This was a new play by him!
"Ah," my heart seemed to say, "now again you will hear his dear words,
although spoken by alien mouths.
"The love seens----"
I could not finish. Although married and forever beyond me, I could
still hear his manly tones as issueing from the door of the Bath-house.
I thrilled with excitement. As the curtain rose I closed my eyes in
ecstacy.
"Bab!" Jane said, in a quavering tone.
I looked. What did I see? The bath-house itself, the very one. And as
I stared I saw a girl, wearing her hair as I wear mine, cross the stage
with a Bunch of Keys in her hand, and say to the bath-house door.
"Can't I do somthing to help? I do so want to help you."
MY VERY WORDS.
And a voice from beyond the bath-house door said: "Who's that?"
HIS WORDS.
I could bare no more. Heedless of Jane's Protests and Anguish, I got
up and went out, into the light of day. My body was bent with misry.
Because at last I knew that, like mother and all the rest, HE TO DID
NOT UNDERSTAND ME, AND NEVER WOULD. To him I was but material, the stuff
that plays are made of!
And now we know that he never could know,
And did not understand.
Kipling.
Ignoring Jane's observation that the tickets had cost two dollars each,
I gathered up the scattered Skeins of my life together, and fled.