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always take this long?”
    â€œHe’ll be here any minute now, honey. Just be patient.”
    Finally it did open, and there he was, carrying a brief.
    I tried to read his face from all the way across the reception room. My eyes fastened on him in mute appeal and followed him as he came on toward me, and then past, and swung out the little gate in the partition railing and passed through. He avoided my gaze with an air of studious preoccupation. He didn’t seem to see me until I had risen and he couldn’t pretend not to any more. That alone should have been answer enough.
    Then he said, “Come inside; come into my office.” And to the girl, “Why did you let her sit out here, Ruthie? Why didn’t you have her wait inside?”
    The girl said, “She didn’t want to be alone in there, Mr. Benedict. She asked if she could sit with me, and I had to be out here to answer the switchboard.”
    He held the private-office door for me and I went in. I felt a little bit as though I were going to my own execution here and now. There wasn’t very much doubt of what he was going to tell me. It was just the word itself that was so awful. And the attaching of a date to it.
    He couldn’t look at me at first. He fussed around with the papers he’d brought back with him as long as he could. I just waited, with my eyes burning at him.
    He sighed finally and said: “Now don’t take it hard. The other day was the real test, and you stood it like a major; you were wonderfully brave.”
    He wouldn’t have said that if he could have seen me afterward, at home by myself, with the corner of the pillow stuffed into my mouth, I thought.
    Wasn’t he going to say it ever? Was he just going to stand there like that all afternoon? “Is it——?”
    â€œI’m appealing it, of course.”
    â€œHe didn’t give him—the other?”
    â€œHe couldn’t; there was no recommendation of mercy.”
    â€œSay it. I can stand it. Only say it quick and get it over with.”
    But he still wouldn’t name the word; I had to myself.
    â€œThe chair? The electric chair?”
    He looked down at his desk in assent.
    It exploded in my mind. My husband has been sentenced to death . That thing we all obey, all live under, the law of the state, has decreed he shall be taken from me in full health, and his body attached to——
    I closed my eyes briefly, opened them again. Because what there was to be seen on the outside was less fearful than what there was to be seen on the inside.
    He was worried about me. I was sitting down, so he must have thrust forward a chair. He tried to take out a bottle of liquor he kept for such emergencies in one of the desk drawers. I motioned to him not to. “Don’t be afraid,” I murmured half audibly.
    â€œIt isn’t over yet. You’re taking the typical layman’s point of view,” he tried to say. Or something like that.
    I motioned that aside too. Of course it was over. The damage was already largely done. The sentence had already been partially carried out on both of us. In our hearts, if nowhere else. How could we both be ever quite the same again? What good would his appeal be by the time it was finally submitted? They’d never give me back quite the same man that had gone up there to that place where they kept them. They’d never give him back the same wife that he had left behind.
    After a while, in a carefully controlled voice that wasn’t like my own at all, I asked: “How did he take it?”
    â€œWith his head up, looking him straight in the eye.”
    â€œI should have been there, somewhere close by, at such a time. He was all alone in that room, poor boy.”
    â€œHe said he was glad you weren’t there to hear it. He thanked me as they took him out for not letting you come.”
    A moment or two went sluggishly by. “I guess I’ll go home