The bride wore black Read Free Page A

through it a thousand times." And without any change of tone, she went on, "I'd better take a taxi. There's one down there."
    Tlie girl looked at her questioningly as it drew up.
    "Yes, you can see me off if you want. To the Grand Central Station, driver."
    She didn't look back at the house, at the street they were leaving. She didn't look out at the many other well-remembered streets that followed, that in their aggregate stood for her city, the place where she had always lived.
    They had to wait a moment at the ticket window; there

    was somebody else before them. The girl stood helplessly by at her elbow. "Where are you going?"
    "I don't even know, even at this very moment. I haven't thought about it until now." She opened her handbag, separated the small roll of currency it contained into two unequal parts; retained the smaller in her hand. She moved up before the window, thrust it in.
    "How far will this take me, at day-coach rates?"
    "Chicago with ninety cents change."
    "Then give me a one-way ticket." She turned to the girl beside her. "Now you can go back and tell them that much, at least."
    "I won't if you don't want me to, Julie."
    "It doesn't matter. What difference does the name of a place make when you're gone beyond recall?"
    They sat for a while in the waiting room. Then presently they went below to the lower track level, stood for a moment by the coach doorway.
    "Well kiss, as former childhood friends should." Their lips met briefly. "There."
    "Julie, what can I say to you?"
    "Just 'goodbye.' What else is there to say to anyone ever in this life?"
    "Julie, I only hope I see you someday soon."
    "You never will again."
    The station platform fell behind. The train swept through the long tunnel. Then it emerged into daylight again, to ride an elevated trestle flush with the upper stories of tenements, while the crosswise streets ticked by like picket openings in a fence.
    It started to slow again, almost before it had got fully under way. "Twanny-fith Street," droned a conductor into the car. The woman who had gone away forever seized her valise, stood up and walked down the aisle as though this were the end of the trip instead of the beginning.

    She was standing in the vestibule, in readiness, when it drew up. She got off, walked along the platform to the exit, down the stairs to street level. She bought a paper at the waiting-room newsstand, sat down on one of the benches, opened the paper toward the back, to the classified ads. She furled it to a convenient width, traced a finger down the column under the heading Furnished Rooms.
    The finger stopped almost at random, without much regard for the details offered by what it rested on. She dug her nail into the spongy paper, marking it. She tucked the newspaper under one arm, picked up her vahse once more, walked outside to a taxi. "Take me to this address, here," she said, and showed him the paper.
    The landlady at the furnished rooming house stood back, waiting for her verdict, by the open room door.
    The woman turned around. "Yes, this will do very nicely. Hi give you the amount for the first two weeks now."
    The landlady counted it, began to scribble a receipt. "What name, please?" she asked, looking up.
    The woman's eyes flicked past her own valise with the "J.B." once initialed in gilt still dimly visible midway between the two latches. "Josephine Bailey."
    "Here's your receipt. Miss Bailey. Now I hope you're comfortable. The bathroom's just two doors down the hall on your "
    "Thank you, thank you, 111 find out." She closed the door, locked it on the inside. She took off her hat and coat, opened her valise, so recently packed for a trip of fifty blocks or a lifetime.
    There was a small rust-flaked tin medicine cabinet tacked up above the washbowl. She went over to it and opened it, rising on her toes as though in search of something. On the topmost shelf, as she had half hoped, there

    was a rusted razor blade, left behind by some long-forgotten masculine