's too nice for here.  Something might happen to it."

"You'll want it when you leave, though."

"You'll come after me, won't you?"

"What do you think?"

"You might bring the muff along that day.  A signal."

"All right.  It won't be long.  Kik said today that you'll be going to
Staff very soon."

Can I ever fake it?  How long can reflex action carry you through?

The store was a little drug store with tables and wire backed chairs
and a soda fountain.  She had always thought of Juniper's store as
being just a storeroom, but it was a real store.  Oh, maybe not
entirely real.  Some of the customers were not real.  You could tell.
You could tell when you were one of the unreal ones.

Robert seated her at a table and then he went to get the sodas.  It was
self-service, he explained.  She sat there, trembling.  Alone, alone,
and some of the people around her were well people.  Were they looking
at her and thinking there is one of the sick ones, there is one of the
people who live here?  I won't let them scare me.  I'll look at them.

She looked around the room and she saw Lola and Lola was sitting with a
little old bald-headed man and grinning like a Cheshire.  She waved at
Virginia.  Virginia waved but not vigorously.  She had a feeling that
Lola's athletic wave must look very strange to the real people who were
here.

Robert said the sodas were good, but Virginia was too self-conscious to
taste the drink.  At the next table an old lady was trying to persuade
a young man not to eat his sundae with his hands; she swiped at him now
and then with a napkin.  At another table two men were having coffee. I
can't tell which is which; maybe they can't tell about me.  She looked
at Robert.  No, no one would ever think he might be the one.  Whereas I
was always rather silly-looking.  It isn't fair.

Robert talked about what was going on in town.  He had been to see
Helene; he told a funny story about one of Helene's radicals.  When he
laughed Virginia knew it had been a funny story and so she laughed too.
"Oh, that Helene," she said.  We are talking just like people.

He told her about a play he had been to.  Afterwards he

was invited to the apartment of one of the cast; he had met so many
people, in these months, that she did not Know.  "It sounds like fun,"
she said.

"But nothing's fun," he said, "when you aren't along.  But you'll be
along very soon, darling."

He told her about their plans, how the family had arranged for them to
stay at home with them until Virginia was well enough.  "... well
enough for a place of our own."  He told about Mag and Ted and the
baby. Virginia listened.  No, she didn't listen.  She put on the face
that a listener wears.  Reflex action.  Slower, Robert, slower.  I
can't follow.  I can't keep up.  I'm not as well as you think.

And when Lola came over to the table and grinned that deplorable
toothless grin.  Only two teeth out but two very important teeth. "I've
worried so much about you thinking my husband was him," she said. "I
wanted to be sure you saw him today."

"I see him," said Virginia.  The little old bald-head over by the door.
"I hope everything is working out."

"It's going to be wonderful," said Lola.  "My husband's going to let me
have a divorce and the children.  So as soon as I get out... But I
mustn't keep my boy-friend waiting."

"I should have introduced you," said Virginia to Robert after Lola had
rushed back to the boy-friend, "but I don't know her last name. Anyway,
things seem different here."

"Yes," said Robert, "they do."

There was another way to look at it.  You had always heard that crazy
people think themselves sane.  Does it follow then that if you think
you are crazy, you are sane?

Dr.  Kik, when she saw him, went on at great rate about how much better
she was; like Robert, he talked too fast for her.  He never seemed
disturbed by her answers and so they must have fitted.  How long could
she continue the pretense?  Or was she mistaken?

The nearest well ladies of Two treated her as if she was one of them.
They told her about the few who were not so well.  They talked a good
deal about going to Staff, about going to One, about going home.  Like
people outside they talked a good deal about themselves.  Virginia had
been no slouch about talking.  While the ladies talked she remembered
that once she had been a talker, but now she sat silent and pretended
to listen, pretended to understand.  The few

necessary responses made her feel as if she had been climbing
mountains "You're so sympathetic," said one lady.  "I can tell you
everything and you understand what I mean."

And Virginia wouldn't know if this lady was just starting on everything
or just finishing; she would not know how long she had been sitting
with the lady; it made no difference to the lady but it made a
difference to V. Cunningham.

Wise people say I am almost ready to go home.  If I am going to be this
way the rest of my life I would rather be dead.  But that is not the
choice.

What you heard about Staff was not reassuring.  All of the ladies were
scared of Staff; quite a few of them had been there once or twice and
they shuddered when they spoke of their experiences.  Virginia tried to
listen, to pick up pointers, but all she picked up was the terror.

As the days ran faster she moved in a thickening fog and Staff came
closer.

Mrs.  Fledderson rounded up the candidates and gave them a cheery
send-off.  She acted as if they were going to a party.  She laid it on
a little too thick and the ladies giggled nervously.

"You're my honor students," said Mrs.  Fledderson.  "Go in and pitch.
You're the first team."  A muscle in her face twitched and her smile
might have been built by an undertaker.

An assistant nurse took them away.  Silently they marched down the
corridor to a little room where the nurse said they would wait.  The
ladies sat in a row on folding chairs.  Now and then the nurse went out
to the hall.  She seemed uncertain about the procedure and her manner
destroyed any remnant of confidence Virginia's reflex might have
retained.

At last the nurse called out a name.  There was a smothered laugh, or
was it a sob, and then one lady got up and went out.  After a long time
she came back.  "They don't tell you anything," she said.  "I don't
know.  They don't tell you anything.  They just write things.  Every
time you open your mouth they write something down."

"Now, now," said the nurse, "don't get the ladies upset."

Another lady was called.

This went on for a long time.

Finally Virginia was called.  She got up.  She had on her glasses but
she couldn't see.  She stumbled after the nurse.  Going through the
door she struck one of her shoulders against the door frame.

The nurse took her to a room where six or eight or maybe

six or seven people sat.  They sat facing an empty chair.  She looked
for Dr.  Kik but she could not see him.

Someone told her to sit down.  The only vacant chair was the one facing
the audience.

"Now, Mrs.  Cunningham," said a voice that was all wrong, "just make
yourself comfortable.  We want to ask you a few questions."  The man
was standing near her now.  It wasn't Dr.  Kik.  It was a short fat man
with a harsh voice.

He asked her her name.  He was holding a paper and she was sure her
name was on that paper.  "Virginia Stuart Cunningham," she said.

Her vision had cleared a little and she saw that the people in the
audience had papers and pencils.  When she spoke they used their
pencils.  Dr.  Kik was not there.  There were two women and the rest
were men but none of them was Dr.  Kik.

The man asked her where she had been born and when.  Maybe I can get
through it without my own doctor.

"Where were you living when you became ill?"

"New York," she said.

"Where in New York?"

"New York City."

"I mean, where in New York City?"

"Manhattan," she said.

"Yes?"

"Yes."

"Mrs.  Cunningham, what was your address in New York?"

I knew all that time what you meant.  "I don't know."  The audience
wrote intently.

"Come now, you know your own address.  Just think a moment."

"I've forgotten it," she said.  "I never could remember figures."

"What street did you live on?"

"I can't remember.  We lived on Waverly and we lived on Ninth and on
Tenth and I think there was another one, not Bleecker, but another one.
Maybe Christopher."  No, that's Helene.

"Is your husband still occupying your apartment?"

"Of course."

"You are sure of this?"

"No, but I think he would have said something if he had moved."

The audience wrote on the papers.

"Your husband has been here to see you?"  asked the little man.

"Yes."

"How often does he come?"

"As often as the rule allows."

"How often is that?"

She looked at him in surprise.  "Why, don't you know?"

There was a sound from the audience; the little man turned around for a
moment.  "Mrs.  Cunningham," he said crossly, as if irritated by her
getting a laugh he should have had, "I know.  I know all about it.  I
am simply trying to find out if you know."

"I can't see what difference it makes.  Would you change the rule?"

"How often are you allowed to have visitors, Mrs.  Cunningham?  Will
you please answer the questions?  It will make it easier for all of
us."

"Once every two weeks, that is, my husband is allowed to come once
every two weeks.  I wouldn't know about other visitors."

"What is your husband's occupation?"

"He's an auditor."

"Yes?"

"Yes."

"I mean, go on."

Why don't you say what you mean, you old fool?  "Go on about what?"

"Please pay attention.  Tell me about your husband's occupation."

"I couldn't possibly.  I don't understand it at all."

The little man's face was getting red.  Was he too warm?  The room
didn't seem warm to Virginia.

"By whom is he employed?"

"The Alden Hotels."

"Alden Hotels?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Why, yes," she said.  "The Alden Hotels.  Maybe you've never heard of
them.  It's a rather small chain.  He audits for their New York
hotels."

"Are you sure your husband does not work for the Kraft Hotels?"

"He works for the Alden Hotels."

The audience rustled its papers.

"Mrs.  Cunningham, would you recognize your husband's handwriting?"

"Of course."

"Will you look at this?"  He held his paper out for her to look.  He
pointed to a line written in Robert's hand.  "What do you see?"

"I see that he has written that his employer is the Kraft Hotels,
Incorporated."

"And you still insist that he is employed by a chain called Alden?"

"Of course not.  If he says Kraft, it is Kraft.  Obviously I was
mistaken.  I'm sorry."  She knew she had not been mistaken.  Somehow
they had got Robert to write the wrong name.  She felt very ill.  She
thought she was going to faint.  The little man was waggling a finger
close to her nose.

"I understand you were distressed to be without your glasses," he
said.

"I am very nearsighted."

"Yes?"

This meant give further information.  "Minus five point seven five
minus point twenty-five... five.  That's the right.  Minus five
point...."

"What are you talking about?"

"I thought you wanted my prescription."

"That will not be necessary.  Have you had your lenses changed
recently?"

"Not for several years."

"How do you explain the fact that you remember a rather involved and
lengthy prescription when you can't remember your home address?"

She hated this man.  "There is nothing mysterious about it," she said.
"You don't expect to forget your address and so you make no effort to
memorize it."

"And you made an effort to memorize your prescription?"

"Yes.  I've always had a horror of losing my glasses away from home,
where I can get a duplicate pair."

"Doesn't your address seem important to you?"

"I don't suppose I'll have to find my way back there alone."

One of the women in the audience nudged the man who was sitting next to
her.  The session might be going well for the audience but it was going
very badly for the patient and for the examiner.  His face was nearing
purple now.  "Mrs.  Cunningham," he said, "a friendly attitude will get
us along more rapidly.  Now, to get back to Mr.  Cunningham, who is
employed by Kraft Hotels, Incorporated.  You are certain that he is
residing in your former apartment?"

"I was," she said.  "Of course now you have made it obvious that he
isn't."

The little man shook his finger again.  He was shaking it so close to
her face that in a moment he would be striking her.

CHAPTER NINE.

"Do you know Mrs.  Fledderson?"  Virginia asked the woman who was
standing next to her.

"Sure," said the woman.  "Say, what do you take me for?"

Virginia looked around the dayroom.  Perhaps this was Two.  It didn't
look the same, though.  They were always changing things at Juniper but
now they seemed to have changed the ladies.

I was in Two.  I and several other patients started out to go to Staff
but something happened and I never got there.

A strange nurse came into the dayroom and Virginia got up.  "Not now,"
said the nurse.  "Wait till I call the Sorting Ladies."  "Could I speak
to Mrs.  Fledderson?"

"I'm afraid not.  She's in Two, you know."

Virginia sat down again.

Later the nurse came back.  "Sorting Ladies," she called.

A half dozen women went over to her.  Virginia watched them and
wondered what Sorting Ladies were.  The nurse looked at them and then
she looked over at Virginia.  "Virginia!"  she said.

Virginia got up and went over to her.

"You are taking Virginia with you this morning," said the nurse.
"Valerie, you introduce her to Miss Rowe."

"Yes, Miss Torrel," said one of the ladies.

"Virginia, you do what Miss Rowe tells you."

"Yes, Miss Torrel," said Virginia.  I used to know a boy named that.  I
wonder if she's any relation.  He wasn't very cute either.

"All right, ladies.  Here is Miss Jenkins."

Miss Jenkins was a student nurse.  She didn't have her cap yet and so
Virginia paid very little attention to her.

"All right, ladies," said Miss Jenkins.

They went out into the hall.  Virginia looked back and saw that the
door said Ward Five.  What had happened to Two?  It had to be
somewhere; Miss Torrel had said Mrs.  Fledderson

was there.  "I don't belong here.  I'm in the wrong place."

"You mustn't talk," said the lady who was Valerie.  "We're going to the
sorting room.  You have to be good or you won't get to go again."

"What happened to Two?"

"Ladies," said Miss Jenkins uncertainly, "you shouldn't ought to talk
in the halls."

They went down several flights of stairs.  The stairs seemed familiar
but then all very plain things are alike.  It was just a concrete and
steel stairway.  Very fireproof.  When they passed a window Virginia
went as slowly as she dared.  She looked out and saw that it was a dull
gray day.

They went down into the basement and then through another hall.  There
were lights in the hall but there were deep shadows.  Valerie walked
along as if nothing could leap out from the shadows.

They went into a room that had long tables stacked with white stuff.

"Good morning, Miss Rowe," said Miss Jenkins.

"Good morning, Miss Jenkins," said a large woman in a light-blue house
dress.  "Good morning, ladies."

"I have a new one for you today," said Miss Jenkins.

Valerie pulled Virginia forward.  "This is Virginia," she said.  "Miss
Torrel said to tell you."

"Hello, Virginia," said Miss Rowe.

"How do you do," said Virginia.

"Connie," said Miss Rowe to the tall girl who stood beside her, "here
is a new one for you."

"Christ," said Connie.

"No, Connie," said Miss Rowe.  "The more hands, the lighter the
work.... All right, ladies, let's get busy."

The ladies scattered around the tables and began to throw things.
Connie looked at Virginia.  "I hope you can count to ten," she said.
She swept her hair out of her eyes.  As soon as she took her hand away
the pale-brown hair fell back.  Virginia wondered if she had just
washed it and was letting it dry.  It was very long fine straight hair
and it hung free from restraint other than the continual sweeping of
the girl's hands.  "We stack things into piles of ten.  You have to get
it right.  Otherwise some wards would be without and some with too
much."

"I see," said Virginia.

"You might as well start here," said Connie.  She pushed her hair away
and pointed to the nearest table.  "There are nightgowns, pillowcases
and sheets.  You sort them into piles

of ten.  Ten nightgowns, ten pillowcases, ten sheets..  you get it?"

"Yes," said Virginia.  "Three different piles."

"Four," said Connie.  "Four, for God's sake."

"You said nightgowns and sheets and pillowcases.  Are some of the
sheets double and some single?"

"Nightgowns, slips, pillowcases and sheets."

"Would you show me which are pillowslips and which are pillowcases?  I
don't know the difference."

"Holy Mary," said Connie.  "Slips.  Underwear.  Nightgowns without
sleeves."

"I beg your pardon."

"When you've finished this table come and tell me.  I'll come and check
your work.  I'm the checker."

"I see," said Virginia.

She stood at the table and sorted out the linen.  Linen in a manner of
speaking.  When she finished she went to Connie and said she was
through.  Connie came back to the table with her and flipped through
the stacks.  The checker found that almost every pile was either one
short or one long perhaps two.  "You can't make mistakes like this in a
hospital," she said in the manner of an old doctor to a dumb interne.

Virginia counted the piles over and over but Connie could always find
mistakes.  Counting this stuff was difficult because it was already
folded.  It was almost impossible to tell the things apart; they were
made from the same material.  But if you unfolded something to try to
discover what it was, Connie rushed over to you and said what the hell
were you doing.  "Do you think we fold this stuff up just for you to
unfold?"  she said.  In a twinkling she straightened out the mess
Virginia had got into.  "It just takes a little concentration," she
said as she swept her hair out of her eyes.

Connie looked to be around twenty.  She was wearing a pretty dirndl of
hand-blocked linen, real linen, and her blouse was of sheer batiste
edged with Irish crochet.

When Miss Jenkins came back she rounded up the ladies and took them
back upstairs.  They went to a washroom that was somewhere in back of
the door that said Ward Five and then it was time to go to dinner.  In
the dining room Virginia sat beside Valerie and Valerie talked to her
the way a professional person talks to a colleague.  Valerie was very
fond of her job in the sorting room.  She said Miss Rowe was wonderful
and that Connie was beautiful and didn't she have the most beautiful
clothes.

"Who is she?"  asked Virginia.  "Is she a nurse?"

Valerie smiled.  She had a front tooth out and one eye tooth out.  She
was a heavy set woman of about forty and there were streaks of gray in
her untidy dark hair.  "She fools you, doesn't she?  She's no nurse.
She's sick.  She's awful sick.  She's been in one hospital after
another ever since she was a child.  Her folks are rich.  Her father
teaches in a college."

"For goodness' sakes," said Virginia.

"She isn't ever going to get well," said Valerie, in the pleased tone
that normal women use when discussing hopeless ailments.  "She's got a
drag, though.  You aren't supposed to be in this building if you are
that sick; you aren't supposed to be here unless you are for sure going
to get well.  She doesn't even live in a ward."

"She doesn't?"

"No.  She and Miss Rowe have a room somewhere in the building.  Miss
Rowe isn't a nurse exactly, but she's a housekeeper or something.  I
don't know.  But Connie is awfully sick.  Gee, she sure can light into
you if you make a mistake.  But she sure can tell the dirty stories
when she's feeling good.  She'll start in again after you've been with
us for a while.  She never likes the new ones."

"That's something.  I thought it was just me."

"She socked me a couple of times when I was new."

"How awful!"

"It's nothing," said Valerie.  "I could kill her easy.  But if she
socks you, just remember not to sock her back.  She's got a big drag. I
socked her back the first time and there was an awful stink.  I almost
got sent back to tubs."

"Do some of the ladies have to do the washing?"  asked Virginia. "Don't
they have machines for heavy stuff?"

"Why, I suppose so," said Valerie.  "Sure, Why?"

"You said something about tubs."

Valerie stared at her and then she laughed.  "Say," she said, "you
don't know much, do you?"  She turned to the lady who was sitting on
the other side of her.  "Esther," she said, "here's a good one.
Virginia thinks tubs means laundry."

Esther craned her neck and looked at Virginia.  "She does?"

"I guess she hasn't had much experience," said Valerie.

"Kid, I was in tubs for weeks and weeks."

"Me too," said Esther.

"She doesn't know what we're talking about," said Valerie.  "Look at
her."

Esther looked at her.  "I guess she doesn't"

"Sure, she doesn't know anything.  Do you, kid?"

"I guess not," said Virginia.

Valerie chuckled.  "I bet you don't even know what shock is."

A shiver ran through Virginia.  "Yes," she said.  "I know what shock
is."

"Honest?"

"Yes.  It's a little room and there's a red glass eye and they put some
paste on your head...."

"She knows," said Esther.  "Don't talk about it.  It makes me sick to
my stomach."

"Well, I can't understand it," said Valerie.  "Knowing about shock and
not knowing about tubs."

"Every case is different," said Esther profoundly.

"But shock before tubs, Esther.  I don't get it.  I had tubs and then I
had shock."

"Me too," said Esther.  She looked suspiciously at Virginia.  "I bet
she did too."

"I bet so too," said Valerie.  "It stands to reason."

Dessert was finished.  They had had a sort of bread pudding made of
stale cake and a thin sweetish gray sauce.  There were lumps of
cornstarch in the sauce.

The ladies went back to the washroom.  Some of the ladies smoked.
Virginia looked in her box but she had no cigarettes.  She didn't care
one way or another.

They hung around in the dayroom for a half an hour and then Miss Torrel
said Sorting Ladies.  Along toward the end of the afternoon Connie told
a durty joke.

Virginia was very lucky to get in with Valerie.  For a time she did not
realize this.  In some ways she reacted to things the way she had
reacted to reality.  In life you got into the habit of taking good
things for granted.  You had always had friends.  You had never known
how it felt to be left out and so you would never have thought about
your present good luck if Esther hadn't told you.  "You're lucky to get
in with Val," said Esther.  "She doesn't take up with everyone.  She's
hardly sick at all."

"I know," said Virginia.  "I would say she isn't a bit."

"It's sex," said Esther.  "It's too bad they can't do something about
it.  My own trouble is nothing in that line of course."

"Of course," said Virginia.

"She's over-sexed," said Esther, "but don't you ever tell

ladies were looking enviously at her and Esther and Valerie.  We are
the upper Crust of Ward Five.  And Val's the Ring Leader.

Valerie deserved to be Ring Leader.  She was the only Ward Five lady
who smiled regularly.  The nurses depended on her and gave her little
responsibilities.  When a nurse went out of the room she left Valerie
in charge.  The ladies always did what Valerie said.  One lady
explained to Virginia that Valerie really was a nurse just fixed to
look like a patient.  Virginia gave this possibility serious
consideration.  It might be.  Valerie might be a sort of spy.  It
didn't seem possible, but you knew a boy back home who gave the
impression of being the sweetest boy alive and he was a labor spy.  His
family bragged about how he dressed up like a laborer and mixed with
the common people.  They thought him a regular Mr.  Mata Hari saving
the world from the CIO.

So Valerie might be a spy.  So Virginia always tried to put her best
foot forward when she was with Valerie.  She did wonder, though, if a
spy wouldn't have pretended a little illness.  There simply was nothing
wrong with Valerie.  Esther, the next nearest well patient in Five, had
periods of being very queer.  There were times when Esther was ready to
slaughter anyone who looked at her.  Virginia wished they would take
the woman away when she had one of her spells, but Valerie never
minded.  "Just keep clear of Esther today," she would say nonchalantly.
"She's not feeling so good."

And Valerie was a great help to Virginia in the sorting room.  When
Mrs.  Rowe and Connie were occupied elsewhere, Valerie would come over
and straighten out Virginia's tangle.  Then Mrs.  Rowe and Connie would
say, "See, you can do it."  Virginia never once got the sorting done
properly by herself, not even once.

"You'll get onto it," Valerie would say.  "Some people just haven't got
that kind of mind, I guess.  Take me.  I was always a whiz at
housework.  That's why I got so sick of teaching school.  I always
wanted to keep house."

"I didn't know you were a teacher."

"Yeah.  Primary.  I didn't mind the kids, but the mothers got me down.
Always this and that, this and that.  I keep telling Dr.  Kik I liked
the kids and that the mothers were the ones..."

"Is Dr.  Kik your doctor?"  Virginia hadn't thought about him being
anyone else's doctor, but of course you couldn't be his only patient.
"He's mine, too."

"I don't believe it," said Valerie.

"Well, he is."

"You never said so."

"You never asked me."

"What does your doctor look like?"

"Like Dr.  Kik."

"Describe him."

How different Valerie was looking; you were almost afraid of her.
"Well," said Virginia, "he's got light hair.  I think his eyes are
blue.  I don't know for sure.  I suppose they are."

"Suppose!"  said Valerie.  "They're as blue as blue."

"Yes, he would look funny with brown."

"Go on."

"Val, you know what he looks like.  If he's your doctor..."

"So you think he isn't my doctor?"

Virginia moved a little away from her friend.  There was no nurse in
the washroom just now.  "Of course I think he's your doctor.  Why
shouldn't I?  Goodness, you don't suppose I think I'm the only patient
he has, do you?"

"I bet you think you're his favorite."

"Don't be silly."

"I know," said Valerie.  "Just because I've only been to Normal you
think he's more interested in you."

"No, Valerie.  I don't.  I hardly ever see him."

"Huh," said Valerie, "I bet you're in love with him."

Virginia had to laugh at this.  "Why, Val, what a thing to say.  What
would my husband think?"

