But here she was now, doing herself no good — it was only storing up trouble to let herself get weak with hunger simply because she longed for a real reason to feel sorry for herself. She would make the toast and have tea with it. But before she did anything she would open the folding doors into the front sitting room and let some of the warmth of the fire steal in there. The room where she stood was less a dining room than a back sitting room, because she and the children spent their time there when they weren’t in the kitchen. The leaves of the big table had been let down, and it stood flat against the wall, with a bowl of her roses on it from this morning. The floor was covered in linoleum, but the rug Bennie had been sleeping on before he crossed to lie in the warmth of the fire fitted very neatly under the folding doors, very much as though it had been specially made, and it gave the room a nice, well-furnished appearance. She opened the doors back carefully. The front room was dim. The curtains were still up on the windows in this room — long French windows that curved out into a bow — and the gray houses across the street were dark in the falling rain. Her own house, she supposed, looked dark to her neighbors over there. She saw that some of them had their lights on, although it was only five o’clock. There was an upright piano against the wall opposite the fireplace in this room. She had put a bowl of pink roses on the piano earlier in the day, and a small vase of them on the mantelpiece. She thought that what light there was in the room came from the roses and from the shining wood of the piano. Also, the fragrance of the roses was stronger in this room than in the back room where she had been standing for so long. Standing doing nothing, she thought. But instead of reproaching herself she went to the windows and looked out into the street, which was narrow and had two facing rows of houses, all identical with her own. She liked to watch people going up and down the street, and she sometimes came in here to attend to her collection of ferns so that she could watch what was going on outside without seeming curious.