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 tyranny or drink, but even after her 'Good-Night' Lanice would listen for any sound from the bedroom, listen for hours sometimes until her cousin's breathing had lengthened and hoarsened. Then she would pull the bedclothes over her head, and, writhing in this hot and suffocating tent, she would wet the pillows with the tears of her remorse and soak her nightgown with the sweat of her anguish. Neither Anthony's departure nor his duplicity had the power to hurt her as did the memory of the response she had made to his light and violent passions. It was her fault. All was her fault. Again and again she told herself that she never should have let him as much as touch her. And he had kissed her and held her! And she had loved him, and he was gone!

But this evening she would go home to find the house all but empty and she could cry for hours and hours freed from the oppressive presence of Pauline and with Mrs. Andrews, remote in her subterranean cell, too far away to hear her. Church bells and sleigh bells. Lights twinkling across the Common. The air sparkled with bells and lights. She stood with one hand on the key in the lock, her back pressed against the door, and looked at the stars swarming in the tree-tops of the Common and thought of God high up in the windy darkness. She said to herself, 'Nothing really matters. In fifty years I will probably be dead.'

Mrs. Andrews had left one lamp burning in the hall. To light the beautiful chandelier when such a large proportion of the family was away would have seemed to her thrifty nature wasteful. Lanice leaned