"Some women aren't satisfied with one man," said Valerie.  "Red-haired
women," she added darkly.

"Look," said Virginia.  "I'm in love with my husband.  It's a bit thick
for you to start talking this way just because my hair happens to be
slightly auburn."

"Slightly!"  said Valerie.

"I've seen redder," said Virginia.

"Where?"  said Valerie.  "Just tell me where."

This happened shortly after dinner.  That afternoon Valerie didn't come
to sort the stacks for Virginia and that evening at supper she sat on
the other side of Esther.  In the washroom Esther told Virginia she
never should have let Valerie know she had a crush on Dr.  Kik.  "It
was mean of you to let her know," she said.

"I haven't got any crush on any doctor," said Virginia.

"You better lay off Kik if you don't want to get into trouble with
Val," said Esther.  "Don't say I didn't warn you.

I don't think it was very nice of you to get her so upset.  She's been
fine for weeks and then you come along and talk about taking her man
away from her."

"I won't bother to get mad about this," said Virginia.  "It's too
silly."

"If they take Val back to tubs you'll know whose fault it is," said
Esther.  "I suppose you'll be glad."

And now Valerie came charging over to them.  "Talking behind my back,"
she screamed at Virginia.  "I'll report you, you little two-timer. I'll
tell him and then you'll be sorry."

"Watch out," said Esther.  "Miss Torrel's just outside in the hall."

"I'll tell her too.  You just see.  You can't get away with that stuff,
Virginia Cunningham Bitch."

"Valerie," begged Esther.  She caught hold of the distraught woman's
shoulders.  Esther wasn't so large a woman as Valerie, but she was
younger; it looked as if it would be a fair match.

The ladies in the washroom stood at a safe distance and watched.

Virginia had already prepared herself for the night and so she slipped
out of the washroom.  In the hall she met Miss Torrel.

"What's going on in there?"  asked the nurse.

"An argument, I guess," said Virginia.

The nurse rushed into the washroom and Virginia, no longer being a
medication lady, went quietly to bed.

The next morning Esther appeared with a bruised eye, and a long scratch
on one cheek.  The scratch had been treated with iodine and looked
pretty bad.  "I guess they took Val away to tubs," she said to
Virginia.  "Serves her right.  Scratching me like that.  Last time she
put on her act they took her away for a couple of days but this time I
hope they'll keep her till I go home.  She just puts it on to get more
attention from that man.  She's no more sick than I am.  She just puts
it on so he'll palaver over her.  Baloney."

Virginia was glad Esther didn't blame her for Valerie's relapse, but
all the same she was blue about it.  Without Val the sorting was
impossible.  Miss Rowe and Connie were very cross.  They said with two
new ones, Virginia and the one who was replacing Valerie, they didn't
know how they would ever get anything done.

Connie, who for days had been telling dirty jokes, never opened her
mouth except to scold a worker.  Miss Rowe

said maybe Virginia would do better in the sewing room and when Robert
came Virginia had to tell him that she had flunked out of sorting.

But before he came a strange thing happened.  It happened the afternoon
before his visiting day.  Virginia had been relieved of her work in the
sorting room and she was spending a day on the ward.  Miss Torrel had
said there was no point in starting in the sewing room until after
visiting day.  And so Virginia was sitting in the dayroom, thinking
about nothing much when all of a sudden there was a man standing in
front of her.  He had not come into the room.  "Mrs.  Cunningham," he
said.  He was a short fat man.

She looked for Miss Torrel, but there was no nurse in the dayroom.  The
other patients were way off at the other end.  "Yes?"  she said.  How
had he escaped from his own quarters?  He must have come in through one
of the windows.  I was looking right at the door and I never saw him
come in.  But he's too fat to get through the window.  Why don't those
fool women do something?  Call a nurse!

"Mrs.  Cunningham," said the little man, "just why did you bite me?"

"Bite you--why--I wouldn't bite you."

"You bit me," he said.

How tired I am of this place.  First they accuse me of being in love
with someone who isn't Robert and then they come around and say I bite
them.  "No one would want to bite you," she said.  "You are a very nice
person, I'm sure."  Get his mind off violence.  "If you would just lose
a little weight..."  That should do it.  Fat people like to talk about
how they eat practically nothing.

The little man looked hard at her.  I never should have said that. He's
touchy on the subject.  "I didn't mean it critically," she explained. 
"Personally, I think a little extra weight is very becoming.  But they
do say that when a person gets older..."

He turned from her and went to the other end of the room.  He began to
talk to some of the other ladies.  Virginia got out of her chair and
crouched behind it.  If she saw someone being hurt she would go help
them, but in the meantime it was just as well to have the chair in
front of you.  I can hold him off quite a long time.  Like an animal
trainer.

It wasn't long before Miss Torrel came and took the little man away.
Until now Virginia hadn't given the woman credit for being much but now
when Miss Torrel led the man away quietly Virginia knew the nurse was
all right.

She sat down in the chair.  Her knees were weak and her hands were
covered with perspiration.  I won't tell Robert about this.  He has
enough on his mind without having to worry about the way they let their
dangerous male patients get into the women's building.  I'll tell him
about the sorting room fiasco.  I'll have to because Kik already will
have told him anyhow.  I hope Dr.  Kik knows how much nightgowns and
slips and pillowcases and sheets look alike when they are all made from
the same goods and all folded up.

"And you see, Robert, by the time you've decided what one thing is you
forget what your count was for that pile."

"Darling," said Robert, "don't think about it.  It wasn't important."

"But it was.  They were furious."

"No," said Robert.  "No, they weren't.  It's just occupational therapy,
something to make the time pass.  You mustn't get the idea it's
anything serious."

"Well," said Virginia, "it is interesting to me that most of their
occupational therapy gets work done that they would have to hire out
otherwise."

Robert laughed.  "Cynical, aren't you?"

They were sitting in the visitors' room.  Only one other Ward Five lady
was entertaining today; it was almost like being alone together. Robert
had brought a box of candy and some fruit and they could smoke in here.
When he started to light a cigarette for her Virginia asked if he
minded letting her to do it.  "Let me have the matches."

He handed her the folder.

"First time I've done this in a long time," she said.  After she had
lighted her cigarette she considered asking him to let her keep the
matches.  But it wouldn't do any good.  He wouldn't let me keep them.

Robert was different today.  He was acting as if she had just had a
serious operation that hadn't been quite successful.  He was so gentle
that she felt as if she was dying.  Maybe he's lost his job.  I
wouldn't expect that to worry him much, though.

After a while he asked if she would like to take a little walk.  It was
a bad day out, he said, cold and raw, but they might go to the store
for a cup of coffee; it wasn't far.

They were going toward the store when Virginia saw the

fat little man.  He was approaching them.  He was walking rapidly.
"Oh, Robert," she said.  There was no time for further warning.

"Good afternoon, Doctor," said Robert.

The little man grunted.  He tipped his hat.  He passed them as if in a
great hurry.

"I went to see him after that staff meeting," said Robert.  "After Kik
told me what happened."

"What did you say, dear?  I was thinking about that terrible little
man.  I wasn't going to tell you but he..."

"Kik told me.  Darling, we all owe you an apology.  It's my fault,
really, but I didn't think to tell you.  I didn't want to worry you and
anyhow I didn't see that it made any difference.  The damn fool. 
Making such an issue of it.  If Kik had been there..."

Of course when you are ill you don't expect to understand what well
people say.  Virginia walked along and wondered what Robert was talking
about.  She kept thinking how funny it was that he had called that
little man Doctor.  Of course he assumed that any man loose around here
was a doctor.

They went into the store.  Robert seated her and then went to the
fountain to give their orders.  When he came back she said it was
terrible the way she was always starving when he was visiting her.  "I
act as if I can't think about anything but food."

"It would have been different if Kik had been there," said Robert.  "He
had to go out of town.  If I'd known it I would have done something.  I
don't know why he didn't have you wait.  Sometimes I... No, he's a
wonderful doctor.  Everyone says so.  And he was really sick about it.
Not that that helps matters so much.  The fat was in the fire.  Of
course he explained everything to Curtis and Curtis was decent about
it.  I mean, he said he was sorry he hadn't known I hadn't told you
about going with Kraft.  It was while you were in the other hospital.
Kraft bought out the Alden chain."

"Other hospital?"

"The one in town.  I never knew they'd be asking you things like that.
Well, Curtis apologized."

"Curtis?"

"He's head of Women's Reception," said Robert.  "That little guy we
just now passed."

Carefully Virginia set her coffee down.  No matter how startled I am, I
do not spill things.  "I thought he was a patient."

Robert laughed.  "I'd like to tell him that.  The numskull.  And I
told him I hadn't said anything to you about giving up the apartment. 
I don't know why he had to go into that.  I didn't want you to think
about it.  I hope it hasn't worried you."

"No, it hasn't," she said.  "All I've been worrying about is counting
to ten."

"You take things too seriously."

"Well, I'll tell you one thing, Robert.  That Dr.  Curtis may be a
doctor and all that, but he's definitely queer.  He came into our ward
yesterday and asked me why I bit him.  What do you think of that?  I
think they better put him in those tubs they are always talking
about."

Robert put sugar into his coffee.  He had already put a sickening
amount into it.  When he wasn't sure if he had sugared it he didn't try
it to see; he put in more.

Her joke fell flat.  "I suppose they can't help it," she said.  Yes,
the joke was in poor taste.  "Being around sick people all the time. 
Just the same I think he's too fat."

"Kik smoothed it over all right," said Robert.  "He said it didn't have
anything to do with them deciding you should stay a little longer."

"I knew I hadn't passed," she said.  She looked across the room and saw
a girl she recognized.  She did not remember where she had seen the
girl, but she had known her somewhere in the hospital.  The girl was
rouging her nose.  It could happen to anyone in an absent-minded mood,
anyone with a double compact.  Virginia shook her head and pointed to
her nose, but the girl continued to use the rouge.  Then she put the
compact away and she and the man she was with got up and left the
store.  "Why didn't that man tell her?"

"Tell her what?"

"Tell that girl she had rouged her nose.  Didn't you notice?"

"Yes," said Robert.  "But, look, honey, I was just thinking... It might
be a good idea to be nice to Curtis if you ever see him again.  I think
he's kind of a grouch."

"I tell you he's nuts," she said.  "Saying I bit him!"  She looked at
Robert, but he was avoiding her eyes.  "Robert!  I didn't, did I?"

He stirred his coffee.  If he put more sugar in it!  "Well," he said,
"I guess you did.  Anyhow, that's the story."

"But when?"

"When he was asking questions, I guess."

She sat back and thought.  I remember a little.  "I remember

that he was always wagging his finger in front of my face."

"He had no business asking you those things.  Heckling you.  The old
fool.  Kik as much as came right out and said he's an old fool."

"Did I bite his finger?"

"It's over now.  It doesn't make any difference."

"I can't help laughing," she said.  "Excuse me.  What did Dr.  Kik
say?"

"Well, he said he'd often wanted to do more than bite the old
buzzard.... But look, Virginia, Curtis is over Kik.  Remember that.
Next time you want to bite someone, darling, don't make it such a big
shot."

She stopped laughing.  "I know it isn't funny," she said.  "It isn't
like me to go around biting people."

"Forget it."

"I wish I could remember it," she said.  She ate the last of her
sandwich and Robert said they had better be getting back.  He had
returned her to the ward and gone away before she remembered that she
had not asked him where he was living.  It was odd not to know where
your husband was living.

I must have him write the address down for me.  I'll take a pony along
the next time I go to Staff.  I'll hide it in my handkerchief.... The
next morning she asked Esther about Dr.  Curtis and Esther said he was
a swell guy.  "He gave me a candy bar once," she said.  "Say, Miss
Torrel says you're going to sewing with us today."

"Yes," said Virginia.

"Swell."

"Have you heard anything about Valerie?"

"Don't mention that woman to me," said Esther.  "I hope she's in
pack."

"Your scratch is almost gone."

"It's no fault of hers.  She tried to kill me.  I hope she's in pack.
There's two things I don't like about this place and one is that
Valerie and the other is that Valerie."  Esther threw back her head and
laughed.

In the washroom a lady named Rosabelle came up and whispered to
Virginia to watch out for Esther.  "I heard her laughing in the dining
room," said Rosabelle, "and I thought I better warn you.  When she
laughs that way it means she's going to have one of her bad spells."

"Thank you," said Virginia.  "I'll be careful."  "I'll read your
palm," said Rosabelle.  "Sometime I'll read your palm and tell you the
rest."

When she was asked if she had ever used a sewing machine Virginia made
the mistake of saying yes.  "But not for a long time," she said.

The woman who was in charge said that didn't matter.  Virginia waited
for her to say it was like riding a bicycle.  The woman said it.  She
added that the sewing was simple.  She gave Virginia a stack of
bathrobes and a lot of little white squares of cotton material.
"Labels," she said.  "All you do is turn the edges under.  No basting.
Just sew them on the robes.  Nothing to it."

Some sewing machines start forward; some start backward.  The machine
Virginia was assigned started forward when you pushed backward and
backward when you pushed forward.  It was one of the bobbin-eating
type.  The bobbin was always empty.  It took you ages to refill the
bobbin and then you couldn't make it stay in the machine.

Virginia's first day, also her last day, in the sewing room was very
difficult.

After that she stayed on the ward.  She helped out with the ward chores
and then sat around and talked with the other ward-bound ladies.  Or
just sat around.  Except for Florence, none of these ladies was very
interesting.  Florence was the one who had charge of the radio.  She
would not permit anyone else to go near it.  She had made a rule that
only classical music could be played in Ward Five.  Virginia would have
liked to discuss music with Florence but Florence was friendly only
with the Great Masters.  She stood on guard at the radio and tapped her
foot.  She stood with her arms folded until someone came near and then
she turned into an effective windmill.

The routine of Ward Five was similar to what you had known in other
wards.  You bathed, that is, you were permitted to share a shower twice
a week.  Once a week you were fine-combed and once a week you could put
in a store order.  If you had credit at the store.  You had three,
meals a day.  At breakfast there always was a bowl of glutinous cereal.
At dinner there was a bowl of pale-brown stew, also sticky.  At supper
there was another sort of stew, but without the shreds of meat
sometimes found in the noon mixture.  The desserts

were cottage puddings and custards and sometimes jello; on Sunday
there was ice cream.

You assumed that the food was nutritious; there could be no other
reason for serving it.

You were weighed once a week.  After dinner.  If you forgot what day
was weighing day you could tell by the meal.  Weighing-day dinner was
always the biggest of the week.  Virginia ate more bread and drank more
water on that day.  Dr.  Kik and Robert had said she must gain
weight.

One weighing day Esther, who had recovered from her bad spell, assisted
greatly by putting one of her feet on the scales.  Virginia weighed
five more pounds that day and the nurse was delighted.  It was bad the
next week, though, when Esther was beginning on another tantrum and you
had no help.

Miss Torrel took store orders for the stay-at-home ladies in the
afternoon when the other patients were still off at work.  Virginia
went to the office to give her order late one afternoon and just as she
started to say what she wanted, Miss Torrel was called away.  "Just a
minute," she said to Virginia.  "I'll be right back."

After waiting at the desk a while Virginia began to walk around.  The
office had a door she had noticed before.  She tried the knob, as a
matter of routine, and was delighted to find that the door was not
locked.  There could be no harm in peeking.  Probably just a coat
closet.

She pushed the door open.  It was a little toilet or, as they would say
in Evanston and other centers of culture, a powder room.  The porcelain
was plain white, however, and there were no fishes painted on the
walls.  Virginia stepped in to look more closely.  Near the toilet was
a roll of paper on a chromium fixture and here were a half dozen towels
on the rack beside the washbowl.  A very clean piece of soap lay in the
soap indentation.  It had a pleasant woodsy scent.

She had put the soap back when she heard someone enter the office and
so she quietly pulled the toilet door shut.  A moment later someone
said her name.  She pushed the bolt cautiously.  The door locked
easily.

It had been a long time since she had been alone.  She lowered the
toilet lid and sat down.  The toilet lid had no muff of cotton fur, but
when you had not seen a frame or a lid in so many months you did not
ask for the muff.  I'll sit here a few minutes and enjoy being alone.
When Miss Torrel leaves the office I'll go back to the dayroom.

"She was here a minute ago," she heard Miss Torrel say.

"Well," said another voice, "she's not in the dayroom."

"Look in the dorms, will you?  Under the beds."

As if I would get under a bed!  What do they take me for?

The office was quiet for some minutes and then Miss Anderson came back
and said she had looked high and low.  "She isn't anywhere on the ward,
Miss Torrel."

"Nonsense," said Miss Torrel.  "Of course she is.  Go find her."

Virginia leaned on the washbowl.  It wasn't very comfortable.  She took
the towels from the rack and folded them into a pillow and then she lay
down on the floor.  She was used to lying or sitting on a floor.  None
of the day rooms she had been in so far had had enough chairs to go
around and so the ladies had used the floor a good deal.  Except in
that hoity-toity One.

She was awakened by Miss Torrel's voice.  "... in here and when I came
back she was gone.  She can't have got out of the ward, Miss Anderson.
You know that."

"Well, I can't find her.  I give up."

"I'll find her," said Miss Torrel.  "I know all their tricks."

There was silence again and Virginia went back to sleep.

She was awakened by someone trying the door.  She got up.  She picked
up the towels and hung them on the rack.

"Sorry," said Miss Torrel.  "No hurry."

So Virginia rearranged the towels and then sat down.

"I hope you don't think it's my fault," came Miss Anderson's voice.

"Of course not," said Miss Torrel.  "I was with her last.  I assume you
wouldn't have let her get past you, into Six."

"That door was locked.  Ever since it's been unlocked Miss Thomas has
been standing there.  I had her take over before I started to search
the dorms."

"She couldn't possibly have got away," said Miss Torrel.  "Say, did you
just now come into the office?"

"Why yes.  I just now came in.  You saw me."

"How did you get past me and into the hall?  Really, this place is
getting on my nerves!"

"But I already was in the hall.  I was talking to Miss Thomas and
asking her to check her dayroom, then I..."

"My dear, when I tried the toilet door..."

Suddenly Virginia couldn't hear what they were saying.  They were
whispering.  Then Miss Torrel spoke up.  "Virginia," she said.  "We
know you are in there.  Unlock that door and come out at once."

Virginia's hand was on the bolt.  She was ready to leave

the little toilet, but there was something about Miss Torrel's voice
that she did not like.  She dropped her hand to her side.

"Virginia!"

She looked out of the window.  She could never squeeze through that
narrow opening, but neither could they.

"Virginia, you don't want to stay in that stuffy place.  Come on,
dear." This was Miss Anderson, and psychology.

Virginia smiled.  "I'm not coming out until Robert comes," she said.
Inspiration.  "I won't come out until you send for my husband."  I knew
that eventually I would find a way to get out of Juniperhill.  I knew
it.  I knew it.  I've finally got them.  He will come and he will take
me away.

It worked.  The nurses argued a little but then they went from the
office.  They had gone for Robert.  They had said so.

In a surprisingly short time they were back.  They said he was here. He
must have been on the way.  Perhaps they notified him as soon as I was
missing.  Yet, it has been at least an hour.  He could have got here by
now.

She unbolted the door.  Where was he?  Rules.  Rules.  Couldn't they
let him come into the office just once?  She shot past the nurses so
quickly that she did not hear what they said.  She was hunting Robert.
He was here.  They had said so.

She ran into the dayroom.

Ward Five's dayroom connected with Ward Six's.  Sometimes the door
between the two day rooms was opened.  This was not done to let the
Five and Six ladies stare at each other, but to permit one nurse to
oversee both rooms.  There was a nursing shortage.  Now, with Miss
Torrel and Miss Anderson occupied in rounding up a patient, one of
Six's nurses was doing the honors for both wards.

"Robert," called Virginia.  He had to be somewhere.

She dashed past the Ward Six nurse and into the strange dayroom.

They caught her, of course.  Someone tripped her and she fell.
Instantly her head was encased in a sack and someone was sitting on her
legs.  The sack was bound tightly around her chest and she could not
breathe.

There was no time for suitable thoughts.  You would think smothering to
death would feel very different.  You felt as if you were being blown
up with a tire pump and yet what was being forced into your chest was
vacuum.  I am going to burst I am going to burst I am...

CHAPTER TEN.

The sea slashed at the rocky coast and sometimes a wave --it would be
the seventh--would strike against the walls of the prison.  High tide.
High tide.

The cell's only piece of furniture was the narrow bed on which she lay,
and the walls were bare and plain save for the window.  She had never
seen the exterior of the building, but the slot like opening told her
what the tower was like.  A small high building of stone.  She was
bound but she saw the building with its turret top.  And the island.
Now at high tide not much larger than the building, a handful of stones
dropped by a giant.  No grass, no weeds, no bushes or trees.  The gulls
circled and then swooped away.  Sometimes a large boat passed at a safe
distance and passengers who knew no better said there is a
lighthouse.

She could wriggle her toes and her fingers, but otherwise she was tied
down tightly in cold wet cloths.  It was winter and the cloths would
have frozen had they not been drenched with salt water.  It was
night.

Far on the fog-hidden shore Robert was finishing his share of the plot.
The boatman would have been engaged days ago.  The old one, the knowing
one, the one who had done it before.  Now he and Robert would be
setting out on the dangerous journey.  Careful, careful, not too close
to the island.  Robert would not know how the stones sucked heedless
boats close, to dash them to bits.  But the fisherman would know.  He
would not allow amateur anxiety to urge him beyond the sea-edge of the
great waves.  Again he would explain how he had rescued the other one
and Robert, remembering the book, would become less strained.  He would
touch the waterproof package of blankets and think how before long she
would be in the boat and wrapped in the blankets. He would touch the
knife brought to cut through the heavy canvas and he would feel for the
flask of whisky.  Again and again he would go over his list to reassure
himself.  The boat, the trustworthy and experienced boatman, the car
waiting near the dock, and at home the fire laid and hot water bottles
warming the blue percale sheets.

He would ask the boatman if he could be sure they would reach her
before she drowned, and the boatman would repeat the story -of his
famous rescue and Robert would wonder

if the old man remembered it as it had happened or as he had read
about it afterwards.

There were so many unattractive aspects in the plan.  Though I am cold
and wet already.... Nevertheless the raging of the waves terrified her
and she wished they would hurry hurry, Robert and the boatman.  Her
share of the plan was to die.  The boatman, for all his bragging,
hadn't had this sort of case; Edmund hadn't had to do his own dying. 
He had a friend to do it for him, but I have no friend here.

She began on the dying.  She let herself get colder and colder.  She
had been doing this some minutes when a man came into the room. Perhaps
the boatman had arranged for a friend, after all.  The old man's
lighter than I thought, the jailers would say in this case as they
threw the sack into the sea.

But the man leaning over her was neither old nor ill.  He spoke to her,
but she did not understand his language.  He put a hand on her forehead
and then she knew he was one of the jailers.  She closed her eyes and
resumed her role.  In a moment this jailer, this man with the
deceptively solicitous voice, would rush into the hall.  Well, he would
say, she's gone.  The redhead, he would say, she's dead.

The other jailer, the older one, would groan and say what a nuisance on
such a bad night.  We'll get good and soaked, he would say.

Let it go till morning when the sea's down a bit, the young one would
say.  But the older one would shake his head and say a rule is a
rule.

