John Webster threw out his hands with a gesture of disgust and then got quickly off the bed. His wife's body had begun to stir and now she lifted herself up. For a moment her rather huge figure was crouched on the bed and she looked like some great animal on all fours, sick and trying to get up and walk.

And then she did get up, putting her feet firmly on the floor and walking slowly out of the room without looking at the two people. Her husband stood with his back pressed against the wall of the room and watched her go. "Well, that's the end of her," he thought grimly. The door that led into her room came slowly towards him. Now it was closed. "Some doors have to be closed for ever too," he told himself.

He was still in his daughter's presence and she was not afraid of him. He went to a closet and getting out his clothes began to dress. That he realized was a terrible moment. Well, he was playing the cards he held in his hand to the limit. He had been nude. Now he had to get into his clothes. An absurd notion came to him. "Has my daughter a sense of moments? Will she help me now?" he asked himself.

And then his heart jumped. His daughter Jane had done a quite lovely thing. There was a certain garment that had to be put on and buttoned. While he did that she turned and threw herself face downward on the bed, in the same position in which her mother had been but a moment before.

"I walked out of her room into the hallway," he explained. "My friend had come up stairs and was standing in the hallway lighting a lamp that was fastened to a bracket on the wall. You can perhaps imagine the things that were going through my mind. My friend looked at me, as yet knowing nothing. You see, he did not yet know that woman was in the house, but he had seen me walk out of the room. He had just lighted the lamp when I came out and closed the door behind me and the light fell on my face. There must have been something that startled him. Later we never spoke of the matter at all. As it turned out everyone was embarrassed and made self-conscious by what had occurred and what was still to occur,

"I must have walked out of the room like a man walking in sleep. What was in my mind ? What had been in my mind when I stood there beside her naked body and even before that? It was a situation that might not occur again in a lifetime. You have just now seen how your mother went out of this room. You are wondering, I dare say, what is in her mind. I can tell you of that. There is nothing in her mind. She has made her mind a blank empty place into which nothing that matters can come. She has spent a lifetime at that, as I dare say most people have.