car that passes, every window that is open, every tree that is climbed, partakes of the nature of the menacing Something that any time may happen to them, until it seems too good to be true that life will ever give them back to you safe and sound again.
Alice could endure it no longer.
She had to go and look for them.
Deep down within her was the knowledge that she was really going to look for Tom. She had given in, but she refused to look this shameful fact in the face.
Flying the lofty colors of a mother's love and anxiety—with the fact of her submission locked safely up out of sight, she went down the hall.
At the foot of the stairs she ran into Tom.
"Tom!" she cried. They might have been separated for a week.
"Alice!" They embraced one another.
"I was just going to look for the children."
"I am coming to find you!" he said, with savage tenderness.
Alice smiled. The world was as it should be. The secret at the bottom of her heart died. She had come out of her room only to look for the children.
One has to play tricks with oneself like this once in a while, or where indeed would self-respect be?