They would come with the canvas sack and put her into it and they would
carry her up to the turret and one--two-heave.  They must throw wide of
the rocks.  They will.  They would not want the mess. One--two--through
the air.  Deep into the cold water.  For a terrifying moment the weight
of the ocean would clamp her to the bottom, but then slowly she would
begin to rise.  Robert and the boatman would catch the canvas with
their grappling hooks and the ascent would become rapid and then they
would hoist her into the boat and quickly slit the dripping shroud.

I thought I saw a boat, the old jailer would say.

Who'd be out on a night like this?  the young one would say.

It was such a night he escaped him that I've told you about.  Before
your time, lad.

You've let that become an obsession, dad, the young one

would say.  Anyhow, boat or no boat, she was deader than a cod and
twice as cold.

Colder now.  The old one would shiver.  Bad night, he would say.

The young jailer's hand left her head.  He said something.  It was a
question; she knew from the lift in his voice.  She did not open her
eyes.  She heard him move from the bed but she was careful to keep her
eyes shut.  He might look around quickly to test her.

Now it was a matter of waiting until he found the older man and then
the two of them would go for the canvas coffin.  The younger man might
complain, as they went for the shroud, that too many of the prisoners
died.  You don't give them enough covers, he might say, and what
they've got is cold and wet from the sea splashing in at the windows.

But the older man would shrug and say he did his job.  You look out for
your job, young man, he'd say.  They've no use for mod run notions with
featherbeds and la-de-da.

She was young, the young jailer would say--the young always touched by
the death of the young.

Better for her dead then, the old man would say.

But she might have escaped--some time.

This would make the old man stop short.  Might have, might she?  You
and Dumas, boy.  I know it happened the once but anything can happen
the once.  It hasn't never happened since.  breathing shallow breaths
so your chest will not rise.  Now they will be coming back down the
hall with the canvas.  Now is the time.  Now.

Under her closed lids she rolled her eyes high.

So smooth a road was an irresistible temptation for some drivers.  Not
for Virginia.  She was a slow one; she was more interested in seeing
where she was going than in the going.  But she was not driving and the
car raced the scenery into a solid brown mass.

They were in the mountains and the barren hills rose up like walls from
the narrow road.  Where are the warning signs and the white-topped
posts?  Dare I ask to stop a little to look at the view?

It was a new sort of automobile; she was alone in the front seat, but
she was not the driver.  She never would have driven at this rate.
Sixty miles an hour.  Eighty miles

an hour, maybe a hundred.  She felt for the pedals but her feet were
swathed in blankets.  No, I absolutely am not the driver, I have no
wheel or anything.  It is a back-seat-driven machine.  Invented at
first as a joke and then found to be practical.  Anyway speedy.  Watch
out!

Straight ahead was a mountain that rose at right angles from the road.
The driver would have to see it.  It rose as high as the sky and was
only a few yards ahead.  Virginia pushed hard on the floor of the car
as if she had had brakes.  She leaned forward, prepared to leap.  The
blankets were a disastrous impediment.

The car swerved and the smash was avoided by a hair.  Holy Mother of
Jesus.

The car stopped.  The driver, undoubtedly shaken and ashamed, came
around front.  It was a woman.

"A close call," said Virginia.  She tried to laugh a little.  No use to
heckle now that it was over.

The driver unwound the blankets.  "All right," she said.

Virginia tried to rise, but the floor went around.  "I must be dizzy,"
she said.

The chauffeur pulled her up.  "Lean on me and you can walk."

"Of course," said Virginia.  "It was just that last turn."

They went toward the sound of water and they came presently to a steamy
place.  It was a sort of hot springs.  It must be a cure.  Yes, there
was a nurse.  You'll have to pay extra for this.  And going up the
mountains in a private car with a chauffeur.  Have I sold a book to the
movies?  Hail Mary, Mother of Jesus.

"Good morning, Society Lady," said the nurse.

Society lady?  The chauffeur?

"How's it going?"  asked the chauffeur.

"Can't complain," said the nurse.  "How'd your party go?"

"Ouch," said the chauffeur.  "Don't mention it.  The head I've got."

"Well," said the nurse, "it's fine if you have the waterworks for it.
All right, Society Lady, take my arm."  She held out her arm to
Virginia.

"Watch it," said the chauffeur.  "Had a little oubletray this morning.
It ickskay and itesbay."

"Oh, hell," said the nurse, "I and the Society Lady get along like a
house afire.  Trouble with you, Kate, you don't butter them up."

"I'm sick of it," said the chauffeur.  "I got my name in the

register now.  Believe me, when I shake the dust of Juniperhill from
my feet..."

Juniperhill.  That is the Death Mountain.  "Me too," said Virginia.

"You see what I mean," said the chauffeur.  "One minute completely
utsnay and the next..."

"Tie a can to it," said the nurse sharply.  "Come on, Society Lady,
it's getting late."

The nurse took Virginia into a cubicle where there was a tub.  "Not a
bad idea," said Virginia.  The perspiration was still running down the
backs of her legs.

She stepped into the tub.  She was not able to get all the way down
into it, though.  "There's something in it," she said to the nurse.
"Cloth or something."

"Never mind the gags, Society Lady.  Just lay down."  Virginia lay back
in the canvas hammock that was swung in the tub.  There was a pillow, a
very hard pillow, for your head.  The tub was filled with water but the
tap was still running.  "I'd like it a little warmer, please."

"I never saw one for being so cold," said the nurse.  She pulled a
wooden gadget out of the tub and looked at it.  Then she dropped it
back into the water.  "Right on the nose.  Body temperature.  Society
Lady."

"My body is cold.  More hot water, please."  "You lay back and relax."
The nurse threw a sheet over the top of the tub, as if it was a bed, as
if the sheet would warm the wretchedly tepid water.  "There now, take a
little shuteye."

"Sleep in a tub?  That's a very dangerous thing to do.  Don't you know
that more accidents happen in the bathroom?  Not that this is a
bathroom but..."

"I'll keep an eye on you.  Just you relax, Society Lady."  "What
society?"

"Hm?  Oh, Ultra.  Very Ultra.  Look, I can't hang around and chin.  I
got my work.  But I'm keeping an eye on you, so don't you worry
none."

"The person whose blood they measured to find out how much to warm this
water," said Virginia, "was a fish.  A dead cod."  This was philosophy;
the one who said this was not utsnay.  I don't like that chauffeur,
calling people utsnay when she can't drive any better.

"That's telling them," said the nurse cheerfully.  She could afford to
be cheerful.  She had a sweater on over her uniform.  She folded
Virginia's robe, looked at that wooden thermometer thing again and then
went away.

She had forgotten to turn off the water.  At first Virginia thought
she was going to be drowned.  She was tied into the tub in some way and
could not get out.  Then she realized that her head was higher than the
tub and that the whole room would have to start filling up first.  And
the little room was only a part of a long hall that had lots of little
nooks like this and they would all have to fill up first.  You could
not figure all this out if you were utsnay.

She heard water running elsewhere and she heard voices.  If the water
filled the whole spa then it would run down Juniperhill and into the
sea, the cold water, the wet always and the skin sloughing from the
palms of my hands.  I am very tired of the water cure.

When she opened her eyes the nurse was back and saying it was time to
move.  With the assistance of the nurse she got out of the tub.  She
hoped the trip down the hall wouldn't be so swift.  I do not like the
chauffeur.  No wonder people ickkay and itebay her.  If I were you,
auffeurchay, I would watch out.

Wrapped in the robe she was led into another cubicle and the nurse said
to get into the tub.

"It is different water?"

"Yep."

"It looks the same.  I thought medicinal waters were colored."  She got
into the tub.  She did not want to.  If my hands keep on peeling I will
have no more hands.  But anything to avoid the ride.  "I didn't wash
before," she said.  "Could I have some soap?"

"You're clean as a newborn babe."

"Are they clean?"

"Don't go technical on me, Society Lady."

"I think I would like to go to the bathroom."

"Well, go ahead.  Don't mind me."  The nurse spread a sheet over the
tub.

"I have to go to the toilet, nurse."

"Go ahead."

"You'll have to help me out."

"Look, Society Lady, if you gotta go, go."

"In the tub!"

"The water's changing all the time."

"I think that's perfectly disgusting."

"Don't give me that, Society Lady."

"What's the point of changing tubs?"

"It's the law," said the nurse.  "We are getting around the law, but
don't you worry about that."

"I am tired of being in a tub."

"Relax."  The nurse inspected the thermometer and then readjusted the
taps.  "A degree over," she said.  "Maybe you did that, eh, hot
baby?"

"Remember to turn off the tap before you leave," said Virginia.  "You
might have drowned me the last time."

"It runs out as fast as it runs in.  Nothing to worry about."

The nurse went away.  The next time she came she had a tray.  "Here is
your lunch, Society Lady," she said.

"My name is Cunningham," said Virginia.  "Mrs.  Cunningham."  "I know.
Mrs.  Cunningham."

"I don't know your name."

"Johnson."

"Miss?"

"Don't need to rub it in.  Here.  A lovely lunch.  Make you feel like a
million.  Tomato juice cocktail."  "Thank you," said Virginia, "but I
do not care for any lunch."

"Come on now."  The nurse shoved the cup at her.

Virginia closed her mouth and turned her head.  For a long time Miss
Johnson tried to shove food into her mouth.  Once she caught Virginia
off guard but Virginia spat the bit of potato out onto the sheet.

The nurse went away and after a while she came back.  She was talking
to someone with her.  "Of course you aren't supposed to be in here, Mr.
Cunningham," she was saying, "but we thought... Virginia, your husband
is here.  He's going to give you your lunch now.  Isn't that nice?"

The man sat on the low chair beside the tub.  Virginia looked at him
long enough to see that he resembled Robert very closely.  Then she
turned her head away.  They had fooled her once, but they could never
fool her again.  They had put her head into a sack the last time.  I
remember.  I remember very well that they fooled me about him coming
and then they put my head into a sack.  I am not utsnay enough to fall
for that trick again.

The man talked and talked.  She would have told him what she thought of
anyone who made a business of masquerading as other people's husbands,
but she knew if she opened her mouth he would stick food into it.  She
was smart.  She kept her mouth and her eyes shut tight and after a
while he went away.

When she opened her eyes another man was there.  It may have been the
same clever impersonator; it may have been

himself as himself.  This time he was not calling her darling as he
had done before; he was calling her Jeannie now.  But he was harping on
the same subject.  Food.  She would throw up in his face.

They had let the water run out of the tub but the bedding was sopping
wet.  They had taken the tile walls away and enlarged the cubicle to
make it look like a room.  They had even put a window into it.  Oh, the
trouble they went to.  They couldn't be satisfied with electrocuting
you and choking you; they had to bundle you up in icy wrappings and
then torture you with food.  Say it again and I'll scream.

He said it again.  "Jeannie, you must eat.  "His accent was heavier
than Boyer's; it was almost as thick as Senja's.  He thinks he is going
to persuade me to take this poison.  What a fool.  Ya ga to hal.  See,
I can speak your wretched language.

His hands were on her shoulders.  "Jeannie, you must eat."

Robert will have the satisfaction of knowing I fought for my life. This
man will win.  He always has won.  But not easily.  Ah, no, I have
caused him trouble before and I shall cause him plenty now.  Come now,
indeed.

Come into the deep hole.  It was not like falling.  First you were not
there and then you were there, deep in the dark.  She wanted to tell
the man where she was.  I have always told him everything.  He means
well. Yes, I must remember that he means well.  Robert said so and
Robert knows.  But how can you speak from the bottom of a deep hole? 
I'm too tired to shout.  And the quicksand is seeping into my
nostrils.

She opened her eyes to blinding light.  She was out of the hole, but
the quicksand continued to flow into her nose.  She tried to speak, to
ask him what in God's name he was doing, shoving a tube into her nose
and forcing mush into it.

She strangled and started to cough, but the mush continued to pass
through the tube.  She could see his hands.  Delicate hands for a man.
Thin and rather bony and with traces of very fair hair.  He was holding
the tube.  In the brilliant round of light was another pair of hands.
These were fattish, womanish hands without hair.

Tottering on the edge she tried to keep her balance but again she sank
into the hole.  When she came up again the circle of intense light had
merged into general paleness and the man was winding up the tube.
"There, Jeannie.  There, there," he said.  "It is over."

Now she saw his face and she shrank close to the bed as she recognized
him.  It was the Young Jailer.

Occasionally she was aware of being moved from a tub to a bed.  From a
wet hammock to a wet bed.  During this long period there was no normal
eating.  The tube business happened again and again and eventually she
understand that it was a way of feeding her.  When she neared the top
of the hole and found the tube in her nose she wanted to tell the Young
Jailer she would gladly eat if he would give her an opportunity, but
she was unable to speak.  The quicksand of the hole pulled her down and
stifled her attempts at speech.

Then gradually she began to come out of it; gradually the periods of
being out of it lengthened and now she walked from bed to tub and from
tub to bed.  And the time came when she went to a small room that had a
table and two long benches and there, along with several other robed
creatures, she ate meals of gravy and gruel.  She ate eagerly.  The
food was revolting looking and tasting stuff but she had learned that
by eating it she avoided the tube feeding.

Sometimes the real Robert came to see her.  She tried to talk to him,
to tell him how cold she was, but all she could do was cry.  She wept
while Robert talked quietly to her.  She liked to hear his voice, but
she never knew what he was saying.  It was terrible when he went away.
He went away and the old routine of tub and bed and meals in the little
room was resumed.  An icy draft blewinaround the windows at the end of
the tub room.  In front of the windows a nurse sat at a desk and marked
on papers.  She wore a sweater and had a coat over the back of her
chair.  All of the nurses in the tub room wore sweaters but the
patients went from tub to tub in sheets or in cotton robes.  When the
wind was blowing hard and cold the tub water, when you first got into
it, felt good.  It always cooled, though.  The nurses said not, but by
the time you had to move on to another tub the water seemed as cold as
the winter wind.

Now came days when Virginia watched the women with whom she ate her
meals.  These women never talked to each other.  Now and then one of
them would speak, but she was not speaking to anyone in the room.
Virginia decided that she would start talking but she could not think
of anything to say and her throat was stiff and shy and so she
watched.

There was one woman who had great energy.  This one wound her sheet
into a reasonable facsimile of an evening gown

She wrapped it tightly around her breasts and tucked it snuggly around
her waist and fixed the skirt so that it dragged.  She went around the
little room elegantly kicking the train out of the way.  She spoke
frequently, but not in English.  She was a graceful and rather
beautiful woman and Virginia admired her and wished she could
understand her language.

There was another woman who spoke often.  This one always sat, sat and
mumbled.  Whether her language was English was not to say; she had no
visible teeth and her lisping might have been anything.  Virginia
watched this woman and the elegant one and remembered them.  The others
might have been different ones each time the little group met in the
small dining room.

After the meal the nurse came and took them away.  Usually two nurses
called for Virginia.  Great strapping women with large arms, they
lifted her up to a bed as if she was a baby.  They bounced her on the
wet sheets and expertly wrapped her into the frigid cocoon.

"That's quite a trick," she said to them one night.  "A durty trick."

The nurses looked at each other.  "Well," said one of them, "it's nice
to know you can talk.  You are always so quiet."

They spread a dry sheet over her.  Why?  No bit of the dry sheet
touched her.  It was not to be endured.  Hurry and get out, you two, so
I can hurry and get out.

She watched with a purpose this night but they worked too rapidly.  She
was unable to memorize the motions that created the cocoon.  It was
not, however, to be endured.  So when the nurses left she began to get
out of the mummy trappings.  It took a long time.

First she wriggled under the wide binder that was tucked between the
mattress and the springs.  This took a very long time.  For a while,
when her head was under the binder she thought she would never manage
it; it was like crawling out of your own skin.  Free of the binder she
twisted her body until she could swing the lower part of it over the
side of the bed.  After sliding to the floor it was comparatively easy.
Using her teeth, good strong teeth and none missing, she loosened the
twists that went over her shoulders and then swayed from side to side
until the sheets unwound.

She stood naked and free in air that felt comfortingly warm.  She took
the dry sheet to the radiator and made herself a tent.  To be warm in
winter.  One of the very finest things in life.

When she became sleepy she went back to the bed.  She shoved the wet
sheets way down to the foot of the bed and, wrapped in her dry sheet,
curled up on the rubber mattress.  She would, she promised herself,
wake up early enough to rewrap herself in the wet sheets but instantly
a voice was screeching.  "Virginia--how on earth!  Who put you in pack
last night?"

"I don't know," said Virginia.

"How did you get out?"

"I was cold."  Why had morning to come so quickly?

"Well," said this morning nurse, "I'll attend to your pack myself
tonight and that's for sure."

Yes, this one who thought she was so smart, this one attended to
Virginia's pack that night and maybe it did take Virginia longer to get
out of it.  Maybe it did.  But she got out and she had another
comfortable sleep.  And the next night they put a large canvas spread
over her bed and they laced this spread under the springs in some way.
The spread had one hole in it, for your head.  It was most unsporting.
No one could have got out of that pack.  Virginia heard some of the
nurses saying that no one had ever got out of an ordinary pack before.
When the very smart nurse wasn't around, the not so smart ones called
Virginia Mrs.  Houdini.  They seemed proud of her but at the same time
they gave her no further opportunity.  Although one night something
very nice did happen.

After the evening meal a nurse left the dining room door open when she
took one of the patients away, and Virginia lost no time taking herself
away.  She was wise enough not to run.  Walk to the nearest exit, she
said to herself firmly.  But then she remembered the keys and so she
started to search for a dry bed.  She looked and looked and finally she
found one.  It was in a dark little cubby, but it was made up with dry
sheets and two blankets.  She got into the bed and when the wind
rattled the window she made herself into a ball and she smiled.

She awakened before the Good Morning Ladies.  Hearing sounds in the
corridor she knew it was time to get up and so she got up and went to
the little dining room and when the nurse came with the trays nothing
was said.  There was a crying need for nurses.  Virginia had heard the
nurses say this again and again; she had heard them arguing about what
duties belonged to what nurse.

That night when she went again to find the dry bed someone was already
in it Clinging to shadows she scouted

around for another bed and at last she came to a room as large as a
dayroom.  In it were mattresses, on the floor.  A dozen or more beds
were made up on the floor.  Most of them were laid with wet sheets
folded in the diabolically exact pattern.  Better get out of here....
"Oh, Virginia.  Wait a minute."

It was too late.  The nurse had seen her.

The nurse consulted her chart.  "Dry bed," she said.  "Well, you might
as well take that one."

"Thank you," said Virginia.  She got into the dry bed.  The Juniper
floors were no harder than the Juniper cots, and a dry bed, no matter
where it is, is luxury.  She had never been able to sleep well on her
back and of course that was the wet-pack position.  Flat on your back,
feet and legs straight, arms and hands straight; fair enough in a
coffin but cruel in a bed.  Inevitably your nose would itch.

V. Cunningham never had to sleep in a wet bed again.  It goes to show
that you have to use a little initiative.  Also it goes to show that
when there are more wet-pack patients than there are nurses to make up
the packs--you have a fair chance.

And not long after this the tub days came to an end.  During the
daytime Virginia stayed In the dayroom, the room which became the large
dormitory at night In the daytime the mattresses were piled up in a
corner and several long benches were pulled out from the walls.  The
ladies who spent their days in this room wore long shirt-like garments
or gray terrycloth robes with numbers stamped on the back.

The two women who had been with Virginia in the small dining room were
now with her in the dayroom.  The foreigner attempted to convert her
robe into an evening gown and she walked around and around and seemed
at times to be welcoming guests to a formal reception.  The old
toothless one sat on the floor and mumbled.  There was another old one.
This one had a white beard that would have been stunning on a diplomat,
preferably a male diplomat.  Sometimes Virginia wondered if the bearded
person was a man.

But the days, in spite of the bearded lady and the foreign belle, were
extremely dull.  Most of the ladies just sat and looked at nothing, at
any rate at nothing Virginia could see.

Sometimes she thought.  Thinking was very difficult.  It was far more
painful than the exercises you have to do after a major operation.  I
must start to think, she would tell herself, but then she would put it
off for later in the day.  One of the difficulties was not being able
to hit upon anything to

think about.  She tried verbs: run, ran, run, amo, amas, amat and that
sort of thing, but her supply was limited.  Finally she asked a nurse
if she might have something to read.  "I shouldn't read without my
glasses, I suppose," she said, "but "I wasn't thinking of that."

All the same it was this nurse who sounded off that night about not
being able to locate enough mattresses.  "I've got used to not having
enough cots to go around," Virginia heard her saying to another nurse,
"but when there aren't enough mattresses, I give up.  They think Ward
Twelve can get along without anything--just because our ladies..."

"Did you say anything to my doctor?"  Virginia asked this nurse when
she came around with the paraldehyde.

"Yes.  You are being transferred."

"Good," said Virginia.  She tried to read the nurse's eyes.  "Or is
it?"

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Some of the Ward Eight patients were employed off the ward.  They were
the Upper Classmen.  Virginia prayed that she would be allowed to
remain an Under Classman.

You wanted to get well.  You never had a conscious moment in which you
were not aware of being sick.  You could no more, while conscious,
forget your sickness than you could forget to breathe.  Asked your
greatest wish in life you would have replied at once--sanity.  How
remote was the world in which sanity was taken for granted.  In the
world outside, people longed desperately to be millionaires, movie
actors, club presidents and even, tell me little gypsy what force
creates this one, even novelists.  True, a bad cold, a touch of
heartburn, an allergy to a favorite dog's hair, could blot out for a
time the desire for money, power or fame.  During the period of the
running nose, the stomach ache or the asthmatic wheeze physical
well-being would stand alone in the spotlight of yearning.  But
nowhere, nowhere save in a madhouse, did mental health get its share of
prayers.

At Juniperhill there was one real god, one real goal, one real love.
The patient who possessed the smallest seed of sanity cherished it
tenderly.  And yet V. Cunningham did not want to be sent off the ward
to work.  Though she wanted, above all, to be well, she cringed from
the transition period and when the time approached when she might be
considered intelligent enough to count to ten she became limp with
fear.

The nurses in Eight rapidly fell into the habit of treating her as if
she had more sense than she actually had.  They were good nurses; they
gave her her glasses almost every day and she was not required to drink
paraldehyde.  They complimented her upon the way she did her ward
duties and seemed unconcerned when she dipped a dry mop into a bucket.
Of the sicker ones they appeared to consider her their star.  The time
was coming near.  She practiced counting to ten.  She could quote long
passages of Chaucer to herself but she could not always be certain that
seven came after six.

When the promotion came she was somewhat relieved to discover that her
work squad went out of the building.  Led by a nurse they went to a
street she had never seen.  Facing each other were two rows of
three-story houses.  Had each of

these red-brick houses been off to itself you would have thought it an
ordinary dwelling, but here in the double row the houses were
unmistakably institutional.  "Staff houses," said Virginia's marching
partner.  "We do Number Nine."

Inside, Number Nine looked like a house, something like a house.  From
the hallway you could see a segment of a living room that was not at
all a dayroom.  Virginia hoped that some day she would get to enter
this room but she never did.  Her job was on the second floor.

Her job was to scrub the floor of a large washroom and to scour the
fixtures and polish the mirrors.  After that was finished she did
private bathrooms.  The large washroom was reminiscent of a ward
washroom, except that it was fully equipped, but the private bathrooms
reminded you of home.  In the little bathrooms were bottles of perfume,
bath salts, medicines, personal towels, bath mats, stockings and
lingerie drying on racks.... She always did the washroom first, to get
it over with.  She didn't, at first skimp her work in the large room,
but she never lingered over it.  It was a pleasure, however, to go into
the private suites where there were carpets and pictures.

