She stood up. “Now when the shoes are finished, you may mail them to me at this address.” Taking a leather case from her handbag, she extracted a card from it. “I must say there is something about your shop I like. It strikes me as what I spoke of before: the real thing. Nothing is so close to my heart as that, sir: the real thing. And if you had known my father, you would see I came by my passion honestly.”

“I hope you will be satisfied with the shoes,” said my father. “But you must not expect too much. My hands are not as clever as they used to be. I am, you see, no longer a shoemaker, I am a shoe-fixer.”

Miss Pride gave him her hand. “It’s time you changed. Good-by.”

He stood stupidly in the center of the room and did not open the door for her, did not, indeed, bid her good-by. When she had gone and the motor of her car started up, he sat down on the stool she had just occupied and putting his hands over his face, the fingers so tightly interlocked that their knuckles whitened, he groaned with some profound, enigmatic misery, and I stepped softly away from the window, perplexed that she who could cause me only happiness had caused him only pain. As I went toward the house, I was gradually infected by his terrible sorrow and felt my face grow feverish, recalling his words last night: the child should never have been born.

In the kitchen, I ran my fingers over the cold stove. My mother was sitting in a chair beside the sink and she drew me down to kiss me. “Who do you love, little Sonie girl?” she said, gazing at me with her great black eyes. And while I answered her as she desired me to, my mind was telling me the truth: “Miss Pride, not you, Mamma.”

TWO

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