" She pried it open again after
sealing, to drop in a tiny gold chain with a pearl-and-turquoise drop,
still another gift, suggested by her mother to the bridegroom. Finally,
there were the little trinkets of more remote days which she dropped
into her purse. A rolled-gold link bracelet dangling a row of friendship
hearts. Her class pin. A tiny reproduction on porcelain, like the one
burned into the china plate in the parlor, of her parents, cheek to
cheek. Regarding it, her throat tightened and she sat down suddenly.
"O God!" she said, half audibly, "what am I doing?" But on the second
she cocked her head to a passer-by and finally leaned out to hail in a
neighborhood man of all work, paying him a dollar and car fare to carry
her bags down to the new Union Station and check them. Seeing them
lugged out of the house was another moment when it seemed to her that
she must faint of the crowding around her heart.
Lena she dispatched to the grocer's on the homely errand of beeswax for
ironing, and, trembling to take advantage of the interval of her
absence, hurried into her jacket and hat, her face deeply within the
wide brim.
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