The buckets were heavy and the exasperating problem of the wet and dry
mops was always with you; the water was hard and the soap cruelly
strong and your hands, after the first day, were continually raw and
chapped.  But the work was so much better than you had anticipated and
the housekeeper said you were a good girl.  "You aren't built for it,"
she would say, "but you are doing fine.  Sometimes the strong ones just
throw things and splash water all over."

But a perpetual backache is annoying and sore hands are a nuisance and
after having spent a morning at House Nine, Ward Eight was browner and
more depressing than ever.  And one morning something happened that
made you nervous about House Nine.

One morning when Virginia was scrubbing in the large washroom a man
came in.  She tried to be nonchalant.  She thought about postmen being
invisible and she hoped scrub women were equally endowed.  She went
casually into the hall while the man was going, not so casually, to one
of the booths.  She had not known it was a men's bathroom.  When,
fifteen minutes later, a woman came into that room she was very
confused and she asked the housekeeper about it.  And the housekeeper
said the room was for both sexes.

When Virginia raised her eyebrows the woman grinned

and said, "Scientific people.  They are above such things, you
know."

After that Virginia was not painstaking with her work in the large
washroom.  She did not approve.

Most of the ladies in the House Nine Squad seemed to take their work in
their stride and if their backs ached they did not complain.  Of an
afternoon Virginia would have given a great deal to lie down on a bed.
You could stretch out on the floor any time but when your back hurt so
terribly even one of the Juniper cots would have been welcome.

Ward Eight, after you had done your morning stint, was Liberty Hall.
Oh, you couldn't go into the dormitories or private bedrooms, but you
could do whatever you liked in the dayroom.  Some of the ladies played
bridge and Virginia was invited to join their club.  They played a kind
of bridge you had never encountered elsewhere.  Perhaps you had
encountered something like it but the people outside who played that
way were never asked to play again.  Here you could change trumps any
time you felt like it and the game was one that could be played by any
number of ladies.  A trick might consist of five cards, seven, three,
one, or none.  However you felt.  If you had good cards and wanted to
save them to admire, all right.  Or you could save them for a flourish
at the end.  No one ever bid and lost.  That was the only rigid rule.
You bid and then everyone else became your helpful partners.  Sometimes
Dummy played the hand for you.  The dummy hand was seldom laid down, as
that, thought the ladies, took the spice out of the game.  They liked a
game with spice.  It was a good, friendly, though spicy game, and no
one ever got mad.  Everyone was given the bidder's score and so
everyone came out even.

One of the best players of the ward was going to have a baby, two
babies, in Virginia's opinion, and very soon.  When she was not playing
bridge the expectant mother was weeping.  She was so afraid that her
baby would be born at Juniperhill.  "But you can always just tell it it
was born at a hospital," Virginia would say.  "You don't have to say
what hospital."

But the girl was not to be consoled.  She spoke continually of her
husband with whom she was very much in love and who was always sending
her nice presents.  All the best ladies of the ward were very gentle
with her and saw to it that she always had a place to sit.  As there
were at least four ladies to each chair this devotion required constant
watchfulness.

In Ward Eight was a spirit of co-operation Virginia had never noticed
elsewhere.  She did remember that previously she had seen much give and
take about cigarettes but as she had always been on the giving end she
had not thought of this as being especially commendable.  In Eight,
though, you were also in on the take.  When the ladies received
packages from home they shared with everyone.  When the store orders
came through you divided with those who hadn't store credit.  If you
had wanted to be in Juniperhill, Ward Eight would have been a good
place to be.  None of the ladies, however, wanted to be at the
hospital. Whatever their troubles had been outside they were anxious to
get back to them and with one exception they all knew where they were
and approximately why.  You would have supposed that the one who had no
conception of her surroundings might have been happy, but Tamara was
the most wretched of all.  She stood off by herself.  The nurses warned
the others repeatedly to stay away from her and as Tamara was tall and
muscular and the owner of a glowering expression, the ladies obeyed.

Tamara had a fur coat which she wore to the dining room.  The nurses
tried again and again to persuade her not to wear it.  The dining. room
was less than a hundred feet from the dayroom and the hallway was no
colder than the dayroom, but Tamara would wear her coat.  If they hid
it from her she would not leave the dayroom.  In an earlier period, the
ladies whispered, Tamara had given them a tale about being a Russian
countess.  But one visiting day they had seen her sister in a maid's
uniform.  They laughed a little among themselves about Tamara's airs. 
Virginia said the fact that the sister was a maid did not disprove the
countesses tale, but the ladies said that fur coat was no countess'
coat.  It was very commonplace, simply dyed muskrat that would fool no
one.  Tamara had had five operations on her head, said the ladies, and
was hopeless.  They were very snobbish about hopeless oases and they
blamed Tamara for being hopeless.  Their attitude about hopeless
insanity was very like the attitude outside.  They hated Tamara for
being insane.

Perhaps once a week Tamara spoke.  She spoke to the nurses as if they
were her slaves.  "Get all of these people out of my house at once,"
she would say.  The nurses said they couldn't understand why Tamara was
saddled off onto Ward Eight where all of the other ladies were so
nice.

But one time Virginia had a small experience with Tamara which made her
wonder if perhaps there might be a chance

for Tamara if someone were to bother to follow up an operation with a
little post-operative care.  There was a piano in Ward Eight and
sometimes Virginia played it.  Once when she was playing snatches of
this and that by ear, Tamara came and sat on the bench with her.
Virginia was so frightened that she thought she would fall off the
bench, but she continued to play for a while.  When she felt she could
endure it no longer she said softly that now she must stop.  And Tamara
smiled at her and said, "Thank you so much, my friend."

And a nurse came flapping excitedly.  "Virginia, you know better than
to get near Tamara."

"Sometimes a sick animal knows more about how another sick animal
should be treated," said Virginia.  But, to tell the truth, she was not
unwilling to go away from the dangerous patient.

It was days before she noticed the old lady.  Oh, she knew the old
lady's name was Jenny and that she had one of the dozen or so private
bedrooms, the cubicles 'that were called bedrooms.  But she had never
really noticed the old woman until the afternoon that Jenny asked her
to tea.

Jenny's room had a cot and a chair and it was so near the dayroom that
the nurses allowed her to go there of an afternoon.  Virginia supposed
that the "to tea" was just a phrase and that Jenny simply wanted to
show off her room.  However, Jenny had a can of pineapple juice on her
windowsill and that was to be the tea.  Virginia asked if she should
take the can to a nurse to be opened.  The nurses were kind about
opening things for you.  But Jenny winked.  She put a hand down into
her dress and brought out a beer-can opener that was strung on a dirty
string.

Virginia was horrified.  There was a strict rule about things of this
sort.  One of the Eight ladies had been a professional manicurist and
she kept the fingertips of the ward ladies, always with the exception
of the dangerous Tamara, beautifully filed and lacquered.  A nurse was
never very far away when the manicurist was at work and the implements
of the process were taken from her the instant she was through with
them.  And here sat old Jenny with a beer-can opener.

The juice was served in paper cups and accompanied by crackers.  During
the party Jenny told Virginia her personal history.  All the time she
talked she toyed with the opener.  Virginia could not keep her eyes off
the opener and she was

glad when she could decently say it was time to leave.  She and Jenny
left together, of course.

The next day Jenny invited Virginia to tea again.  And the day after
that.  She seemed to have an unlimited supply of pineapple juice and an
inexhaustible personal history.  While she talked she played with the
beer-can opener.  Virginia wanted to report the opener but how could
you betray a fellow patient?

Of a morning you worked at House Nine; of an early afternoon you played
bridge or took a nap on the floor; always of a late afternoon you had
tea with Jenny.  There was no way out of it.

It may have been partly Jenny's illness and it may have been partly her
age; it may have been entirely Virginia's imagination, but the old lady
seemed to have a very peculiar look in her eyes.  When she glanced up
from the can opener to Virginia there was a sort of contemplative
expression that Jenny was planning to kill her.  She was marvelously
polite to the old woman.

She never mentioned Jenny to Robert when he came to visit.  He was
looking so tired and drawn these days that she could not bear to add to
his worries.  Although she was certain that he would be disturbed if
she knew what she was fearing she also knew that he would not think her
in any danger.  He would think that on top of everything else she had
got a worse persecution complex.  Maybe I have.  Maybe that is it.

But the sharpness of that can opener was not imagined.  How easily it
bit into a can.  "Don't sit so far away," Jenny would say.  "I'm a
little deaf.  I can't hear you when you are so far away.  Come closer,
my dear.  Come a little closer."

And then one afternoon Virginia knew it was going to happen.  Jenny
opened the can, as usual, but then she set it back on the window ledge.
She wiped the opener on her dress and looked at it a long time.  Then
she looked at Virginia.  "A penny for your thoughts, dear," she said.

Virginia sprang from the cot.  She ran out into the hall and to the
office.  A nurse, Miss Bixby, was at the desk.  "Why, Virginia," said
Miss Bixby, "what's the matter?"

Virginia tried to think.  It had been urgent, she knew, to reach a
nurse but now she could not remember why.  Something awful was going to
happen to her.  "Get a doctor, please.  Get my doctor, please," she
said, as the floor began to soften and swirl.

"Take it easy," said Miss Bixby.  "It's all right.  Just hang

on... Miss Jones!  All right, Virginia... just hang on to me.  Miss
Jones, get..."

They were fighting their way through the deep varnish of the hall now.
"Just hang on," said Miss Bixby.

"It's never happened this way before," gasped Virginia.  I never had
such definite warning.  I never had warning before that I knew was
warning.

"Your doctor will be here in a minute.  We'll go to meet him.  We won't
have any trouble at all.  See, it's not far to the door."

Virginia bit her lips.  "Take my glasses," she said.  "I would hate to
break them."

Miss Bixby took the glasses.  "You are going to be all right," she
said.  "It may be just something you ate.  You are just feeling
faint."

She spoke without conviction, all the time urging Virginia forward.
Wants to get me out of her ward before it happens, wants to get me to
wherever it is more convenient for them, wants to get me into his
hands, slender hands for a man but they are strong.

It was coming rapidly now.  Could he come so fast?

Miss Bixby opened the door.  "You see," she said, "there he is.  He is
coming as fast as he can."

Virginia could tell that he was running, but she knew he would not
reach her in time.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

The sun is shining.  It's summer again.  Again?  Perhaps still.

Now white flakes, like snow, began to dance in the sunshine.  There may
be a bonfire near by.  I would like to see a bonfire.  I would like to
sit near it and get warm.

"It's snowing," said someone.  "High time."

"I was wondering what time it was," said Virginia.  High time.  It must
mean time for high tea.  She frowned.  She did not like to think about
tea time.  Why?  I always used to like tea.

But then she remembered something.  She had gone to a tea where an old
woman had tried to knife her.  She tried to kill me and I ran and ran
and the Young Jailer came to my rescue.  Because he is under the
impression that he is the only one who is permitted to kill me. Jeannie
is my special interest, my major project, he says.  Each day I kill her
once,

each week day once and twice on Sundays.  Do not weep, he says when he
finishes, it is finished and you are no more hurt.

She looked at the woman who had announced the time.  The woman was a
stranger with a cropped head.  She wore a heavy red delivery-boy
sweater and her nose was dripping.  "Do you have a cold?"  said
Virginia to suggest that a handkerchief was needed.

The woman snuffled and the drizzle vanished.  "Freeze you to death if
they can," she said.  "What did you say your name was again?"

"Virginia Cunningham, though you can't say again until you've said
once.  What's yours?"

"Margie," said the woman.  "You talk like a school teacher.  You must
have been a school teacher."

"Must have been and was are two different matters," said Virginia
wisely.  "What time did you say it was?"

"About time for dinner," said Margie, "but I don't suppose you'll be
wanting any.  Not after the feed they give you after shock.  What did
you have this morning?"

"Oh, the usual," said Virginia.  She squinted at the dancing flakes.
Shock.  The little room with the egg-beater smell.  The Young Jailer
bending over you and saying what a joker you are, Jeannie.  "You make
such jokes," he said.  Jeannie.  He does not even know my real name.

She put her hands to the small of her back.  Yes, the wedge was there
this morning.  And touching her temples she discovered a trace of the
paste.... A very low percentage of mishaps--I like that word
mishaps--in connection with electric-shock treatment.  I read that once
upon a time when I had no interest in the subject.  His assistant has a
silly voice and there is another nurse who comes in to hold your legs
down.  You wake up in a different room and are given an enormous
breakfast.  One thing, I said to him, you get a decent meal for a
change.  And he said I was his little joker.  Talking without thinking
what he was saying, his hands busy.  If anything goes wrong I hope you
get it too, I wanted to say to him.  Maybe I did.  Maybe he thought
that also a great joke.  But I figured out that if he gave me too much
he would get it too.  He would be touching me, would he not?  It would
serve him right.  Or has he some special insulation?  Yes, he must
have.  Otherwise he would not be so lighthearted.  They would see to it
that they are always safe.  No mishaps for the operators.

"I read somewhere," she said cautiously to Margie, "that shock
treatments impair the memory."

"Never repaired mine," said Margie.  "I got the most wunnerful memry. I
member ever thing that ever happened.... And lots that never did.  How
many shocks you had?"

"I don't know for sure.  Sixteen or eighteen, I think."

"My," said Margie, "you must be real sick."

"I hate to forget things."

"I'd like to.  Plenty I'd like to fergit.  But I'm a Republican and a
nelefun never fergits."  Margie laughed and a shower of mucus sprayed
from her nose.

Virginia moved away from her.  She went to another window to watch the
snow.  Even though it had a false theatrical look and vanished as soon
as it touched the ground it probably was snow.  It might be piling up
on the other side of the building, in the shade.  She started to cross
the room to see.

In the center of the room was a rug.  It was a nine by twelve, a
ridiculous pale-gray stamp on the large brown floor.  They did not have
this before.  But maybe it is a different ward.  Yes, I have not been
in this dayroom before.

It was a poor rug but it felt good after so many months of linoleum.

Someone was shrieking.  Virginia turned to see what the trouble was.
Margie was shouting for Miss Green.  "Virginia's on the rug again," she
called.

A nurse came into the dayroom and now she began to yell.  "You get off
that rug.  Virginia Cunningham," she shouted.

Virginia got off the rug.  She did not walk toward Miss Green but Miss
Green caught up with her.

"We do not walk on our rug," the nurse said.  "We have told you a dozen
times.  We do not walk on our carpet."

"Why not?"  asked Virginia.

"Because we don't," said the nurse.  "Understand?  You can't come to
this ward and do as you please.  I don't know how you got along in your
wards but here we have rules and we stick to them.  We do not walk on
our rug.  We are the only ward that has a rug."

Virginia looked at the rug.  It seemed very ordinary.  Twenty-nine
seventy-five, you would guess.  Maybe it covers a dangerous sink-hole.
Maybe I barely escaped with my life.  I was deep in a hole for a while
and maybe that was the hole.

"And we mean to keep it looking like new," Miss Green was saying.  "See
that you don't go tramping all over it."

"You might hang it on the wall," suggested Virginia.

"Your wisecracks may have been appreciated in some wards," said the
nurse, "but definitely in Fourteen they do not go over.  That rug is
strictly safe right where it is if you will keep your big feet off of
it."

Virginia studied Miss Green's feet.  About size nine.  What's she mean
calling a five and a half big?

"You've walked on it every day since you've been here," said Miss
Green.  "I am getting good and tired of it.  I have my work to do.  I
can't come in here every few minutes to chase you off.  It isn't as if
you didn't know better."

"How long have I been here?"

"Too long," said Miss Green.

This was a new type of nurse.  It is true that Virginia had annoyed
nurses before, but she had never seen one quite like Miss Green.  Miss
Green appeared to be hysterical.  "I'm sorry," said Virginia.  "I wish
you could understand that I can't remember 'anything."

"Excuses all the time," said the nurse.  "I never in all my..."

"Miss Green," screamed Margie, "Emma's on the rug."

A fat middle-aged woman was in the center of the rug and going a rather
good Charleston.  She began to sing.  Sweet Georgie Brown.  "Oh, do let
her finish," begged Virginia.  "She's good."

But the nurse now put her own big feet on the rug.

Miss Green, though she acted as if she was the whole cheese, was not
the head of Ward Fourteen.  The head nurse was all right.

When Robert came to visit, Virginia told him about the rug and he
laughed and said she had invented the story.  He never would have said
that if he had not thought her much better.  It was most encouraging.

On Christmas Day, when he was allowed to pay an extra visit, he and the
other visitors were permitted to come into the dayroom and Virginia was
able to show him how vigilantly the patients tried to keep the guests
off the rug.

It was a sad Christmas in spite of the joke about the rug.  In the
morning the ladies were taken to the great hall where you had once seen
a movie.  There was no movie this time.  A man stood on the stage
beside a Christmas tree and led

the patients in carol singing.  Among the carols they sang that
morning was Yankee Doodle.

When Robert came, in the early afternoon, he brought a large box.  He
brought Virginia two woolen nightgowns, some woolen underthings and a
sort of hood that he claimed women on the outside were wearing.  It was
an absurdly childish cap but it was warm and anyhow things made no
difference here.  He had also brought a box from Margaret and Mother.
It was an assortment of interesting food.  She was not, said Robert, to
pass this around as she had done with everything else.  She was to give
it to the nurse and just take one thing at a time.  There were lovely
cookies and all sorts of canape pastes.

"I should have done something about Christmas," said Virginia.  "But it
slipped up on me.  I could have got you a little something at the
store."

But Robert said her being so well was the only present he wanted.  "You
really are getting well now," he said.  "There won't be any more
setbacks."

"This is Ward Fourteen," she said.  "Will I have to work my way back to
One?"

"Absolutely not," he said.  "You know, Kik told me he would hate to be
stuck in One."

Virginia laughed at that.  She remembered now how Miss Davis had
disliked Dr.  Kik.  "She'd make it hard for him, all right.  And I bet
he wouldn't know the mops apart, either."

They took a little walk to try out the new hood.  Robert pretended that
she looked enchanting and maybe he actually thought this.  In some ways
he was a very stupid man.  Often she had thought what a help it would
be to have a critical husband who would tell you when your makeup
wasn't right.  Robert was no help.  He always said everything was
charming.

On their way out of the ward she called his attention to the
bedspreads.  "I never saw them before," she said.  "They were got out
on account of company coming into the ward.  So you see we have spreads
as well as a rug."

Robert said it was all very swanky.  He especially enjoyed the rug. "My
God," he said, "if I had had any idea of what it was going to be... But
it won't be long now."

It would have been cruel to remind him that he had been saying this for
months.

During their walk he told her about his most recent interview with Dr.
Kik.  The doctor, he said, had been favorably impressed by her
insisting upon going to a ward where there was no racial
discrimination.  Virginia had no recollection

of any such insistence, but since the doctor had been favorably
impressed she decided not to question it.

After the visitors had left, the ladies handed in their Christmas
presents and the nurses locked the things up in the cupboards.  Then
the spreads were taken from the cots and locked away.  The ladies went
to the dayroom and waited for the call to supper.

Recalling Robert's odd story about racial discrimination, Virginia
looked around the room and noticed, for the first time, that some of
the patients were colored.  One of the nurses was colored.  Not Miss
Green.  Miss Green never would have tolerated that.

One of the colored patients seemed to be a special friend of Virginia.
She brought her a candy bar.  Virginia hated to take it; she was afraid
that the girl had only the one bar, but the girl insisted.  "You are
always giving me things," she said.

The next day this girl and several other Fourteen ladies were invited
to a dance which was to be held in the large theater.  When the dancing
party lined up Virginia saw that her friend had no hat.  It was snowing
heavily and so Virginia went to the closet, which was still unlocked
for the benefit of the dancers, and got her new hood.  She took this to
the colored girl and after some argument the girl put the cap on.  She
looked very cute in it.  She was young and pretty and the bright colors
became her.  "I won't take it off," she said.  "Someone might steal
it."

Just then Miss Green came around the corner.  "What are you doing with
Virginia's hood?"  she said to the colored girl.

"I said she could wear it," said Virginia.

"Your poor husband," said Miss Green.  "He tries so hard.  Don't you
know that cap came from Saks Fifth Avenue?  And then you let a..."

"He would want her to wear it," said Virginia hastily.

The colored girl had shrunk back against the wall.  Her round black
eyes were full of tears.  "I don't want to cause any trouble," she
whispered.  The hood was in her brown hands and she was holding it out
to Virginia.  "Please, I don't want to cause any trouble."  "You see,
Virginia," said Miss Green.  "It's people like you that stir up all
this racial business.  All right, Party Ladies!  Form a neat line, if
you please.  Ladies!  No talking!  Ladies who do not form a neat line
and who keep on whispering will definitely not be allowed to go to the
party."

One morning Miss Green brought a pile of coats into the dayroom and
threw them on the floor.  Then she read off a list of names and said
for those ladies to put on the coats.  Virginia rushed to the pile.
Daring to throw my good coat on the floor!

After some shoving she was able to get to the pile.  Her coat was not
there.  Her name had been called but her coat was not there.  It was a
chance to trip the comically and pathetically important Miss Green.

"Take any one," said Miss Green.  "It doesn't make any difference. Your
own things have gone.  Hurry up."

"Gone where?"

"Hurry up.  The car's waiting."

So we are going out for a ride.  Good.  There was one coat left now and
Virginia took that.  It was very heavy.  It was dark blue, a man's
coat.  The sleeves hung down beyond her hands and the skirt reached her
heels.  When she started to button the coat she noticed that the front
was covered with some sort of dried paste, not, she hoped, gravy that
had been eaten and regurgitated, exactly what it looked like.

The coated ones lined up near the hall door and then the head nurse
came and said their names.  "Well, ladies," she said, "be good girls
and do what the nurses say.  Goodbye."

The ladies said good-bye.  Virginia glanced back to the part of the
room where some of her friends were sitting.  None of the ones she had
been friendly with was in the coated group.  The coated ones,
strangely, were those she had always avoided, those she had considered
too sick to be socially possible.  But she waved to her friends.  When
you've not had a ride in about a year you can't be too particular.  Her
friends did not wave back to her.  They were looking very unhappy.
Several of them were weeping.  Dear me, I wouldn't show my jealousy so
plainly if any of them had got to go out riding.

Outside a car was waiting for them.  "I don't know how we'll see
anything," said Virginia as she got into the car.  The seats were along
the sides, as in a station wagon or, perhaps, a police wagon.  When the
rear door was closed the ladies sat in twilight.  "I would about as
soon have stayed behind," grumbled Virginia.  "Where are we going?"

"No talking," said Miss Green.

The ride was very short.  "Hardly worth the effort,"

commented Virginia.  She was reminded of the time she and two friends
went to the opera.  It was during their freshman year at college and at
the last possible moment someone had given them tickets for the opera.
None of them had ever been to a real opera.  They drove in town and
parked where someone had told them to.  It was a miserable snowy night
and they all had on their dancing slippers.  They huddled close to a
building until they attracted a cab.  "To the Opera," they ordered
recklessly.  Between them, they had decided, they would surely have
enough to pay for it.  The driver was very fresh.  "No kidding?"  he
said.  Then I said we were in a hurry and would he please drive us to
the Opera at once.  And he drove to the other side of the street.
"Presto chango," he said, "here you are."

Well, here we are, back in a flash.  The weather would not have injured
today's chic costume, driver.

