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Mrs. Faulkner stood. “I think I’m the better judge of that. He’s with me every minute I’m in this house.”

“Ted is dead,” said Ruth incredulously.

“That’s just it,” said Mrs. Faulkner impatiently. “To you he is dead. You can’t feel his presence or know his wishes now, because you hardly knew him. One doesn’t get to know a person in five months.”

“We were man and wife!” said Ruth.

“Most husbands and wives are strangers till death does them part, dear. I hardly knew my husband, and we had several years together.”

“Some mothers try to make their sons strangers to every woman but themselves,” said Ruth bitterly. “Praise be to God, you failed by a hair!”

Mrs. Faulkner strode man-like into the living room. Ruth listened to the springs creaking in the chair before the sacred cabinet. Again the whispered dialogue with silence drifted down the hall.

In ten minutes, Ruth was packed and standing in the living room.

“Child, where are you going?” said Mrs. Faulkner, without looking at her.

“Away—South, I guess.” Ruth’s feet were close together, her high heels burrowing in the carpet as she shifted petulantly from one foot to the other. She had a great deal to say to the older woman, and she waited for her to face her. A hundred vengeful phrases had sprung to mind as she packed—just, unanswerable.

Mrs. Faulkner didn’t turn her head, continued to stare at the mementos. Her big shoulders were hunched, her head down—an attitude of stubborn mass and wisdom. “What are you, Miss Hurley, some sort of goddess who can give or take away the most precious thing in a person’s life?”

“You asked me to give a great deal more than you have any right to ask.” Ruth imagined how a small boy might have felt, standing on this spot while the keen bully of a woman decided what, exactly, he was to do next.

“I ask only what my son asks.”

“That isn’t so.”

“She’s wrong, isn’t she, dear?” said Mrs. Faulkner to the cabinet. “She doesn’t love you enough to hear you, but your mother does.”

Ruth slammed the door, ran into the wet street, and flagged a puzzled motorist to a stop.

“I ain’t no cab, lady.”

“Please, take me to the station.”

“Look, lady, I’m going uptown, not downtown.” Ruth burst into tears. “All right, lady. For heaven’s sakes, all right. Get in.”

“Train number 427, the Seneca, arriving on track four,” said the voice in the loudspeaker. The voice seemed intent on shattering any illusions passengers might have of their destinations’ being better than what they were leaving. San Francisco was droned as cheerlessly as Troy; Miami sounded no more seductive than Knoxville.

Thunder rolled across the ceiling of the waiting room. The pillar by Ruth trembled. She looked up from her magazine to the station clock. Her train would be next, southbound.

When she bought her ticket, checked her baggage through, and settled on a hard bench to read away the dead minutes, her movements had been purposeful, quick, her walk almost a swagger. The motions had been an accompaniment to a savage dialogue buzzing in her head. In her imagination she had lashed out at Mrs. Faulkner with merciless truths, had triumphantly wrung from that rook of a woman apologies and tears.

For the moment, the vengeful fantasy left Ruth satisfied, forgetful of her recent tormentor. She felt only boredom and incipient loneliness. To dispel these two, she looked from group to group in the waiting room, reading in faces and clothes and luggage the commonplace narratives that had brought each person to the station.

A tall, baby-faced private chatted stiffly with his well-dressed mother and father: yanked out of gray flannels and college by the draft … nothing but a marksman’s medal … bright, lots of money … father uncomfortable about son’s rank and overparking …

A racking cough cut into Ruth’s thoughts. An old man, cramped against the armrest at the end of a completely vacant bench, was doubled by a coughing fit. He waited for the coughing to subside, so that he could take another puff on the cigarette butt between his dirty fingers.

A frail, bright-eyed old woman handed a