Ellen felt estranged to all the people about and even to herself. An unutterable awe of all places swept through her, a fear of trees and stones, and she shrank even from the roadway of the street which lay out dusty before her. Familiar itself became unfamiliar, and a glance down at her own hands where she saw accustomed lines and folds of skin brought bewilderment. She sat for an hour. She tried to seem unconscious of the glances which the negro women cast upon her. She tried to think of some place in which she would prefer to be, but all places were alike abhorred. She stared down at a tuft of sourgrass growing in the gutter at her feet. Suddenly out of the chaos in her being there came a hunger, a quick craving for food to eat. Food. Her mouth wanted it. Bread. Bacon fried and laid on bread. Bread sweetened in grease. If she had a pone she would not even be looking at her hands, would not even be seeing the stones of the road or the gutter, not in such a place as this. Suddenly it came to her that she was going to walk away from the curb before the church, that she had risen and was walking off past a yellow negress and past three white bundles of clothes. She went up the street down which she had come, and after a little she knew that she was going to ask for food at some door. She went far up the street looking at house after house before she decided upon a place to ask, a white house with vines on the porch set back among elm trees. A tinkle of piano playing came out of the house, curves of music running through the air. When she walked up onto the porch a fear of doorways, of wide sills and glass panes and doorbell fixtures, came upon her. A rug on the porch filled her with terror under which lay a joy. She scarcely dared knock on the smooth doorframe and her knock fell faint and meek. She asked her wish in a voice that was low and full of anguish. The woman was kind and she asked again.

‘Do you-all know any gypsies a-campen out any the roads?’

‘No. Are you lost from your folks?’

Ellen thought a moment, putting ideas together and separating them in her mind.

‘I’m a-looken for somebody I know,’ she said. ‘Just a-looken.’