But they were not back.  Though they went through a cage porch that was
familiar they then went into a dayroom that was different.  Very
different.  There was no regular furniture.  There was no carpet.  As
the coated ladies walked through this room the creatures who had
already been in it gathered into an audience.  They were queer-looking
women.  They were dressed in gray-blue denim butterfly garments cut
from the Juniperhill nightgown pattern.  They had very short hair. 
They stared at the newcomers as if this was a parade especially
arranged for their entertainment.  Miss Green spoke to a nurse who
apparently was attached to the place and then she turned to her group
and said to come along.

They marched on through the dayroom to a cemented corridor and a
staircase.  At the first stop some of them were turned over to another
nurse.  At the next stop Miss Green counted them.  "Here they are," she
said to the nurse who had appeared.  Then she said good-bye to this
nurse; she did not say good-bye to the ladies.  "I am Miss Vance," said
the new nurse.  "Come into the dayroom.  You can put your coats on one
of the benches."  "The dayroom was very like the one downstairs.  There
were four or five long wooden benches.  Some of the patients were
sitting on the benches; some were sitting on the brown linoleum; some
were walking around.  In the center of the room an obese woman with a
great deal of rouge on her face was singing.  You could tell she had
had voice training; you could tell this more from her professional
stance than from her voice.  She stood with her hands clasped over her
bay window and she had the self-assurance you do not find

in amateurs.  Her hair was black and cut into a Dutch bob and at her
neck was a large bow of red-tissue paper.  Her dress was one of the
gray-blue habits.

When the prima donna had finished her song someone clapped.  Virginia
clapped too.  The singer bowed.  It was an experienced bow.  She held
up a hand to quell the applause that had died almost at birth and
smiled and shook her head.  Then she retired from the center of the
room and the concert was finished.

Well, said Virginia to herself, this is it.

She sat down on one of the benches.  In one corner a woman was dancing.
By studying the woman's feet Virginia discovered that she was doing
accurate formal ball room dancing.  She did the sort of tango your
parents did when you were a little girl.  Then a one-step, the kind you
learned in dancing school.  She danced beautifully.  It was too bad she
looked so much like a man.  Her iron-gray hair was cut exactly like a
man's and of course the shapeless dress did nothing for her.

"She was a school teacher," said a lady who was sitting beside
Virginia.

"She knows the old dances," said Virginia.  "That is the original
fox-trot."

"She was a school teacher.  What's your name?"

"Virginia."

"I'm Ruth."

"Is this the same building I was in before?"  asked Virginia.

"Where were you before?"  asked Ruth.

A very sick woman.  "I think they called it Receiving."

"Reception," said Ruth.  "No, this is different.  I used to be in
Reception."

"What do they call this building?"

"Five."

"Just Five?"

"Well, Building Five."

"Why did they change me?"

Ruth grinned at her.  "Don't you know?"  Virginia did not like her
somehow.

"They just said we were going for a ride.  They'll be coming to take us
back soon, I expect."

Ruth laughed.  "They brought me over, just for the ride, three years
ago."

"But why didn't they keep me in Receiving?"

"Reception.  You stay there till you go home, if you go home before a
year.  Otherwise you have to go to one of the

other buildings.  You can't stay in Reception more than a year."

"I hadn't been there a year."

Ruth shrugged.  "Sometimes they know sooner, I guess."  She had a
string which she was windinginand out of her fingers.

"What's that you're doing?"  asked Virginia irritably.

"Cat's cradle."

"What?"  "Cat's cradle.  You want to do it?"  She handed Virginia the
string.

"I don't know how."

"She doesn't know how to do a cat's cradle," said Ruth to another lady
who had come up to them.

The new lady also had a string which she was winding.  She looked hard
at Virginia.  "I never saw anyone who couldn't do a cat's cradle," she
said.

"Look," said Ruth, "I'll show you.  Give me the string."  She took the
string and in a twinkling made it into a complicated pattern.  She said
for Virginia to do it.  She gave Virginia several chances but Virginia
could not do it.  "She's in a bad way," said Ruth to her colleague.

Another lady came up to show Virginia a doll.  It was made of rags.
"You see," said this lady.  She pulled one of the arms and the other
shortened.  "Cute?"

"Very cute," said Virginia.

"I make them all the time," said the lady.  She spoke jerkily and now
and then raised her right hand into the air as if to catch something.

"Why do you do that with your arm?"  asked Virginia.

"Do what?"

"Raise it up that way."

"I do not raise it up that way," said the lady.  She raised it up that
way.  "I'm not nervous," she said.  "You seem to be nervous.  You can
keep the doll."

"No, it's yours."

"That's all right.  I'll let you keep it.  I make them all the time.
The others can make dolls but not with arms that pull."  She pulled the
doll's arms to demonstrate and then she went away from Ruth and
Virginia.

"She's very sick," said Ruth.  Virginia got up and went toward a
window. Most of the ladies in this ward, she noticed with revulsion,
had horrible skin.  They had great red sores on their faces.  Syphilis.
 I must be very careful in the washroom.

Remember Senja.  One morning Senja met me at the door of her
apartment.  Oh, Jeannie, she cried.... Someone else calls me Jeannie...
Senja couldn't say Ginny.  Jeannie, she said, I haf syphil-lous.
Yatzterday whan I was in store I haf to go my Gott how I haf an I dint
put paper on the sit and now I haf the syphil-lous.... She was always
having diseases.  She read about them in the newspaper.  Cancer of the
brats was her favorite.  She really was cracked.... Says you?

"Supper, ladies," shouted Miss Vance.  She was an amazon of a woman.
There was a nurse, a long time ago, that I thought was large; I hadn't
seen anything.

The ladies scrambled over to Miss Vance.  Virginia tried to keep a
little air between herself and the others.  However, such foul-smelling
air was undoubtedly as thick with germs as were the ladies.

"I don't know yet," the nurse was saying.  "Wait a sec."  She cocked
her head in the direction of the hall and then she bellowed,
"Tunnel!"

She unlocked the door and the ladies sped down the stairs.  Virginia
had a hard time keeping up with them.  They raced into a basement and
then into a tunnel.

The tunnel was something for a horror story.  There were lights but the
pale glow they gave off was swallowed in the midnight pools between the
lights.  The walls were cement patterned with cracks.  Water seeped
slowly from some of the wider cracks and on the uneven floor were
puddles of dark water.

The tunnel was divided into two lanes.  The dividing wall was of some
sort of heavy chicken wire and on the other side of it ladies scurried
along like gray-blue rats.  Now and then there was a lady in a canvas
jacket laced up the back.  Virginia saw her breath in the pale light as
she panted to catch up with her crowd.

They came to a staircase.  This also was divided into two parts but the
dividing agent in this case was merely a railing made of two iron bars.
A very fat old lady crawled between the bars and went up the other
side.  It made no difference.  You all came out on the same landing.

At the door was a nurse, oh, such a large nurse.  She unlocked the
door, but she held an arm across the opening and the ladies shoved
against her.  When she dropped her arm the ladies spilled into an
enormous room and rushed for a line that was forming on one side.

There were tables and chairs in the room.  There must

have been forty tables.  The line, more of a crack-the-whip, advanced
rapidly toward a chromium counter.  Ladies carrying trays were going to
the tables now.

When Virginia came to the pile of trays she took one.  A bowl of food
was put on her tray and then another counter attendant slapped a
sandwich onto it.  The woman behind Virginia grabbed the sandwich, but
the counter attendant gave Virginia another one.

She was handed a dessert.  It was a custard in a small round pan.  Then
she picked up a mug of coffee.  It had milk in it, of course, and she
was quite sure it would also have sugar, but she hadn't the courage to
ask for black unsweetened coffee.  At the end of the steam table was a
tray of forks and spoons.  There were no knives.  She took her tray and
went to a table where there were several empty places.  She asked if it
would be all right for her to sit there.  Nobody looked up and so she
sat down.  She had eaten most of what was in the bowl when the meal was
suddenly over.  The ladies snatched up their trays and rushed to the
front of the room where they slid the trays through a window.
Everything was done as if a train had to be caught.  They ran back to
the door and down into the tunnel.  They rushed through the tunnel and
raced up the stairs.  When Virginia started to turn in at one of the
doors off the stair hall a nurse shook her head.  "You don't belong
here," she said.

Where had your own ladies got to?  She hurried up another flight and
there was Miss Vance.  She went into the dayroom but none of the ladies
was there.  She could hear them though, and she followed the noise and
came to the washroom.  The washroom was jammed.

The ladies milled about restlessly.  Some of them were smoking.  There
was no standing in line for a booth.  You elbowed your way.  No matter
how long you stood you still had to elbow your way.  You had also to do
some pushing while you remained sitting or else you did not remain.

A pasty-faced woman came to Virginia.  She had a notebook and pencil.
"You are Mrs.  Cunningham?"  she asked.

"Yes," said Virginia.  The woman was not wearing one of the denim
sacks.  She had on the kind of sweater the girls were making when you
were in high school.  You threw your thread around the needle twice to
get that balloon effect.  The woman's blue-serge skirt was very long
and she had her hair done into puffs over her ears.  Cootie garages.

"Have you had a bowel movement today, Mrs.  Cunning ham?"  asked this
relic.

"Well, really!"  said Virginia.

"I keep the record.  I'm Miss Sommerville."

"Oh."

"Have you?"  Miss Sommerville looked at Virginia anxiously.

"Yes," said Virginia.  She could not remember, but Miss Sommerville
seemed pleased with the answer.  She made a check in her notebook and
went off to another lady.

Presently the rack of nightgowns was pushed in, but the nurse gave
Virginia one of the Christmas gowns.  Just inside of the neck, at the
back, was one of the small labels which were so easy to sew on and
which you had been unable to manage.  A new number had been added to
your label.  The 14 was crossed off and now there was a 33.  How
swiftly I fly backward.

She was assigned to a dormitory that had seven beds.  Along each of the
side walls were three cots and one was in the center, just in front of
the windows.  That was Virginia's.  She got into the cot.  Having had
to turn her glasses in she could not see what her roommates looked
like. She could hear them, though.  One of them was telling a story
about the time she and Peter went to a Catholic church and Peter nudged
her and said, Get up, old woman, they're 'all getting up.  "And my
knees were so stiff I couldn't, and I said to him, Peter, I said, I'm
on my knees for life.  I'll always have to be a Catholic."

Virginia thought it was a rather funny story and said so, but the
narrator told her to mind her own business.

"You're the new one, aren't you?"  said another voice.  "Don't mind
Molly.  I'm Louise."

"My name is Virginia."

"How long have you been at Juniperhill?"

"Since last February," said Virginia.  "I was in Mendelin Hospital in
the city for a little while before."

"I was there too," said Louise.  "I liked it better than here, didn't
you?"

"I don't remember it at all."

"I liked it," said Louise.  "The halls were wider.  It was sort of
friendly."

"I got folks," said another voice.  "I ain't like some.  I got a place
to go to and the doctor he knows it.  You got a tempreture of nothin,
Eva, he says.  Eva, he says, you got a tempreture of nothin and you can
go home.  He says this

to me and I'm goin home.  I got a place to go.  I got folks that want
me."

"I haven't," said Louise.  "But I've made my way before and I can do it
again.  I just wish they'd say here's five dollars, Louise, get out. We
never want to see you again.  I'd get, all right.  They wouldn't need
to worry about that."

"What sort of job would you look for?"  asked Virginia.  It was getting
dark now.  She had figured out which bed Louise occupied, but she had
no idea what she looked like.  Eva, she gathered from the quality of
the voice, was a colored woman.  The woman who had gone to church with
Peter sounded old.

"I was a telephone supervisor once," said Louise.  "That was before Mr.
Hawes, but I could do it again.  Mr.  Hawes wanted to marry me but I
said once was enough.  I was married once, but he died."  "I'm
sorry."

"It was a long time ago.  I can hardly remember what he looked like.  I
never got over Lou, though.  She was only six when she died.  She
looked so pretty in her coffin, just like she was asleep.  I wish you
could have seen her."

A nurse came into the dormitory and turned off the radiator and opened
the windows, "It's a cold night, ladies," she said.  "Good night."

"Good night," said Virginia.

"I got a tempreture of nothin," said Eva.  "The doctor says so."

"You go to sleep, Eva," said the nurse.  "Don't you go keeping the
other ladies awake."  "I got folks to go to," said Eva.

"Peter," said the old woman, "turn over and stop snoring."  Virginia
pulled her warm nightgown over her feet.  She should have, she knew,
been frightened and depressed by the newest transfer.  She was in a
much worse building now and none of the patients she had seen so far
struck her as being good risks.  And yet the hopelessness that had been
hounding her had lessened and for the first time she dared to believe
that she might get well.  Perhaps her foundation for this beginning of
optimism was childish or, terrifying thought, perhaps it was the start
of delusions.  However, when you realize you aren't the sick est in
your ward, it does something for you.  I'm not so ill as the old woman;
I don't think Robert's here.  I know where I am and I know I am
sick--yes, still foggy, still a woman who is not sane.

Shock treatments.  Why bother with insulin, metrazol or

electricity?  Long ago they lowered insane persons into snake pits;
they thought that an experience that might drive a sane person out of
his wits might send an insane person back into sanity.  By design or by
accident, she couldn't know, a more modern "they" had given V.
Cunningham a far more drastic shock treatment now than Dr.  Kik had
been able to manage with his clamps and wedges and assistants.  They
had thrown her into a snake pit and she had been shocked into knowing
that she would get well.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

For a week it appeared that the only diversions offered ladies in
Thirty-three were the races to the cafeteria.  Sometimes, when the
weather was milder, they went outside to the cafeteria.  It was quicker
that way.  When word came that the overland route was to be taken a
nurse piled coats on one of the benches and several times Virginia got
her old friend, Dried Gravy.  Coats were not provided for the tunnel
trips, although the tunnel was far colder than the out-of doors.

All of the cafeteria meals were similar to the first one Virginia had
had there.  Of morning there was cereal instead of stew and sometimes,
gala occasions, there were hard boiled eggs.  There was always trouble
on egg mornings.  Invariably a few ladies would throw their eggs.
Virginia was tempted to join in this game, but she forced herself to
eat.  The eggs smelled bad but then any eggs that had been cooked hard
and long take on a peculiar sulphur smell.  They were not necessarily
spoiled eggs.  The only really good part of each meal was the bread.
The bread sandwiches were stuck together with a smear of butter.

There was no time to look around.  You ate as fast as you could.
Virginia choked down what she had time for, not because she was hungry
but because she knew it was imperative to gain weight, The maddening
pace set by the diners was never relaxed and she was never able to
finish a meal.  She considered copying a lady who stuffed bread into
the front of her dress.

On Robert's visiting day there was real food and time to eat.  He
always brought a treat along and then took her to the store.  She could
have her coffee black at the store and this was nice; she had never
been able to enjoy the smell of

canned milk.  On visiting day she wore her own coat and the nurses
were very complimentary and they would not permit the other ladies to
rub up against her.

Although there was a polisher in the dayroom there was no intense
feeling about it.  You shoved it around if you wanted to.  The nurses
were not very particular in Thirty three.  You had a feeling they knew
when they were beaten.  They seldom raised their voices, except to
announce meals or to stop the occasional drifts toward violence.  On
the whole the ladies were well behaved.  The singer sang.  Sometimes
she had a paper bow on her head; once she had a lavish sash of toilet
paper around her abdomen.  Virginia wondered where she kept her private
stock.  What the nurses doled out was not from rolls.  It might be well
to make up to the singer.  There had been days when the nurse had said
she was sorry, but there was no toilet paper.  She was sorry.

The ladies who belonged to the cat's-cradle society worked at their
strings by the hour.  Virginia was never able to master the art.  The
lady who made dolls made dolls all day long.  If she hadn't been
interrupted so often by the need to clutch the air she would have
filled the ward with arm pulling dolls.  And the dancer danced all day
long.

There were ladies who talked.  They fixed their eyes on things unseen
by others and they spoke in animated voices.  Some of them seemed to
enjoy their conversations; they would pause, as if listening to the
unseen and then they would chatter on.  Virginia came to think of these
women as not being especially crazy; it was a way to pass the time and
possibly a better way than the cat's cradling.

There was a girl who would have been pretty had she not been disfigured
by the Juniperhill skin disease.  This girl always carried a Bible and
she preached sermons about vegetarianism.  She had an effective voice
but her sermons boiled down to a repetition of If you saw their eyes as
they go to the slaughter house you would not eat their flesh.  She
always, somehow, made Virginia very hungry.  "It says right here in the
Holy Bible," the preacher would say, and she would slap her Bible and
then go into the eye patter.  Virginia sometimes wondered if the
hospital had hired her to go around with this sermon.  Certainly the
commissary department did not believe his serving much, if any, meat.

There was another young woman who had a religious turn of mind.  This
one had given birth to Jesus some days.  Virginia tried to talk the
girl out of this obsession, but the girl smiled sweetly and said she
was Mary, Mother of Our

Lord.  Some days she was not Mary.  Then she was Hester, a
twenty-year-old girl from Brooklyn.  Until she got sick she was a star
student in journalism.  When she was not being the Mother of Our Lord
she was talking about wanting to be a newspaperwoman.  Virginia always
regretted she had not met Hester earlier.  Earlier she might have
fallen in with the Mary idea and learned something about the Old Days,
but now she was far too well.

"I had a friend here a long time ago," she said one day to Hester--this
was a day when Mary was not present.  "It was back in Reception.  She
was a newspaperwoman and she was almost well.  She's back at her job
now, I imagine."

"Maybe she could help me," said Hester.

"Her name was Grace," said Virginia.  "I wish I knew her last name."

"Never mind," said Hester.  "I can find her.  I think we'll always know
each other, don't you?"

It was a rather terrible thought.  "Just so everyone isn't able to spot
us," said Virginia.  "Could it leave a permanent scar, do you think?"

But Hester was too young for this sort of talk.  On days when she was
Mary, Virginia would remind the girl of the newspaper ambition but
Hester would shake her head.  "You speak of things I know nothing
about," she would say.  "I am the Mother of Our Lord.  I gave birth to
Jesus."  It might have been interesting for a very well person or for a
very sick person; for an in-between it was a great bore.

And in general the life in the ward was a great bore.  Eccentricity
that captured your attention at first became deadly monotonous.  The
dancer never stopped dancing; the talkers never stopped talking. 
Louise was a perfectly normal woman, but in the daytime she was unable
to see flesh and blood.  Also she was one of the ladies who didn't wear
shoes.

One night Virginia asked her about this.  "I'm sure they would give you
a pair of shoes, Louise," she said.

"Yes, they would," said Louise.  "They have.  You should see the shoes
they tried to make me wear.  I've always been very careful with my
feet.  I wear a quad and I never in my life paid less than fifteen
dollars."

"I know, but the sidewalk is so cold.  And there's water in the
tunnel."  "I won't wear what they give me.  I have more respect for my
feet."

Louise, however, would wear stockings, the long black cotton stockings
issued to the patients who had no supplies

of their own.  Several of the Thirty-three ladies went barefoot.
Sometimes there was snow on the sidewalk when the ladies went to the
cafeteria but the barefooted ones padded along as if they did not
mind.

The dreary life seemed to go on indefinitely and then one day Miss
Vance said Dr.  Terry wanted to see Virginia.  Virginia had never heard
of any Dr.  Terry and she said so.  "He's your doctor," said Miss
Vance, and Virginia said oh no, he was not, that Dr.  Kik was her
doctor. "Well," said the nurse, "you have a new one now.  Dr. 
Terry."

She took Virginia downstairs to an office whose door said Dr.  Terry
and when Virginia went in she saw a young man in a white coat, very
young fellow who could not have been more than an intern.  She was
disgusted.

"How do you do, Mrs.  Cunningham," said this young squirt.  "Won't you
sit down?"

She sat near the desk.  Behind that desk he looked like a child.  He
squirmed around in the swivel chair and seemed desperate for something
to say.  Then suddenly he shot a question at her.  "Just what is there
about the hospital that you don't like?"

Was he serious?  It would be more sensible to ask if there is anything
one does like.  "I hate the smell of that formaldehyde," she said.

"Paraldehyde," he said.

"Yes.  I confuse the words.  And it tastes the way I imagine
formaldehyde does."

His smile was the sort you use when you wish to let the other person
know you understand he was trying for humor.  "But you don't take it
now."

"I know, but the others in my ward seem to."

"We admit that paraldehyde is a trifle--pungent," he said.  "What
else?"

"What else don't I like?  For one thing, I'm so afraid I'll catch one
of those dreadful diseases that make your skin break out.  I can't
think of the words.  Oh, yes, syphilis and the other one.  The washroom
and all those women with the terrible sores..."

"Everyone has been examined," he said.  "There is no one in this
building who has either syphilis or gonorrhea."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure, Mrs.  Cunningham," he said with the dignity that only
very recent medical-school graduates can achieve.

"But why do they have the sores?  Is it something about the diet?"

How his face stiffened!  "Are you interested in the study of medicine,
Mrs.  Cunningham?"

Oh, dear, I shouldn't even imply that there could be something wrong
with his dear Juniper.  "I simply don't want to catch whatever it is,"
she said.

"You have no cause for alarm," he said.

And curiosity killed a cat?  I'd very much like to know what makes
those sores but I'll have to be satisfied with assuming it's dietary.
If it had nothing to do with improper diet, wouldn't you have said so,
smarty?  And I've no interest in the study of medicine, thank you, but
I am interested in people.  My interest in one Dr.  Terry is very
slight, however, and so you can relax and stop waving the flag for
Juniperhill.  "Where's Dr.  Kik?"

"Dr.  Kik?  He is in Reception."

"I know, but I'm his patient.  I want to see him."

The young man looked down at the enormous desk which undoubtedly made
him feel important but which unfortunately made him look insignificant.
"As a matter of fact," he said, "Dr.  Kik's been ill."

Kik, the executioner, the Young Jailer--if he dies I am lost.  He's a
queer man who hides behind you and asks impertinent and impossible
questions, but he came running when I needed him to come running and
when he said, "It's all right now, Jeannie," I knew I was safe.

"Nothing to be alarmed about," said the alarmist of a doctor who adored
the word "alarm."  "Just a cold, as a matter of fact."

What a fool he is, scaring me half to death and then saying it is just
a cold.

"Was that all you wanted to say to me?"

"I didn't ask to see you, Dr.  Terry," she said.

On the way back to the ward she asked Miss Vance if Dr.  Terry was an
intern and the nurse said no, he was a full fledged doctor.  "I can
hardly believe it," said Virginia.  "He's so jittery and so pompous."

"Maybe it was you, kid," sniggered the nurse.  She probably fancied
herself a pile of monkeys.

"I won't have him for my doctor."

"Sure, sure," said Miss Vance.  "But he's a nice kid, Virginia."

"I'd rather have a good doctor."  "He's no slouch at doctoring."

"I don't care.  Dr.  Kik's my doctor," said Virginia, "and I'm not
interested in making a change."

But evidently Dr.  Terry was meddling in her case.  That afternoon she
was invited to a popcorn party.  Miss Vance thought that was just too
super for words.  When the Popcorn Ladies were summoned, Virginia
stumped over to the door to join the group.  If you were going to get
out of this prison it looked as if you'd have to do what they said,
even to the extent of going to a damn popcorn party.  I don't like
popcorn and I don't feel like going to any kind of party, but has that
anything to do with it?  Believe me, when they throw a party here they
can be very sure of their number, though come to think of it, perhaps
sometimes a patient goes off into the deep end of illness just at the
very thought of a Juniper party.

