He was wonderful tender with her, though. I don't mean just in little loverlike ways, saying things and calling her things and looking at her gentle. I mean in ways that don't have to be said or called or looked, but that just are. To my mind they mean a thousand times more. But I thought that in her heart she sort of hankered for the said and called and looked kind. And of course they are nice. Nice, but not vital like the other sort. If you had to get along without one, you know which one would be the one.
When we went into the other room, Ellen took me to look at the baby, in bed, asleep, same as a kitten and a rosebud and a little yellow chicken, and all the things that you love even the names of. And when we went back, Ellen went to the piano and begun to play rambley things but low so's you could hardly hear them across the room, on account of the baby. I sank down and was listening, contented, and thinking of the most thinkable things I knew, when she looked over her shoulder.
"Russell," she says, "if you'll come and turn the music, I'll do that new Serenade."
Russell was on a couch, stretched out with a newspaper and his pipe, and I dunno if I ever seen a man look more luxurious. But he got up, sort of a one-joint-at-a-time fashion, and came slumping over, with his hair sticking out at the back. He stood and turned the music, with his pipe behind him. And when she'd got through, he says:
"Very pretty, indeed. Now I'll just finish my article, I guess, dear."
He went back to his couch. And she got up, kind of quick, and walked over and stared into the fire. And I got up and went over and stared out the window. It seemed kind of indelicate to be looking, when I knew so well what was happening in that room.
For she'd forgot he was a person. She was thinking that he was just another one of her. And that seems to me a terrible thing for any human being to get to thinking about another, married to them or not though they be.
When I looked out the window, I needed new words. I hadn't realized the elevator had skimmed up so high with me—and done it in the time it would have taken the Emporium elevator, home, to go the two stories. But we were up ten, I found afterward. And there I was looking the city plain in the face. Rows and rows and fields of little lights from windows that were homes—and homes—and homes. I'd never seen so many homes in my life before, at any one time. And it came over me, as I looked, that in all the hundreds of them I was looking at, and in the thousands that lay stretched out beyond, the same kind of thing must have gone on at some time or other, or be going to go on, or be going on now, like I saw clear as clear was going on with Ellen and Russell.
It was the third night I was there that the thing happened. I was getting along fine. I did the ordering and the managing and took part care of the baby and mended up clothes and did the dozens of things that Ellen wasn't strong enough to do. Delia and I had got to be real good friends by the second day.
Russell came home that third night looking fagged out. He was never nervous or impatient—I noticed that about him. I'd never once seen him take it out in his conversation with his wife merely because he had had a hard day. We'd just gone in from the dining-room when Russell, instead of lighting his pipe and taking his paper, turned round on the rug, and says: