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Cynthia.”
    “But I do. I’ll give you a day. I’ll give you till tomorrow. You can spend today packing your things. Then, as soon as the apartment can be disposed of, I will leave it too.”
    “My God,” Andrew said, “you do mean it.” And his temper rose too. “Then sit here and stew. Cry your eyes out instead of pulling yourself together. I’ve lost patience. I can’t do any more.”
    So it ended. Now she was trying to make a new life for herself at work in a settlement house for homeless mothers and children. It was a joyless life, but a useful one at least. Often she thought when she saw a young woman holding her baby that she would be willing to change with her. Poverty was cruel and dreadful, but with compassionate help it could be overcome; it was not final.
    Again she went to the window as if out there might lie some answer to her questions. The sky was a dirty pink, the nighttime sky that hides thestars above great cities. It was time to leave this costly view and things that filled these rooms, the shining, pretty gadgets that once had been so joyfully assembled for a lifetime home. Gran’s letter lay open on the desk.
Come and spend the day. Spend the night. Stay as long as you want to. I love you
.
    Once more she read the loving words and imagined Gran at her desk writing them.
    How could anyone refuse?

C hapter 3
    I n Washington, Lewis Byrne put down the receiver and sat quite still, thinking about his daughter.
    He had always, in the privacy of his thoughts, called her his gift of joy. Tall and calm as Cynthia was, he could see himself and his kin in her; piquant and graceful, she was also like her mother, having Daisy’s quick wit and strong, athletic body. Repeated in Cynthia these qualities seemed to have been intensified; as you watched her, you could imagine a bird in flight. A wounded bird now, he thought, and was heavy with thatthought, when the door opened and Daisy came home.
    “How was it?” he inquired.
    “Nice. I surprised myself by finding how many women I already know in Washington.”
    “Looking at you, nobody would ever guess your worries.”
    She had brought a brisk air into the room, as if she had just returned from a swim or a horseback ride or tennis. There was energy in her stride and her direct blue gaze.
    Ruefully, she replied, “What’s the use of showing them?”
    “None, I suppose. I talked to Cynthia.”
    “Anything new?”
    “Nothing, except she’s going with us to Mother’s.”
    “Oh, that’s good. I was afraid she wouldn’t.”
    “She loves my mother.”
    “Well, of course. What I meant was, having to go through the town, seeing the church where they were married, and then the cemetery.”
    “How Andrew can have done this to her! Men have their moments, God knows, but this! It’s unforgivable. After all they had been through, andjust when we really thought she was beginning to recover.” Lewis shook his head, sighing. “No matter how old your children are, it’s never over, is it? Remember the shock we had when she broke her arm in three places? And when she was seven, and got lost at the Brownie picnic—or we thought she was lost, anyway?”
    “Remember when she was fifteen and madly in love with that awful boy?”
    For a few minutes they were silent, until Daisy said gently, “Get up. Let’s have dinner and go to a movie, a comedy, if there is one. This sort of thing doesn’t help either us or Cynthia.”
    “You’re right. But I hate December,” he said as he rose.
    On a short, gloomy afternoon that call had come, rushing them to their daughter, to their dead grandchildren and the anguish.
    “I know it’s a bad month altogether. But come on, dear, get your coat.”
    For Daisy’s sake he must try. They had dinner and it was good, but he was not hungry. The movie flickered before his eyes without registering. Back at home when she went to bed, he pleaded work.
    “I’ll come in a little while. I’ve got to read some material on public