They gave the party in an alcove just outside of Ward Thirty-three.
Four card tables were set up.  On a smaller table was an electric
popper, and a nurse was turning the handle around and around.

Two women in civilian dress assisted at the party.  Virginia h ad a
sickening conviction that they were church or club women earning merit
badges and the privilege of telling their acquaintances over teacups
about exotic and dangerous adventures among the insane.  In loud
saccharine voices these amateur social workers explained that there was
to be a very gay game with prizes.  Virginia was unable to concentrate
on anything but the bitter difference between her clothes and the
costumes of the hostesses, but the other patients got through the game
of lotto without effort or enthusiasm.  They played it as if it was a
chore to be got out of the way.  When a lady filled a row she announced
it and she took her prize, a candy bar, and divided it 'among the other
players at her table.  The hostesses were upset about this dividing and
would try to explain that when you won you were entitled to keep the
prize for yourself.  The sick ladies looked at the well ladies and did
not understand; they had quite forgotten the ways of the world.

It took about a half hour to get rid of 'the candy bars.  By that time
the hostesses were not looking so pleased and sleek and they were eager
to state that the party was over.  The nurse who was presiding at the
popcorn table gave each guest a scoop of popcorn in a paper napkin.

"My, I bet you had fun," said Miss Vance.

"Yes," said Virginia.  "Gambling and everything."  "Oh, boy," said
Miss Vance.  "Hot dog, eh?"  She accepted a few grains of popcorn. 
"I'm wasting away to a shadow," she mourned.  "Down to two forty."

The night nurses were smaller than the day nurses.  But at night the
active ladies were given paraldehyde and so it was not necessary for
the night nurses to be so large.

Virginia had got into the habit of sitting or lying on the floor.  It
was simpler.  If you sat on a bench you were likely to be shoved off
very quickly and so why not start out on the floor?  She had a favorite
place, near a door.  There was a crack under the door and the air that
blew through that crack did not smell of paraldehyde.  It was very
refreshing, but after a few days she had a bad case of sniffles.

She asked Miss Vance for some kleenex, but the nurse said there was
none.  She gave her a rag, however.  Virginia tore the rag into two
pieces; the larger piece was for daytime use and the smaller piece for
night.  In the evening she washed the daytime handkerchief and hung it
on the radiator behind her cot.  In the morning she washed her night
rag and hung it at her belt to dry.  She had to guard her rags
carefully because of the doll lady.  One morning the doll maker managed
a brilliant coup and captured both of the rags and for two days
Virginia had to use her skirt She would have used her slip but by now
her nose was far too tender for the coarse material.  She tried to hold
her skirt so that the used places would not show and whenever she was
in the washroom she washed the soiled spots.  It was a relief to find
one of the rag dolls.  She took the doll apart and so again she had
handkerchiefs.  By this time the doll maker had got hold of other
materials and so had no interest in Virginia's supplies.

The last time that Robert had visited he had left her two packs of
cigarettes.  Virginia was careful when she opened her candy box. Robert
had said she was to keep the cigarettes for herself but of course she
had to give a few away now and then.  There was a colored woman who was
always hounding her.  She never once saw that colored woman smoke a
whole cigarette.  She put the whole ones down her neck and smoked the
butts she was able to tease from the other ladies.  Once Virginia asked
her what she did with her whole cigarettes

and the woman sneered at her.  "I only smokes butts," she said.

After Virginia and Louise became such good friends in the dormitory
Virginia fully expected they would be friends in the dayroom.  Often
she went to Louise in the hope of continuing a subject they had been
discussing the night before but Louise would never talk to her in the
daytime.  She talked.  She talked continually but to someone Virginia
could not see.  Virginia found herself becoming very jealous of the
unseen entertainers of Thirty-three.  She was so terribly lonesome and
she had no invisible companion.

One afternoon she was told she could go to O.T. She and five other
ladies went down the hall to the alcove where the popcorn party had
been held and there a young foreign woman was trying to teach the
ladies to sew and knit.  "It's no use," said Virginia.  "I can't
concentrate.  I'd like to read."

"Ah," said the teacher, "you enjoy to read, yes?"

You enjoy the choo-choo, yes?  "Yes."

"Perhaps one day you will write, yes?"

"I've written for many years," said Virginia.  God, how I hate to be
spoken to as if I was a puppy.

"How interesting," said the teacher.  "What is it that you write for
many years?"

"Novels," said Virginia.  "A couple of them have been published."

"So?"  The teacher was giving her a queer look.

"Afternoon of a Faun and A Little Night Music," said Virginia.  "Not
that you would ever have heard of them."

"So you write music also," commented the teacher.  She had a face that
would have been tragic in an American, but for a foreign woman it was
rather effective.

"No, those were the titles of my novels."  It was obvious that the
teacher thought she was making all this up.  Why didn't you claim
Ulysses?  But for a minute I thought she was accepting me.

"Next time I shall bring you the Times' book section," said the
teacher.  "You are interested in books.  You would like that part of
the New York Times newspaper.  It is about books."

"Yes," said Virginia.

But the next time she went to O.T. there was no mention of literature.
This time the teacher insisted that Virginia work on a baby quilt.
Virginia sat at the quilting frame and did almost no work.  While she
was sitting there a man came by and said how lovely the spread was and
when he

had gone one of the quilters said proudly that he was her doctor.

"Dr.  Kik is my doctor," said Virginia.

"Kik," said the teacher.  "I never heard of any Dr.  Kik."

"He's in Reception," said one of the ladies.

"He's my doctor just the same," said Virginia.  "He's sick just now. He
had a bad cold."  There, that proves it.  And the very next day Miss
Vance said Dr.  Kik had sent word.  He wanted to see Virginia.  He
would be in Dr.  Terry's office.  Oh, Virginia was excited.  She
smoothed out her largest rag and folded it to make it look like a real
handkerchief.  She asked if she might wear a different dress, but Miss
Vance said her dress was all right.  It was that same old blue dress.
Virginia dampened the almost obliterated marks of the pleats and tried
to set them with her fingers.  This was not very successful.  She was
able, however, to sneak a piece of string from one of the cat's cradle
ladies and she tied the string around the waist of her slip.  Evidently
it had been easier for the nurse to provide her with a hospital slip
rather than to hunt up one of her own.  The hospital slips were just
like the nightgowns, except for sleeves.  The slip Virginia was given
hung four inches below the hem of her dress, but with the string
tightly tied around her middle she could blouse up the voluminous
garment.

Miss Vance accompanied her to Dr.  Terry's office and knocked on the
door.  The voice that said to come in was his.

"Ah, Jeannie," he said.  "How are you?"

"I'm fine," she said, "except for a sniffle."  She glanced at the rag
she had folded so carefully.  What a wad it looked.  "But you, Doctor,
how are you?  I heard you had a cold."

He shrugged and then sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk.  He
looked as if he belonged behind an executive's desk; he was no squirt.
"It was nothing.  Tell me, how is it with you?"

"Well," she said, "it's rather dull."

"You have been to O.T. twice."

"And to a popcorn party," she said.  "Even so, the days are very long.
I wish I had something to read.  But I suppose it would be almost
impossible to read in that dayroom."

"Yes," he said.  "Yes, I am afraid so.  Tell me, what is it you
want?"

"Robert," she said.

He looked at her and then he got up and went over to the windows.  "But
what else?"

"I don't care," she said.

"When was he last here?"  he asked.

"Wednesday," she said.  "It's terrible to see him just one afternoon
every two weeks."

"You will see him again this Wednesday."

"But he was here last Wednesday."

The doctor came back to his chair.  "He will come this week also.  I
promise you."

"Oh, thank you.  You have been so kind.  This is Tuesday, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Thank you so much."

There was a miniature rubber tire ash tray on the desk.  Dr.  Kik
picked this up and looked at it as if trying to figure it out.  She had
the feeling that he was waiting for her to speak.

"There is something that bothers me a good deal," she said.  "Seeing
you I know I have seen you before.  Many times.  I mean, I know that I
know you well, but I don't remember.  Sometimes in the dining hall or
on the walks or in the store I see people I know, that is, their faces
'are familiar, but I don't know why.  I know I have been here almost a
year and yet I remember nothing before last summer.  And only patches
since then."

"Oh, come," he said to the ash tray.

"I know, Robert told me, that first I was in another hospital.  I
remember nothing of that.  I don't remember being brought to
Juniperhill."

"Come," he said.  "Of course you remember.  You and I had many
conversations.  You remember."

She shook her head.  "No," she said.  "I've read that shock treatments
sometimes do that, but I want to know if it's temporary amnesia."

"You are becoming a doctor," he said.  He put the ash tray down.  "You
interest yourself in psychiatry."  His voice was still very beautiful.
No change of mood could coarsen so lovely a voice, but she sensed that
he was displeased.  "You dramatize," he said.  "You recall something
you have read and you attempt to fit the facts into that pattern.  You
remember everything, of course."

"I'm sorry," she said, "but I don't.  You are mistaken."

He shoved the ash tray from him.  She understood that he wished her to
leave.  She understood also that he was no longer her doctor and that
he did not wish to be 'bothered by her.  This interview, she realized,
was unofficial and for some reason it had gone badly.  He was no longer
interested

in her as a case or as a person.  I know this as a child knows how a
magician does his tricks.  The mentally ill woman reads the mind of the
doctor.  He does not like to be told he is mistaken.

Suddenly she was acutely matching breast-pocket handkerchief.  She got
up.  "Good-bye," she said.  She wanted to run from this elegant man.

He stood up.  "Good-bye, Mrs.  Cunningham," he said.

It was nearly supper time before she remembered he had promised that
Robert would come the next day.  She forgot her sorrow about losing Dr.
Kik and went racing to the cafeteria with the other ladies.

Miss Vance had finally listened to her appeals and now she had her
leather jacket every day.  She wore it to meals Whether they went by
Tunnel Ladies or by Outside Ladies.  Tonight as she hurried along
through the tunnel a woman who

to the ward.  She was pretty much alone when she saw Grace.

Grace, the fair girl who had won a hoover apron, the girl who had been
almost well enough to go back to her job on the newspaper.  "Oh,
Grace," wailed Virginia.

The girl on the other side of the wire partition stopped when Virginia
called her name.  She stood very still and looked through the fence.

"But I thought you'd gone home," said Virginia.  "Months and months
ago."

Grace stared at her.

"I'm Virginia.  You remember me.  We were good friends.  We used to sit
in the sun and talk.  Remember?  It was in Ward Three, Grace.  You used
to tell me where my bed was and what number my hanger was and things
like that.  I was always forgetting everything but you always knew."

Grace's eyes were nearly black in the dim light of the tunnel.  They
were fixed on Virginia but they seemed not to see.

"They have cut your pretty hair so short," said Virginia.  She put her
hands up to her face to brush her tears away.  "I'm sorry.  I'm really
glad to see you.  Of course I'm not.  You know what I mean.  I'd
thought you were back home."

Grace said absolutely nothing.

And then Virginia noticed that her friend was wearing one of the canvas
jackets.  She had seen many of these jackets since coming to Building
Five and she supposed they were what are called strait jackets.
Previously she had thought a strait jacket was something that covered
all of you but perhaps the kind she was seeing here was semi-formal.
They looked like lumberjacks.  The arm like appendages were crossed and
fastened in the back.  The whole contraption was laced up the back.  It
looked as if there might be straps or something for the patient to rest
her arms in, at any rate the arms did not dangle.  The ladies who wore
these jackets went directly to seats in the dining room and nurses took
them trays and fed them.  Just yesterday Virginia had sat next to a
lady who was being fed.  Between bites she told the nurse about a trip
she had had in Europe some years back.  She was an aristocratic-looking
woman with a Best Bostonian way of speaking.  The nurse appeared to be
listening to her with interest and respect.  Both of them gave the
impression of being too well bred to notice that one was being fed by
the other.  Virginia had seen this Boston woman many times and always
the woman was wearing a canvas jacket.  You were tortured by

curiosity.  It was impossible to imagine that so dignified a person
needed to be tied up.

Grace started to move away from the barrier.  "Don't go," said
Virginia.  "Come back, Grace.  Turn around and maybe I can reach
through and unfasten that thing.  It is ridiculous for them to... I
never knew a kinder person, a more gentle person.  As if you
would..."

Grace paused long enough to give Virginia a look which made her
grateful for the jacket and the fence.  Yes, it was as if she would.
Even the thought of Robert's coming visit failed to remove the memory
of Grace's parting glare.

Louise tried to strike up the usual dormitory conversation, but
Virginia was unresponsive this night.  Off in her corner Eva rustled
papers and spoke of her non-existent temperature.  Louise surmised that
Eva had a quantity of candy bars hidden away and that she ate candy
each night in bed.  "My great ambition," said Louise, "is to have a
candy bar in bed.  A candy bar any place, any time.  My, how I would
like a piece of candy.  Someone gave me a piece when I was in the other
hospital.  That was a nice place.  So sort of friendly."

"I ain't like some," said Eva.  "I got a tempreture of nothin and folks
to go to.  The doctor says so."

And the old one spoke sharply to Peter.  Virginia knew now which old
one Molly was.  She was the one whose head was done up in adhesive.
There was an adhesive strap under her chin and it gave her a rakish,
sporting look.  "My husband's coming tomorrow," said Virginia, "and I
want to get some sleep."

But before she went to sleep she thought a long time about Grace. Grace
also had been so certain of recovery.

The next day she did not try to eat much at dinner.  Robert was coming.
After dinner she waited patiently in the dayroom and every time Miss
Vance came into the room she expected her to say he had come.

At last she went to the nurse and asked why he was so late.  "But he
was here last week," said Miss Vance.

"I know, but Dr.  Kik said yesterday that he would come today."

"Oh," said the nurse.  "Well--he's flying."  She winked at Virginia and
rushed off.

Flying?  Is it far enough from town?  I wish he wouldn't.

It only takes an hour by bus and so why is he later?  It could not
take more than a half hour by air.

It was supper time before she gave up hope.  During the long afternoon
she had imagined many gruesome things.  She also decided that she had
misunderstood Miss Vance, that the nurse had said "lying" instead of
"flying" and had meant Dr.  Kik.  Apparently the doctor had not been
telling the truth but you did not expect a nurse to be so blunt about a
doctor.  You knew that the nurses sometimes amused themselves by saying
odd things to the patients and you supposed they thought it made no
difference.

"Did your husband come?"  asked Louise when they were in bed.  She and
Virginia had sat side by side most of the afternoon but of course
Louise did not know that.  She had spent most of the day with a
hallucination brother and they had had a terrific fight.  Virginia,
listening now and then, had almost seen the brother.  The fight was
about Mama's will and involved sharp remarks about death-bed influence
and who had paid most of the mortgage.

"No," said Virginia.  "I suppose the doctor just said it to make me
feel good at the time.  I suppose he thought I would forget it right
away.  He won't believe me when I say I've forgotten him, though.  I
don't know.  They talk to us as if we were children."

This reminded Louise of her daughter.  She told a bright saying or
two.

"I'm sick," said Virginia.  "I know that all right.  But damn if I'm
that sick."

"What did you say?"

"Nothing.  I guess I was talking to myself."

"Mercy," said Louise, "don't get started on that.  The way some of the
women in this ward talk to themselves..."

"I got a tempreture of nothin," said Eva.  "I ain't like some."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Next day Virginia found something to read.  It was a small piece of
newspaper.  It had been almost a year since she had seen any part of a
newspaper.  Fortunately the piece had been torn from the amusement
advertisements and so gave more material for thought than you could
have got from a torn-off news story.  She studied the ads and felt less
isolated.  Life with Father was still running.

and here is the announcement of the Wagner cycle.  We went last year.
Just last year?  What a long time Melchior and Flagstad stood and sang
and sang that wonderful music and when we went out we felt as if we had
been battered and squeezed and drained dry.  But where is her name?
What has happened to her?

The scrap of paper gave you something to think about for hours.  It was
not easy to hit upon things to think about and once you had assigned
yourself a topic it was difficult to think.  She had invented a private
therapy.  Thinking Therapy, she called it.  T.T. Ah1 Right T.T. Lady,
she would say to herself and then she would have her class in thinking.
A one-pupil class.  It was hard but she felt it was important to learn
again how to think.  It seemed queer to her that the hospital had no
interest in teaching its patients to think.  Juniperhill's goal was to
Keep Them Quiet.  Perhaps a group of thinking patients would have
disturbed the peace.  Let people think and at once they are drawing up
petitions and demanding Rights.  There simply were not enough nurses to
handle thinkers.

One of Virginia's T.T. assignments was The history of the Modern
American Novel.  She had read a good deal on this subject and could
remember enough to occupy herself for quite some time.  She also
thought, in a lighter mood, about Famous Writers I Have Heard Speak.
She had heard many famous writers but none she could recall who should
have accepted the invitation.  It was, of course, rewarding to be able
to say you had seen Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood
Anderson and Zona Gale and so on.  It was too bad not to be able to say
what they had said, but of course no one cared.  What people cared
about was what the writers looked like and, to tell the truth, they did
not care a great deal about this.

But what had happened to Flagstad?  Virginia stopped in the tunnel to
ask the nurse who stood at the fork to direct traffic.  The nurse shook
her head and motioned for Virginia to go on to the cafeteria.  For a
moment Virginia saw the tunnel as the nurse must have seen it.  There
the sane woman stood alone at the dark crossroad, alone except for
several ladies who stampeded through the gloom.  Virginia could
sympathize with the nurse, but she did want to know what had happened
to the world's greatest soprano.  "Kirsten Flagstad," she said.  "Why
isn't she in the Wagner cycle this year?"

"Maybe she's in another building," said the nurse.  "I

don't know all the ladies' names.  Go to the cafeteria, please."

Virginia ran to catch up with her ladies.  She reached the stairs in
time to see the very fat one crawl through the iron bars.  "That's the
way she measures herself," said Virginia to anyone who might care to
learn the answer.  "When she can't get between the bars any more she
will start to diet."

In the dining room she ate her dessert first and in this way was
certain of getting the most fattening part of the meal.  She had
developed speed and had almost finished her bowl of stew before the Big
Run Back began.

Sometimes she wondered what the cafeteria workers thought about their
customers.  The women who served in back of the steam counters were not
nurses and yet Virginia had seen one or two of them around Ward Thirty
three now and again.  She supposed they were hired for a few ward
duties as well as for their cafeteria work.  There were men in the
kitchen too.  When you slid your tray through the dirty dish window you
could see a young man working furiously at a gigantic dish-washing
machine.  He worked in an undershirt and you could see the red sores on
his arms and shoulders.  Imagine taking a job in a place where you
caught the institution disease.  Times must be hard outside.... When
she could not think of anything else for T.T. she thought about her
life.  She was not able to bring The Life up to date.  She could think
about what happened today, about the woman who had given her a cookie,
about the one who had given her an orange and later cried out to the
nurse that someone had stolen it.  She could think about what happened
yesterday and perhaps the day before.  She could remember Robert's last
visit and know for sure that she was thinking of the most recent one.

She also could go very far back.  She did beautifully when she leaped a
year, but no matter what Dr.  Kik had said she could not remember the
time just before the hospital in town or the early part of Juniperhill.
There should be a rule that all Juniper doctors must have been ill
themselves at some time or another.  Then they would know what you were
talking about.  But I would not want a doctor who had been sick.  How
could you be sure he had got over it?  Will people be that way about
me?  Never quite sure?

The chief thing is not to look it.  Silly Mary at home looks it.  She
looks goofy and yet the doctors say she is normal.  You can't depend on
looks.

For example, Robert.  He looks practical.  He has a conservative face
and he dresses conservatively; you wouldn't catch him dead in that
flashy outfit of Kik's.  And, in keeping with his appearance, Robert
graduated from a School of Commerce where he belonged to a good old
fraternity limited to boys from good old families.  The Cunninghams
were solid people who had money.  Had it is right; they did not spend
it.  They lived in the same house and did not worry about making it
over.  Virginia's people, once they settled down, began to take out
partitions.  The Stuarts could not enter a house without getting an
if-you-moved-that-partition gleam in their eyes.

When Virginia and Robert were married everyone said she had done very
well.  They had been equally surprised about her and Gordon getting
engaged, but Gordon's death had fixed that.  She could tell they felt
his death was in keeping with her character.  Afterwards they waited
expectantly for her to become a Fallen Woman or something becomingly
tragic.  They were astounded when Robert married her.  They were let
down.  They had counted on Virginia to give them something to talk
about.

She and Robert started out the way you would expect young Cunninghams
to start out.  She thought it was a wonderful life but, to be
consistent with what was expected of her, she did talk about kicking
over the traces.  She talked about how she and Robert would run off to
Paris for a year.  She was just talking.  The Stuarts were great on
just talking.

She had a sinking feeling when she and Robert got on the train for New
York.  They had been to New York a number of times for short vacations
but now they had stored their furniture and Mother was saying she could
not look Mrs.  Cunningham in the face.  "What is going to happen to
you?"  she had said over and over.

Virginia did not know.  She wondered too.  Robert was very bland.  He
said they would have a marvelous time.  He said they would go to the
theater every week.  They would live on a funny street in the Village
and ride on the ferry boats.

They did all of this and they had a marvelous time.  Often it would be
days before Virginia would remember that no money was coming in.  After
a year Robert announced it was time to Face Facts.  Virginia supposed
this meant he was going to swallow the Bitter Pill of returning to
Evanston, but he had no intention of going back home.  He got himself a
job in New York.  He earned less money at this job than he had earned
since

his school-day vacation jobs, but that did not bother him.  In order
to live they had to keep dipping into the dwindling savings but that
did not bother Robert.  He could not imagine what Virginia was worried
about.  Robert, I think there is something the matter with my head.

"You are to go with the Cafeteria Ladies this morning, Virginia," said
Miss Vance.

Three times a day for many days Virginia had been going with the
cafeteria ladies.  Or so she thought.  However, this morning when the
nurse called, "Cafeteria, ladies," she remembered that the usual shout
was "Breakfast, ladies."  Only a half dozen women responded to the
cafeteria cry.

Among the half dozen were two whom Virginia had noticed in the
cafeteria kitchen.  Gracious, they have to report for work early and
how silly to have to come here first.  You'd like to have a crack at
organizing Juniperhill.  But remember you are a patient; remember you
are utsnay, dear.

She went with the Cafeteria Ladies.  They went without a nurse, just
the half dozen of them, through the tunnel.  The nurse who guarded the
fork had not come on duty yet.  It was almost like being given a pass
key.  You couldn't help hesitating at that crossroad.  Suppose you made
a dash for it.  Trouble was, you didn't know what it was.  Trouble
also, you were too well, far too well to think you could escape.

The Cafeteria Ladies paid no attention to her.  One of them was around
fifty and very heavy and tired-looking.  She was the one who always
dished out the main course at the counter.  Two of the workers were
very young, probably under twenty.  They were cheerful and talked
together as they walked along.  Then there was a slightly older one who
had nice legs done up in amazingly sheer stockings.  Another worker,
around the vintage of Legs, looked Italian and had fine black eyes and
beautiful skin.

The walk was leisurely and when they came to the dining room they went
through it to the kitchen.  The oldest woman told Virginia to hang her
jacket on a hook near a locker.  "And now you come with us and have
your breakfast," she said.

They went through the kitchen and there, on the other side, was another
dining room.  Like going through the looking glass, Alice.  This dining
room was smaller than the other one and had a less institutional
appearance.  A tall

colored woman behind the counter struck a glass with a fork.
"Breakfast is served," she said in a glorious voice.

