the truck has not come, with him and the bottles! Why is he late? Did he leave the factory early, against his habit, so that I did not notice him amid that whirl of machines and human beings in motion? I began to be afraid, and the road is long, long... to the end of the world... where our old house is, and my silver-haired mother, and a fire with a pot of soup upon it. And I am hungry, and I long for my mother and for him — the three of us sitting round the fire, talking of things that are nothing like bottles or factory smoke, dreaming of things our days do not know. Did he pass me and not see me? And I heard the sound of a car scratching the silence of the evening — perhaps it is he? From afar the two shining eyes appeared, and came toward me slowly, slowly. No. It was not the big freight truck with its irritating screech; it was one of the cars of the rich, light and trim, and he was driving it... But he did not stop. Why, I wonder? I am certain he saw me, for the car's eyes split the dark of the evening, and I planted myself in its way until I thought it would run me down. And when it passed me by I cried out with all my strength, and it stopped, and I ran to it, and he opened the door for me. I made to lift my foot in, but I started back, feeling two ugly eyes glaring at me from behind two black-rimmed spectacle lenses. Who was it? I do not know! Perhaps the director, whom we know only by name. He leaned his body forward a little and asked haughtily: "And who might this be?" — and said no more, only moved a hand holding a huge lighted cigar: away with you. And the man who loves me and whom I love, the man who had drawn me to him and said "You shall be my wife," did nothing but push me aside from the door and

then shut it in my face — gently or roughly, I do not know. And the car passed on and left me to the storm, alone; and generous tears welled up in my eyes, and a wave of hatred wrapped me round, and before my eyes danced the images of things grown huge, beyond the reach of my weakness — lofty, towering, out of reach of those who crawl on their bellies, like me. Everything a giant — the houses, the human beings, the

trees, the cars, even the empty beer bottles: each one seemed to me as tall as an ogre. And in the midst of this world of towering things I saw myself with him... with the man who gave me a ring and said: "You shall be my wife." And we were two dwarfs creeping upon the earth; stretch as we might, we could not reach the length of the director's finger that waved me away from the car and left me to the storm.