The light from the open door behind her streamed out and cut the darkness with a wedge-shaped blade. Where it fell, the grass was purple-blue milk, rich and thick with color.
Alice walked to the alley gate, and fumbled with the cold latch until she had opened it. Fog lay in the lamplit alley like a bright breath. Up and down the street beyond, the cold roofs were heavy on the solid houses. Their dead finality was like a threat against the vague and living dark.
Alice felt as though she were rushing out of herself like an unseen storm.
She wanted to lose her body in the dark.
But, at the end of the alley, people were passing. And she could see the square, turgid as a river, where lights of cabs and automobiles floated, trembled, disappeared, and reappeared again. She was in terror of them. She no longer wanted to be known to herself.
She turned, and shut the gate, and ran back up the walk to the house.
The kitchen was vacant, bare. A moth spun in zig-zag near the quivering gas flame. On the stove, the pots and pans, crusted with food, leaned together, half upset. There was white oilcloth on the table, and on the floor a scrap of threadbare red carpet. Bread was making in a covered bowl on a shelf back of the stove. The baby's clothes, which Mrs. Farley had been ironing, hung in a corner on a line. On a chair the bread board was laid out with a heel of bread and a large knife.
Alice picked up the knife. She wanted to cleave her vision of herself.
But she must cleave it surely. She was afraid.
She dropped the knife, and, at the clatter, almost ran from the room.