Breakfast also was glorious.  You went past the steam counter and took
whatever you wanted.  There were eggs galore.  There were several kinds
of cereal.  You could have coffee black; you could have cocoa and milk;
you could take something of everything.  You could have a knife.
Virginia had been thirsty for weeks.  Perhaps there was a fountain in
Thirty-three, but she had never discovered it.  This morning she took
milk and coffee.  She hadn't quite got the courage to take cocoa too,
although she noticed that the fattest ones of her group took all three
beverages.

One member of the group did not sit with them at breakfast.  She was a
tall thin one and she sat off at a table alone.  She had snowy hair
that hung in a long bob, a most unusual coiffure at Juniperhill. 
"That's Treva," said the oldest woman when she saw that Virginia was
looking at the tall one.  "She's very sick.  She never eats with us." 
"Oh," said Virginia.  She did not understand,

"I'm May," said the oldest woman.

"I'm Virginia."

"Yes, I know.  This is Rachel."  May pointed to one of the younger
ones.  "And that's Flo."

Rachel giggled.  Flo turned wide eyes toward Virginia; queer eyes that
seemed not to focus.  That one is not well, that Flo.  She can't be a
regular worker.  She is a visitor, like Treva, like me.

The one with the nice legs was Julia and Bianca was the Italian.

The ladies, having acknowledged the introductions, turned to their
whopping big breakfasts.  The bread on this side of the cafeteria was
served unbuttered.  You took butter from a bowl of cracked ice.  Bianca
and Flo each had five pats.

"Time, girls," said May after a while.

The girls picked up their trays and took them to the dish window.  This
side of the cafeteria had its own dishwashing machine, its own coffee
urns, its own staff of workers.  This was the right side of the tracks.
In addition to knives there were breakable plates and cups.

Virginia and her squad went to the other side and started to work.  She
was told to help make the sandwiches.  The woman who worked with her
would take three pieces of bread at a time and somehow butter the
proper sides and slap the finished sandwiches into tall even piles.
Virginia was very slow.  May said she would get on to it.

You could smell your guests before you saw them.  Way off at the far
end of the dining room the nurse opened the door and the smell swept
in.  Then the ladies came.  When you were with the breakfast crowd you
did not realize what a din it made.  The building seemed to quiver this
morning and you stared across the counter and wondered if those really
were people, those creatures in the sacking dresses.  During the brief
meal Virginia stood at the dirty dish chute and shoved trays on to the
dish washer.  The dirty trays started coming before the last lady was
served.

When the dirty dishes were gathered in, Virginia helped the dish washer
to put them into wooden crates which he shot on through the machine. He
was a patient young man whose name was Joe.  He told her again and
again how to stack the plates and he said she reminded him of his
sister.  May whispered to Virginia to watch out for Joe.  "He's very
sick," she said.  "Always keep the rail between you and him."

May was a great one for saying everyone was very sick.  It was
surprising to discover that all of the cafeteria workers, including
May, were inmates.  Sometimes there were no nurses around and at these
times you had a funny feeling in your stomach.  The kitchen was large
and there were many workers.

In reality it was not a kitchen; it was a serving pantry on a gigantic
scale.  The food was wheeled in on carts.  The sandwiches and the
coffee were the only foods created here.  The workers stayed here all
day long.  When they were not working at the preparing and serving of a
meal they scoured and scrubbed the equipment.  Oh, now and then you had
a few minutes.  There was a toilet you could go to whenever you liked;
you did not have to ask permission.  And as some thoughtful person had
supplied the toilet with torn newspapers you were saved the
embarrassment of asking the nurse.

The nurses who were in and out of the cafeteria were sociable but
unfortunately too energetic; they had a great passion for scouring the
aluminum.  Whenever Virginia thought she might have a moment to rest a
nurse invariably would ask her if she wouldn't like to help with the
scouring.  The manner of asking was reminiscent of Miss Hart, back in
the polishing days.  You simply could not refuse so gracious an
invitation.  But all in all, it was a treat to get to spend an entire
day away from the dayroom.  You had plenty to eat and plenty of time in
which to eat.

And one day May gave you three pecans.  What a treat.

Virginia cracked one and ate it before she remembered Louise.  How
ashamed of herself she was then.  Here she was in a position to have
all the butter and coffee she wanted and like a pig she had gobbled up
a rare delicacy.  She cracked the other two nuts and tied the meats
into a rag she had found and that night she gave them to Louise in the
washroom.

The gift brought Louise into reality.  She recognized Virginia and
spoke to her gratefully.  She exhibited the nuts to the ladies who
crowded around her and she told them to help themselves.  The
generosity of the Juniperhill paupers was something that never failed
to make Virginia weep and now she had to pinch herself to keep from
bawling.  Louise held out her hand and offered the nuts as if she owned
a forest of pecan trees.  "Don't give them away," said Virginia. 
"There isn't enough.  Eat it yourself."

Louise smiled.  "I know what I'm doing, Virginia," she said.  "Help
yourself, girls."

The ladies helped themselves daintily.  They broke the small pieces
into smaller pieces and were careful to leave Louise a crumb.  Louise
nibbled that crumb and said it was delicious.

The next day Virginia gave Treva two cigarettes.  She had become
extremely nervous about Treva's smoking.  The tall white-haired woman
usually smoked rolled up newspaper.  Virginia never discovered where
she got her lights but all day long Treva smoked something.  She
accepted the cigarettes from Virginia without comment but later on she
came over to her.  "You did not give me any cigarettes," she said.  She
sounded furious and Virginia shrank from her.

"I told you to keep away from Treva," sed May.  "You watch out.  She's
dangerous."

But the next day Virginia saw Treva put a lighted cigarette end into
her mouth and it was impossible not to do something.  She quickly
filled a cup of water and hurried over to Treva and handed it to her.
They were busy in the kitchen just then and no one was noticing Treva
or Virginia.  Treva took the cup, dashing the water into Virginia's
face.

Virginia went back to her work and the next time she saw Treva eating
fire she just let her eat it.  After all, I am a patient in this place,
not a nurse.  But I am nearing non patient status.  The softness is
leaving.  The sympathy.  Yes, and the generosity... I no longer
distribute cigarettes the way I used to.  It is a queer way to judge
your sanity.  I shall feel better about this return of selfishness if I
consider it a

return of antlike wisdom.  I am able now to take heed of the day to
come.  I have three cigarettes and if I look ahead I'll see that I
cannot order more until the day after tomorrow.  Therefore I shall not
share my supply but I shall hoard it so that each day I can be sure of
having one smoke.  That, dear lady, is sanity.  An insane woman would
give all three cigarettes away, then wonder why she hadn't any for
herself.  And sit off in a corner with a roll of newspaper... There was
much talk in the cafeteria about the coming dance.  There was to be a
dance Saturday afternoon.  May was not going.  Her dancing days, she
said, were over.  Virginia did not wish to do any dancing at
Juniperhill, but she decided to go along to watch.  She might some day
wish to write about a dance in an insane asylum.  For some weeks now
she had been unable to think of herself as a part of Juniperhill.  The
Observer had come back and a novel was being formed.

On Saturday, all of the workers, except May and the Observer, were
somewhat slicked up.  Treva had a paper flower in her hair and she was
carrying a half-smoked cigar.  Treva seldom gave assistance in the work
but today she stuck her cigar through her belt and helped push dirty
dishes along the chute.  Joe muttered to Virginia that Treva had a
guilty conscience on account of the dance.  Joe was not going.  He was
religious.  He was sad when he learned that Virginia planned to attend
the party but his depression was lightened a little when she said she
did not intend to dance.  Joe did not fraternize with the workers. When
he had a moment from his chores he opened a badly damaged copy of The
Vicar of Wakefield and frowned steadily at whatever page he turned to. 
He did not read the book but he was very proud of it.  It was his, his
only possession.  On the days when Virginia had her glasses she asked
him if she might look at his book and he would hold it out for her to
look.  He would never let go of it.

Jack, who took care of the coffee urns, was more sociable.  He never
spoke, but he rolled cigarettes for the ladies and nodded politely when
they thanked him.  Virginia couldn't help being a trifle afraid of
Jack; he looked dangerous and she especially avoided him when he was
carrying buckets of boiling water.  However, May insisted that Jack was
fairly safe and that Joe was the one who might cut up rough.  The only
time Virginia saw Joe in action was when two of the kitchen workers got
into an argument about which rows of tables in the dining room belonged
to which one of them.

When the argument became noisy Joe leapt over his railing and ran into
the dining room and it took two nurses and the cooperation of the two
irate workers to persuade him to go back to his machine.  It was lucky
for Joe, said May, that the nurses were not some others she could think
of.  "Most of them," she said, "would have had him put in pack for
that.  And don't you believe him when he tells you he isn't going to
the dance on account of religion.  They wouldn't let him go.  Not him.
Why, he'd as soon kill a woman as look at her."

The workers who were going to the dance went unattended.  They were
Special People.  Bianca was more or less in charge of the group, at any
rate she was the one who kept an eye on the undependable Treva.  But
Treva behaved nicely and although she would not walk on the sidewalk
she stayed close enough to her contingent.

This Saturday afternoon the great hall was set up differently.  The
chairs were in rows along the sides.  After the ladies had filed in and
taken seats the men came and sat on the opposite side of the room.  On
the stage was an orchestra.  When the orchestra started to play the men
rushed over to the women.  There was no time wasted in selection.  A
man bowed to the first lady he came to.  It was odd to see a very young
man bow to a very old woman.

Virginia had chosen a seat in the back row and she had kept on her
leather jacket.  She had borrowed a needle and thread from Miss Vance
and sewed the buttons back on.  Now she sat with the jacket buttoned up
to indicate that she was here only to watch.

"Hey, Cunningham," a man called to her.

She shook her head.  Had he learned her name from one of the nurses?
Hearing your name gave you an unpleasant notion that you might have
attended a dance before.  No telling what all Dr.  Kik had shocked out
of your memory.  "I'm not dancing, thank you," she said.

"Come on," he said.

He came toward her.  Virginia looked for a nurse.  The nearest was one
she did not know.  The nurse smiled and said to go on and dance with
the gentleman.  Do they really say Good Morning Gentlemen on the men's
side?  I should think they would be chummier and call them Boys.  But
this one waiting for her was no gentleman, nor was he a boy.  He was a
trembler.  He wasn't such an old man and he was not bad-looking, but he
was a trembler.  His hands trembled; his whole body trembled.  It was
horrid to have

to dance with him.  He danced badly but at least he held her very
loosely and showed no interest whatsoever in her.

When the orchestra stopped playing he bowed to her and went back to the
men's chairs.  When the music started he came for her again.  "All
right, Cunningham," he said.  There was no way out of it.

During the next intermission there was an announcement.  The orchestra
leader said he had been asked to say that no one was to dance more than
three times with the same person.  "And," he added, "I have been asked
to say there mustn't be any cheek-to-cheek stuff."  He was a fat
moronic-looking young man and laughed loudly when he said this last.
His players joined in his laughter and a few of the guests made
laughing sounds.

Then Virginia's trembler came back.  Now it was simply a case of which
of them was the sicker.  "I can't," she said.  "I've 'already danced
with you three times."

"Two times," he said.  "Come on."

I know I'm not as sick as he is.  "Three times," she said.  He had to
believe her; she did not shake.

The poor man looked dazed but he went away.  Then another one came.
This one was small and sleek with a shining bald head and a party
smile.  He was several inches shorter than Virginia but he danced
fairly well and he did not shake.  He made a small attempt at
conversation and said it was not quite so cold today as you might have
expected at this time of year.  Virginia agreed with him.  He said that
at this time of year you might expect several feet of snow.  Virginia
said indeed you might.  She danced twice with him and at the end of the
second dance he presented her with a handkerchief.  It was a hideous
cheap handkerchief and rather worn, but it was washed and ironed neatly
and she needed a handkerchief.  He said his mother had given it to
him.

"I couldn't take it from you," said Virginia.  "Keep it."

But he wanted her to take it as a party favor.  He was around fifty and
of the party-favor vintage and so she accepted it.

During the dancing she had been watching a handsome young man who did
marvelously complicated steps.  He danced the entire time with one of
the colored nurses.  Perhaps she was the only one who could follow his
steps or perhaps he was one who could not be trusted.  Anyhow it was
wonderful to watch him and the pretty nurse with whom he danced.  Once
he noticed Virginia and smiled at her.  She would have loved to try to
dance with him.  He was the

only one who appeared to enjoy the ball.  In general the patients
plodded around as if this was another therapy they had got to endure.
It made you think of stories about people dancing heroically as the
ship sank.  The music was atrocious, so bad that you decided the
appointment must be political or that the czar of the music world had
foisted it upon the hospital out of spite.  There was the possibility
that the band was composed of patients but undoubtedly the Maestro of
American Music would not have permitted this.  Anyway, you had always
heard that insanity helped in the matter of music and this orchestra
had no help of any musical kind.

A half dozen or so women who were strangers to Virginia hailed her by
name.  One woman was especially effusive.  "But I'd thought you had
gone home long ago," she said.  "You always seemed so well."

Virginia thanked her and made appropriate remarks and they parted with
the usual Juniperhill formula for the best possible taste.  "I hope I
won't see you again..."

You knew, after this dance, that you would never go to another.  You
had a certain status now.  You were eligible to attend dances but you
did not have to go.  They would not urge you.  They hadn't enough
time.

There wasn't enough of anything at Juniperhill.  Not enough doctors,
not enough nurses, not enough toilet paper, not enough food, not enough
covers for cold nights.  When the laundry did not get around to the
wards in time there were not enough sheets and not enough pillow cases.
As Virginia knew from her past experience, there were not even enough
beds.  There wasn't enough of anything but patients.

"There's no middle ground," Robert had said recently.  "I fought this.
I investigated private places all over while you were in the hospital
in town.  I couldn't find a single private sanitarium that charged as
little as my entire salary.  Here at Juniper the white-collar pays a
percentage.  It's fair enough.  You pay what you can afford.  If you
have nothing you pay nothing and you get the best medical treatment in
the country.  Everyone knows that.  But the surroundings... The public
acts as if mental illness did not exist.  They leave it entirely to the
politicians.  There's a lot of whoop la for tuberculosis and cancer and
infantile paralysis, but to hell with the increasing number of mental
cases.  Yes, I know they were right when they told me Juniperhill has
the best doctors and all, but there just aren't enough of them."

Robert was very bitter about Juniperhill and Dr.  Kik these days.
Robert had been responsible for having her transferred

to Building Five.  "I didn't say I wanted you taken out of Reception,
but I did make it clear I wanted you to come under the jurisdiction of
another doctor.  Kik was too busy.... I suppose Five isn't as nice as
Reception, but I'm sure it's better for you."

"Yes, I'm sure it is," said Virginia.  Robert had never seen the
dayroom of Ward Thirty-three.  He had never seen the cafeteria.  He had
never eaten one of the Juniper meals.  He had never even got much of a
whiff of paraldehyde.  And he was bitter!

Although she wasn't always as able to follow Robert's conversation as
easily as he seemed to think, the periods of relaxed concentration were
increasing.  Often her share in their visits came without
self-consciousness; it was something like playing a piano piece you
hadn't played in years.  If you didn't think about it you could tear
through the piece without faltering, but if you began to wonder about
what was coming next you were sunk.  Robert's face had lost the
strained look and he spoke to her as if they were two normal persons
who were conspiring to break through the red tape of the hospital.

"It was hard to get you in," he said, "but nothing to getting you out.
I think I've got the answer, though.  I just happened to mention that
we'd be going back home and did they perk up!  I've been harping on
that ever since."

"But what's that got to do with it?"

He laughed as if he had a delicious joke on the dignitaries of
Juniperhill.  "You'd be in another state and they wouldn't be
responsible any more.  They like that."

After a moment Virginia laughed too, not just to please Robert but
because she thought it was a joke.  It had been a long time since she
had thought anything was really funny.

"Of course I don't know a damn thing about psychology," said Robert
after a while, "but I'd stake my life on Kik being wrong.  Maybe he's
right according to a book of theories, but he still doesn't know you.
Why, you hear about psychoanalysis lasting over a period of years and
he just had a few months of it with you."

"Months of what!"

"Psychoanalysis.  I suppose it's important but anyhow he came out with
the wrong answer."

"You mean he psycho analysed me?  You mean when he

was hiding somewhere in the bushes and asking those silly questions
about did I hear voices.... It's sort of vague now...."  There was a
stream, I think, and his voice.  Or was it a girl's voice?  There was a
black couch.  "I don't think it's fair to ask a person questions when
the person doesn't know what's going on."  "It's part of a theory,"
said Robert.  "They want to know what your subconscious has been up to.
 But I can't see this business about Gordon."

"Gordon?"

"Dr.  Kik talked to you about that, didn't he?"

"It seems to me I do remember him saying something about Gordon.  How
did he ever know about Gordon?"

"Darling, it's not his fault if there's anything about you he doesn't
know.  He went all through your life and he decided you had a
subconscious feeling of guilt on account of marrying me and that's what
gave you a breakdown."

"Well, I'll be darned," she said.  Gordon's been dead sixteen, no,
seventeen years.  She shook her head.  "It's the sort of thing that
would be nice in a book, but don't you think I waited rather long?"

"Seems that way to me."

Gordon had died just before Virginia and he were to have been married.
From the start of it his illness had been recognized as incurable and
so his death had brought a mixture of sorrow and relief.  In those days
Virginia hadn't heard much about people losing their minds--perhaps it
had not been so fashionable then to have a breakdown; she had been
surprised not to turn white but she hadn't thought to be surprised
about remaining sane.  "It's embarrassing," she said.  "I mean, for Dr.
Kik.  I always think of him in connection with that little room with
electricity, always the man of science.  This changes the picture. I'll
have to think of him as a man of romance as well.  Gee, I thought you
had to be rich to get a doctor to listen to the story of your life. I
thought you hired a doctor when no one else would listen to you.... Of
course I think about Gordon.  Why of course I do.  Often.  Something
will remind me of what he said or did--you think about him sometimes,
don't you?"

"He was my friend," said Robert.  "Dr.  Kik doesn't understand us," she
said.  "He just doesn't understand how we felt about Gordon or how we
feel about him now.  He's kind of young, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Well, the hell with my subconscious.  What I'm interested in is
getting the old conscious to working again.  You know, maybe my
subconscious did cook up something like Dr.  Kik said, but if it did
I'm sure it was for a novel.  I always did have a secret, anyhow I
hoped it was secret, ambition to write tripe.  Oh, tripe... You
remember that Polish restaurant where they had tripes-in-cream on the
menu and I ordered it because I thought it would be exotic?"

"And it was so white," said Robert, "and those slimy little white
strips..."

I do not like thee, Dr.  Kik--now that I am not so sick.  Oh, I like
you, but I think you are rather silly and maybe you have a secret taste
for tripe--tripe sing-cream.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

"You go to Staff today," said Miss Vance.  "So you won't have to go
with the Cafeteria Ladies."

The confidence Virginia had gained in the past few weeks vanished and
again she was a quivering invalid.  She could not remember the name of
Robert's new employer; she could not remember his present address.  He
had told her but she had not written it down.  And I forgot to have him
note down the address of that apartment we had last and I still can't
even remember the name of the street.... After breakfast Miss Vance
took her to a dressing room.  "That old thing you are wearing isn't so
hot, is it?"  said the nurse.  "I think you might wear your gray suit.
It's real cute and about the only thing you wouldn't swim in."  She
shook the gray skirt and frowned at it.  "You just sit there while I
give it a little press.  You want to look good when you go to Staff."

"Does it help?"  asked Virginia weakly.

"Well," said Miss Vance as she plugged in the iron, "it sort of
bolsters you up to know you look good.  That was one of the things
Sommerville was always harping on.  She was always saying if the ladies
were given better clothes and makeup and so on..."

"You mean--our Miss Sommerville?"

"Yes."

"The one who keeps the b.m. record?"  You could not imagine Miss
Sommerville ever making a sound remark.

"She used to be a nurse," said Miss Vance shortly.

"Oh."

The nurse wet a finger and touched the iron.  "Here in this hospital,"
she said.  "She felt things too much, though.  In this business you got
to have a hide like a rhinoceros."

"I've wondered about her.  She worries about that record she has to
keep.  Isn't that responsibility too much for her?"

Miss Vance shook her head.  "It's her own idea.  She was a good nurse.
She and I took our training together.  I never would have come to
Juniper if it hadn't been for her always pestering me about it.  See,
she came here right from training and she kept writing me about how
they were always so short of nurses and how something had to be done
and all... Once you get here it's sort of hard to get away...."

"That's been my experience," said Virginia.

Miss Vance smiled.  "Don't worry.  It won't be long now.  But I'm
telling you it's even worse for a nurse.  There's not a darn thing to
stop you from leaving, except for what made you take up nursing in the
first place.  Oh, I don't want to make us out missionaries or anything
holy, but there's easier ways to make a living.  Take me, for instance.
I got a little chicken farm in Jersey.  Inherited it.  I have a couple
on the place now but always in the back of my mind I keep thinking I'll
get out of nursing and go to that little farm.  Pretty place and good
money in it.  But it's hard when you know there isn't anyone to take
your place here.  Of course if you died.... But you couldn't help that.
That's what I keep telling my girl friend.  But she doesn't understand.
She doesn't know anything about it.  She keeps saying suppose I died,
then they'd have to get along without me, wouldn't they?  Sure.  But I
couldn't help it if I died and I can help it about the chicken farm.  I
wouldn't feel right about walking out, especially now when nurses are
scarcer than ever."

Virginia watched the pressing for a few minutes.  "Is Miss Sommerville
going to get well?"  she asked.  The question was not good form, but
she couldn't keep from asking it.

Miss Vance slapped the iron on the skirt.  She wasn't using a pressing
cloth but at least she was ironing on the wrong side of the material.
"She's been sick a very long time."

"What a shame."

"Yes.  She was a good nurse.  But she felt things too much.  She tried
to get some changes made.  It was like beating her head against a stone
wall.  Worse.  The damage was more permanent.  But maybe she wasn't
such a good nurse.  Look at it another way.  A good nurse can't be any
reformer and that's what Sommerville was.  A good nurse has got to take
orders and get along with what she has at hand.  You aren't

supposed to get any ideas.... Well, I guess that will do."  "Going to
Staff, eh?"  said Ruth, when Virginia went back to the dayroom.  "All
fixed up, aren't you?  I suppose you think you're going to pass."

Virginia was the only Thirty-three patient who went to Staff that day.
She and Miss Vance met another nurse and several patients in the hall
and Miss Vance turned her over to the other nurse.  The terrified troop
marched to a building where Virginia may or may not have been before.
She had no memory at all today.  They went to a room and sat in folding
chairs and waited.  She and three others were not called.

The nurse finally said it was time for dinner and that would be all
until this afternoon.

On their way back to the home building they stopped to let a group of
children run past.  "They surely don't have children in this hospital,"
said Virginia to her marching partner.  It's a nursery school that cuts
through the Juniper grounds when it lets out.  I cannot bear it if
children have to live here.

But a nurse was shouting to the children.

"Yes," said the marching partner.  She looked at Virginia and then
added, as if to make it easier, "Some of them are above average in
intelligence.  Genius type.  But they are better off here than they
would be at home."

"So I've been told," said Virginia.  "So I've been told."

