“It's dried on,” she said, turning her face back into tie corner. “I'm afraid this is going to take awhile, Paul.” She scrubbed. The stain slowly disappeared from the plaster but she went on dipping the cloth, wringing it out, scrubbing, and then repeating the whole process. He could not see her face, but the idea - the certainty - that she had gone blank and might go on scrubbing the wall for hours tormented him.

At last - just before the clock chimed once, marking two-thirty - she got up and dropped the rag into the water. She took the bucket from the room without a word. He lay in bed, listening to the creaking boards which marked tier heavy, stolid passage, listening as she poured the water (out of her bucket - and, incredibly, the sound of the faucet as she drew more. He began to cry soundlessly. The tide had never gone out so far; he could see nothing but drying mudflats and those splintered pilings which cast their eternal damaged shadows.

She came back and stood for just a moment inside the doorway, observing his wet face with that same mixture of sternness and maternal love. Then her eyes drifted to the corner, where no sign of the splashed soup remained.

“Now I must rinse,” she said, “or else the soap will leave a dull spot. I must do it all; I must make everything right. Living alone as I do is no excuse whatever for scamping the job. My mother had a motto, Paul, and I live by it. “Once nasty, never neat,” she used to say.”

“Please,” he groaned. “Please, the pain, I'm dying.”

“No. You're not dying.”

“I'll scream,” he said, beginning to cry harder. It hurt lo cry. It hurt his legs and it hurt his heart. “I won't be able lo help it.”

“Then scream,” she said. “But remember that you made that mess. Not me. It's nobody's fault but your own.” Somehow he was able to keep from screaming. He watched as she dipped and wrung and rinsed, dipped and wrung and rinsed. At last, just as the clock in what he assumed was the parlor began to strike three, she rose and picked up the bucket.