She especially remembered having been told so by a Mrs.  White a long
time ago.  "We had another child," said Mrs.  White, confidential after
a cocktail, "but he wasn't quite normal.  Nothing hereditary, of
course. It was a birth injury.  We were very sensible about it and put
him into an institution before our second child came.  It wouldn't have
been fair otherwise.  Anyhow, he's much happier than he would ever have
been at home.  With his own kind.  He's really quite remarkable in many
ways.  They cultivate special talents, you know.  He's grown up now and
they say he's one of the best they have in their handicraft work.  Very
artistic.  So many of them are, I guess.  Well, after so many years he
really doesn't seem like a part of our family.  We did everything we
could for him.  Spent hundreds and hundreds... We used to go to see him
but it wasn't advisable.  It upset him so.  You see, he always knew us
and that made it hard.  We keep sending

him money so he can have little extras and every Christmas he sends us
a basket that he's made...."

The shouting children had passed.  No one could say they did not look
happy and they certainly were making as much racket as normal children
would make.  Maybe the building they live in is pretty and gay and
perhaps the nurses love them and don't mind being recognized by them.

Strange to be on the guest side of the cafeteria counter.  "What's
wrong?"  whispered May.  "I was afraid you'd been transferred.  Aren't
they going to let you...?"

"I went to Staff," said Virginia.

"God!"  said May.

"They didn't get to me.  I have to go again this afternoon."

After dinner Virginia went again to the little room of folding chairs.
She had stopped shaking.  You can shake just so long and then you
become numb.  While she was sitting there and staring out into the
corridor a young man passed.  He was the one who had come into the
washroom of House Nine back in the scrubbing days.

When she went into the Staff room she noticed immediately that the
young man was there and she wondered if he would remember her and hold
it against her that she had been working in the washroom when he
desired to use it.

This Staff was unlike the other one.  Of course she recalled little
about the other one but she was sure today's gathering was much less
formal.  The doctors were sitting around a table that was over by the
windows.  You had to walk across the room to them.  They watched you.
The room seemed very wide.  Perhaps this was a part of a deep
psychological plan.  Perhaps they simply sat near the windows on
account of the light.

"Mrs.  Cunningham?"  said a dark man who had a pipe in his mouth.  "Sit
down, please."

There was a chair beside him.  Virginia sat down.  The other doctors,
including the washroom man, picked up papers and looked at them.  The
doctor with the pipe studied Virginia briefly and said he understood
that her husband planned to take her home, out of the state.

"Yes," said Virginia.  How emphatically he said that "out of the
state."

He took his pipe from his mouth.  "Well," he said.  He looked at his
colleagues.  "Are there any questions?  I believe we have sufficient
information.  That will be all, Mrs.  Cunningham.  I'll see you before
you leave.  Is there anything you would like to say?"

She swallowed.  "No," she said.  "I can't think of anything.  Should

I?"

"No, no," said the doctor quickly.  "That will be all then."

"Thank you," she said.

She went back to the waiting room.

When she returned to the ward Ruth collared her.  "Did you pass?  Did
you pass, huh?"  the woman asked.  There was a nasty glint in her
eyes.

"I wouldn't know," said Virginia.

"Come on now.  Give."

"I don't know."

After the days in the cafeteria the ward was unbearable.  The next day
Virginia asked Miss Vance if she might go back to work and the nurse
said it would be all right.  During the first day back in the cafeteria
Bianca got word that she had passed Staff.  This news caused quite an
uproar and for a while it looked as if Joe might lose his control.
Bianca kicked off her shoes and whooped and hollered and May looked
questioningly at Virginia, but Virginia pretended not to understand. No
one had come to inform her that she had passed but she was sure the man
with the pipe would work it.  She had never seen him before but she
knew he was her friend for life.  She did not know why, but he had made
a decision about her and he had had no intention of discussing the case
with the other doctors.  It isn't that I don't appreciate all you did,
or tried to do, Dr.  Kik, but there is a sympathy in this other man
that you lacked.  You had pity and interest but this new one has an
intuitive understanding and a willingness to admit that a problem is
solved even when he does not understand what the problem was or how it
was solved.  Or this is what I think; this is what I hope; this is what
my intuition told me.... There was a new nurse in the cafeteria that
day.  Gracious, she was excited when Bianca went into her war dance.
Bianca laughed in her face.  "I'm going home," she said to this grand
new nurse.  "You think I shouldn't yell a little?"

The grand new nurse was young and beautiful.  She did not assist with
the scouring of the pans.  She stood' by and watched.  Once she made a
suggestion but Rachel scoffed at her.  "This is the way we do it," said
Rachel.  Virginia could tell that the nurse did not like this at all
but you could also tell that the nurse was frightened.  When Jack
brought in the boiling water did he try to make himself look more
sinister than usual?  He glowered at the new nurse and then turned and
winked at Virginia.

When it was time for dinner the new nurse stood at the steam counter
to supervise.  May told her how to hold a tray in front of the food but
the nurse did not seem to understand.  She took the tray and held it in
back of the pans of dessert; she did not get the idea.

The smell rushed into the large room and then the ladies.  They jostled
and shoved up to the counter and began to grab.  The new nurse did not
understand at all that you had to hold a tray upright in front of the
food and to pass the dishes over the top of the tray.  Virginia was
standing beside the nurse and she held her own tray up to show the
nurse how to do it.  But that new nurse was not going to learn anything
from crazy people.  Not her.  She stood there behind the desserts and
looked down her pretty nose and of course it was not long before one of
the ladies grabbed two desserts.  Now that was all right.  Frequently a
patient grabbed around the trays and when this happened you just said
sternly to give you back the extra helping.  Usually the patient handed
the extra serving back.  If not, one of the nurses on the other side
could handle the situation.  It was nothing tragic; nothing to get into
a lather about.

But the new nurse raised the tray she had in her hands and slammed it
down hard on the wrists of the thief.  Both pans of dessert went flying
and the patient stared at her injured arms.  The crash of the tray
against the metal of the counter had made a noise loud enough to
attract the attention of everyone in the cafeteria.  For several
seconds it seemed that no one was breathing.  The workers at the
counter stared down at the food.

It was a very frightening silence.  Suddenly the new nurse whirled
around and ran from the kitchen.  Behind the dishwashing machine rail
Joe stood with a large crate raised up in his arms.  Jack, coming in
with more boiling water, looked after the new nurse, shrugged, and
poured a bucket of water into the coffee urn.

"All right, girls," said May.  "Let's get going.  Virginia, watch the
desserts too."

The line moved on.  After the meal one of the old nurses came back to
the kitchen and she helped with the scouring.  No one mentioned the new
nurse.  Why mention some one you'd never see again?  Why bother with
instability in a nurse when you had so much other instability to think
about?  That girl was scared to death.  She was scared before she came
in here.  She will always think she was lucky to get out alive and
maybe she was.  Maybe she was.  You can't tell.

Jack and his boiling water.  Joe and his heavy crates.  Treva, even
Treva who is always so aloof.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw that
she had picked up a chair.  We, the almost well ones, were the
dangerous ones just now.  Those dumb creatures on the other side of the
counter, they just looked and wondered why.

"Your husband's coming today," said Miss Vance.

"But it's Sunday, isn't it?  He works Sundays."

"His name's down, that's all I know.  He must have a drag."

Could it be The Day?  Don't count on anything; they have fooled you
before.  It wasn't so long ago that Dr.  Kik promised you Robert would
come and then later Miss Vance said he was flying, or something that
sounded like "flying."  Wouldn't your nurse know if you were to be
released?

The man with the pipe was sympathetic and he hustled me on my way for
fear I would betray myself to the rest of the staff--thought he might
have been fearing I'd bite him.... The washroom man?  Did he speak
against me after I left?  But even had he remembered, would he hold my
scrubwoman presence against me?  You make a mountain, Virginia, out of
what is after all only a juniper hill

"You won't go with the Cafeteria Ladies, of course," said Miss Vance.
"Sort of nice to have a rest?"

Sort of.  "But I'll go tomorrow?"

There was no flicker in the nurse's eyes.  "Sure, unless you want me to
try and get you out of it.  I thought you liked it, though."

"I do."  I meant I did.  I can't ever like it again, not after thinking
maybe today... "Cafeteria, ladies," cried Miss Vance, and Virginia
caught a glimpse of May and after a while Breakfast Ladies Tunnel was
announced.

A week or two of bad weather had kept the tunnel in steady use and the
dim passage hung even heavier now with the stench.  I wonder how it is
in summer--but I don't wonder too much.

"My husband's coming," she explained to May over the counter.

"Oh," said May.  "I was scared."  She wouldn't have thought of a
pleasant reason.  "I thought maybe you'd been sent to tubs or pack."

You think I'm that sick?  Perhaps I will be sent to pack, May, pack in
the outside sense.

It was egg morning and there were admonitions about Not Throwing
Ladies, admonitions that made you ache to hit someone.  Virginia peeled
her egg and then the lady next to her snatched it away and, without
bothering to take aim, threw it.  Stupid, if you'd half tried you could
have knocked her cap off.  Don't scowl at me, nurse, I wouldn't throw
an egg at anyone this morning--but watch out for me next egg morning,
if I'm still around.

Remember the days when night followed morning without interval and you
moaned in terror at the loss?  Be thankful for the creeping seconds of
this morning.  One, two--sixty will make a minute.

In the dayroom the doll-maker demonstrated her clever wares and the
Cat's Cradle Society held a meeting and the opera singer obliged with
snatches of Wagner and the dancer danced and the vegetarian preached
and Louise argued with her brother about the mortgage.  "Fired from the
job?"  asked Ruth.

Could this one whose cradles were swift and untangled, know?  "I guess
my husband's coming," said Virginia.

"He doesn't come on Sunday."

"All I know is what Miss Vance said."

"Come on, give.  Are you going home?"

Virginia shrank away from the tormenter.  "I wouldn't know," she
whispered.  "I wouldn't know."

Before the noon rush, Miss Vance put Virginia into the gray suit and
told her she looked swell.  Swell enough to get on the bus for town?
Swell enough and well enough?

See the fat one who crawls between the railings.  Laugh and be
reassured.  Someone just now said there will be ice cream and that
means it really is Sunday.  And there is Flo, sure enough, presiding
over the little round pans.

"I forgot to return your thimble," said Flo as she reached into her
apron pocket.

"Keep it," said Virginia.  "I have another one."  At home.  At home.
Bianca kicked off her shoes and danced around the cafeteria when they
came to tell her she was going home; she whooped and hollered, but she
knew for sure.

Flo put the thimble on and held up her hand as if to admire a precious
ring.  "Gee, Virginia, you mean for keeps?"

Beyond Flo was Joe, already working at his dishwasher.  Virginia waved
when he glanced in her direction but he seemed not to recognize her. He
was busy, of course, remembering

how hot the water should be and how much soap powder to use.

"I don't think much of those gloves for a day like this," said Miss
Vance when V. Cunningham was in hat and coat.  "It's awful cold out"

If it's The Day, I'll have my muff.... But Robert stood in the hall
with empty hands.  Smile.  Don't let him know.

"We've got to see three people first," he said.  "Button your coat.
It's almost zero."

Three people before going to the store for hot chocolate or coffee?

In the lower hall was a checkroom for the convenience of visitors and
Robert stopped there and asked for the package he had just left.  "You
might as well have it now," he said to Virginia.  It was the muff, of
course.

Of course?  "It was even colder in the tunnel," she said when they went
out of the building.

"Gifford first," said Robert.  "He's the important one.  I talked to
him on the phone this morning and he said everything was set for
today."

"I can't believe it," she said.

"Well I can," said Robert.

They went into the building where the staff had met, but it was
different now.  "You will stay with me, won't you?"  she asked in a
sudden panic.

"You bet I will," he said.  "Chin up.  This isn't anything but a matter
of routine."

God, make me look intelligent, she prayed.  Don't let me bite anyone.
That's much more important than looking intelligent.

Gifford was the man with the pipe.  He laid it aside to shake hands.
"Well, Mrs.  Cunningham," he said, "you are leaving us?"

You are asking me?  "I hope so," she said.

He waved them to chairs.  "A very comprehensive history," he said, and
he slapped a thick manuscript that was on the desk.

Robert said nothing and since the doctor seemed to expect some comment,
Virginia spoke up.  "History of what?"

"Er--you."

"All that?"

"Dr.  Kik is very thorough," said Dr.  Gifford.

"Oh, dear.  I mean, yes, I know."

"We American-trained men can learn a great deal from

men like him."  Dr.  Gifford glared at them as if daring them to deny
this.

Robert said nothing.  Was he already easing into his old time habit of
letting his wife do the talking?  Robert hadn't much small talk and he
had done none at all, any more, when the subject was distasteful to
him.  Years of curtain lectures had accomplished that much.  When
Robert P. Cunningham realized that speaking his mind would distress his
wife, he maintained silence.  That, he often said, was what she wanted,
wasn't it?  He said it was beyond him.  When he did talk, she said it
was wrong and when he didn't, she said it was worse.  If Dr.  Gifford
was waiting for Robert to fabricate white lies on the subject of Dr.
Kik he might as well settle back in his chair.

"He was always so kind," said Virginia.  Yes, that's true.  Robert
probably camped on his trail, pestered him to death, and yet Dr.  Kik
remained a gentleman.  He continued to be a gentleman even after he no
longer considered me his little joking Jeannie.  And behold the case
history and think of the many many histories he's had to prepare.  "We
are grateful to him."

Dr.  Gifford nodded.  "A sound man and very thorough."

You sound dissatisfied.  Do you fish?  I think I know what you fish
for, but the bait is still out of reach.

"I'm fully in accord with Dr.  Kik's findings," said Dr.  Gifford, "but
I hope you won't get any--sentimental ideas.  Often the layman
misinterprets the doctor."

"I'm sure they usually do," said Virginia.  Robert, say something!

"It would be unwise if you were to deduce, from Dr.  Kik's findings..."
Dr.  Gifford coughed and he transferred his glare to his pipe.  "Damn
pipe."

"Of course I don't understand psychology," said Virginia, "but if you
mean about the boy who died, I'm sure Dr.  Kik was wrong."  There, I
took the bait.  I hope you are satisfied.

Dr.  Gifford knocked his pipe sharply against the ash tray.  "Oh, you
are, are you?"

Robert, if you'd spoken I wouldn't have got into this mess.  Now he'll
get so mad that he won't sign our paper.  I wonder if we could make a
run for the gate.  "I was tired," she said.  "And I suppose I was
scared about money.  It was my fault, really, that Robert gave up his
nice job at home, and so I kept trying to write something that would
make up for it.  It's bad when a writer begins to think more about the
check than the story.  It makes you awfully nervous.  And

Robert was working such terrible hours and having to do part of his
sleeping in the daytime, and I knew that wasn't good for him.  And
after he started working I got so homesick.  I'd never lived anywhere
but Evanston before, you know, and I missed the family and our old
friends and the trees and the familiar streets.  At home I could go
places without worrying about how to get there, but in New York!  I
went to a lot of meetings here and the people were cordial and all, but
it was different.  And I never once got on the right subway the first
time.  I can't understand the subway."

"Who can?"  asked the doctor.  "Are you going to start this
meeting-chase all over again?"

"No, I certainly am not."  She had relaxed now.  Dr.  Gifford hated to
let them know what a pushover he was, but she knew it now and she
realized that Robert had known it for a long time.  Robert wasn't
taking any chances.  For once in his life he would have lied.  Had it
been necessary he would have spoken hours in praise of Dr.  Kik and
everything else about Juniperhill, but it was not necessary.

"Don't do anything you don't want to do," said the doctor,

"That's a nice prescription."

"Cast down the gavel, Mrs.  Cunningham."  And then, in case they had
missed his literary allusion, the doctor repeated the phrase.

Robert's social poise wasn't so horrible; he laughed.  Then he asked
about parties and Dr.  Gifford shook his head and said only the family
at first.  "And if I know families, that's going to take a lot out of
her.  Later on you can have a friend or two in and after a while go to
a party or so.  Talk to that Chicago man I told you about.  He'll know.
But then you'll know too.  She will tell you."  He turned to Virginia.
"Frankly, Mrs.  Cunningham, I don't think you are entirely well yet."

"Goodness," she said, "I know I'm not."

For a minute or two the doctor was busy with his pipe.  Virginia could
have told him, as she had often told Robert, that he stuffed it too
full.  "Nearer well than you think," he said when the matter of
lighting had finally been finished.  "Always were.  But don't crowd it.
Plenty of time."

"What about writing?  I used to do a little."

"What did I tell you?  Already you want to rush back."

"No," she said.  "Even my kind of writing takes a little thinking."

The doctor grinned.  "I read a review of your last book."

"But that was several years ago."

"a Little Night Music," he said triumphantly.  "And a picture almost
as bad as the one Kik's got here."  He thumped the case his story

"What a remarkable memory," said Virginia quite as effectively as a
lush blue-eyed blond would have said it.

The doctor glowed.  "I always read the reviews," he said.  "No time for
anything else."

"I like the reviews better too," said Virginia.  "Unless it's a
mystery.  I love mystery stories."

"Me, too," said Gifford.  "They always turn out with everything tied up
neatly.  You aren't left wondering."

"What about the possibility of recurrence?"  asked Robert.  It was an
abrupt question that no one but Robert would have asked in the presence
of the patient.

Dr.  Gifford threw the pipe down.  "Since we don't know the cause," he
began.

Had he slipped?  Dr.  Kik thinks he knows the cause and you said you
were in accord with him.  And yet Virginia was convinced that the slip
was deliberate and that Dr.  Gifford had planned, from the start, to
inform the Cunninghams that his accord with Dr.  Kik was not
brimming.

"... and when you don't know the cause, you can't say definitely.
Sometimes we know exactly why; sometimes we can make a satisfactory
guess.  The confusion of city life?  Thyroid?  The thyroid trouble in
this case seems minor and yet... I'm inclined to think the cause or the
combination of causes entirely physical and yet I can't put my finger
on it.  I honestly don't know.... Why recovery?  Shock was indicated
but did shock do it?  Was it rather a matter of time?  And a sheltered
life?"  Here he shot Virginia a glance which she could not translate.
"I'll put my neck out on the recurrence angle, though, and say in my
opinion there will be none."

And did you insert "in my opinion" because here again you and Dr.  Kik
are not singing in the same key?  But I'll not take your word for it
nor Dr.  Kik's word; I'll take my own.  If this be shelter, give me
storm away from the hills.

"A balanced diet of work and rest and play," said Dr.  Gifford, "and no
more than an hour a day when you begin to write again."

"You can't get started in an hour," she said.

"I'll see to that part of it," said Robert.

The doctor rose.  "Fine," he said.  "Well, here's the paper."

"You had already signed it," said Virginia.

"I signed it right after the staff meeting," he said.  "I've

been in this field a long time and although I may not know many of the
answers, I think I know when it's time for a patient to get out."

They had left Dr.  Gifford before Virginia began to think about what
the paper meant.  Until now she had concentrated upon getting the
release and hadn't thought much beyond.  Bianca danced, but was there
fear under her gaiety?  Did she, even while shouting her joy, suddenly
realize that Juniperhill, the shelter patients devoted their sane
moments to hating, was indeed a shelter?

Terror of a world no longer familiar shook Virginia and she had to
clutch her hands together to keep from snatching the paper from Robert.
How can I go outside?  I won't know what to say to people or how to
look when they are talking.  I won't know when to sit down, when to
stand up.... I've forgotten the simplest of the social amenities and
it's been so long since I've had to use my own judgment that I've lost
the capacity.  "Oh, Robert," she moaned.

"Just think," he said, "only a few more minutes."  How happy he
sounded!  "It won't be long before we're on the train and the folks
will be waiting at the stationin Chicago, and we'll drive out along
that old lake and pretty soon we'll be in Evanston.  It's all over,
darling.  The doctors can beat their brains trying to figure out why
you got sick and why you came out of it, but all we care about is that
it's over.  And it's never going to happen again.  I'll see to that."

He wasn't afraid.  He knew her better than anyone else did and yet he
wasn't afraid.  Her hands, hidden from him by the muff, relaxed a
little and presently she had calmed down to the extent of wondering
what on earth they would do without her in the cafeteria.  I was good
in there.  Maybe I never knew too much about mops, but I was really
very good help in the cafeteria.

She didn't catch the names of the other two doctors.  One was the
washroom man.  He signed rapidly.  The other man, not so eager to be
rid of them, absorbed a little time by telling them of his misery with
sinus trouble.  When they neared Thirty-three, Miss Vance was looking
for them.

"Sent to pack," said Virginia.

"Kid," said the nurse, "you slay me."

Robert asked if he could come into the ward to help with

the packing, but Miss Vance said he knew better than that "But we
won't be long," she said.

The drab ladies of Thirty-three had seen Virginia's hat and coat often
enough to be fairly calm about them, but the muff created a stir.
"Ladies," shouted Miss Vance to the crowding admirers, "every last one
of you will be sent to pack!"

"Sheared lamb," hissed Ruth.

Virginia turned to deny this, but when she saw the look in Ruth's eyes
she nodded.  "S.  Klein's," she said.

Ruth shook her head.  "No.  I know fur.  It's beaver, all right.  And
you're going home.  I knew it this morning."

"I'm so sorry, Ruth...."

"So what kind of a dope are you, you and your S. Klein?"

"One side or a leg off," said Miss Vance.

When she had dismissed the junior nurse who had started the packing,
Miss Vance said she had taken the liberty of throwing the blue dress
away.  "I hope you didn't want it for a memento."

Virginia had taken off her coat and now she was ripping out the upper
of the two labels.  V. Cunningham.  Under the hospital's name was a
long string of numbers.  All but the 33 were crossed out.  "I've got
plenty of mementos," she said.  She dropped the label into the
wastebasket and admired the remaining tag that meant nothing except
that this coat had been purchased at a certain shop.  The label didn't
even give away that the coat had been bought off a Greatly Reduced
rack.

On the table was a pile of her very best handkerchiefs.  Robert must
have worked hard to pick out the nicest ones to send along with her.
Every handkerchief was stamped with that India-ink identification and
yet Virginia had never once got to use one of her handkerchiefs here.
But can you blame a nurse who has fifty noses to count?

The packing was nearly finished when Miss Sommerville came into the
dressing room.  The junior nurse had left the door slightly open. "I've
been looking all over for you, Mrs.  Cunningham," said Miss
Sommerville.  "I don't have your record for..."

"The patient is checking out," said Miss Vance.  "She is leaving the
hospital."

"That will make room for another one," said Miss Sommerville, "but
they'll send us more than one.  They always do.  And we're so crowded
already.  I just don't know where it's all going to end."

Miss Vance snapped the large suitcase shut.  "I'll tell you

where it's going to end.  When there's more sick ones than well ones,
by golly the sick ones will lock the well ones up."

Miss Sommerville frowned.  "I'm not sure they'll like it here," she
said doubtfully.  She raised her right hand and stared into the empty
palm.  "Where's my key got to?  How can I let her out?"

"Just draw a line through her name," said Miss Vance.

"I've tried that before," said Miss Sommerville, "but it doesn't work."
But then her expression of distress vanished.  "I know.  I'll erase
it."  She laughed a little as she scrubbed at the notebook.  "There,"
she held the book out to Virginia.  "See.  You're gone."

"Thank you very much," said Virginia.  She picked up her muff and Miss
Vance said she guessed they had everything.

"I should have said good-bye, but it's too late now, of course," said
Miss Sommerville.  "It would be silly to say good-bye to someone who
isn't here."  And again reaching for the ghost of her key, the former
nurse unlocked a private door.

the end.