“Must ‘a’ dozed off,” he said, reaching down for his newspaper.

She was winding her fingers now in and out among themselves.

“Burkhardt?”

“Eh?”

“What—­does a person do that’s smotherin’?”

“Eh?”

“I know.  That’s what I’m doing.  Smotherin’!”

“A touch of the old trouble, Hanna?”

She sat erect, with her rather large white hands at the heavy base to her long throat.  They rose and fell to her breathing.  Like Heine, who said so potently, “I am a tragedy,” so she, too, in the sulky light of her eyes and the pulled lips and the ripple of shivers over her, proclaimed it of herself.

“Seven-forty!  God! what’ll I do, Burkhardt?  What’ll I do?”

“Go lay down on the sofa a bit, Hanna.  I’ll cover you with a plaid.  It’s the head-noises again bothering you.”

“Seven-forty!  What’ll I do?  Seven-forty and nothing left but bed.”

“I must ‘a’ dozed off, Hanna.”

“Yes; you must ‘a’ dozed off,” she laughed, her voice eaten into with the acid of her own scorn.  “Yes; you must ‘a’ dozed off.  The same way as you dozed off last night and last month and last year and the last eight years.  The best years of my life—­that’s what you’ve dozed off, John Burkhardt.  He ’must ‘a’ dozed off,’” she repeated, her lips quivering and lifting to reveal the white line of her large teeth.  “Yes; I think you must ‘a’ dozed off!”

He was reading again in stolid profile.

She fell to tapping the broad toe of her shoe, her light, dilated eyes staring above his head.  She was spare, and yet withal a roundness left to the cheek and forearm.  Long-waisted and with a certain swing where it flowed down into straight hips, there was a bony, Olympian kind of bigness about her.  Beneath the washed-out blue shirtwaist dress her chest was high, as if vocal.  She was not without youth.  Her head went up like a stag’s to the passing of a band in the street, or a glance thrown after her, or the contemplation of her own freshly washed yellow hair in the sunlight.  She wore a seven glove, but her nails had great depth and pinkness, and each a clear half-moon.  They were dug down now into her palms.

“For God’s sake, talk!  Say something, or I’ll go mad!”

He laid his paper across his knee, pushing up his glasses.

“Sing a little something, Hanna.  You’re right restless this evening.”

“’Restless’!” she said, her face wry.  “If I got to sit and listen to that white-faced clock ticking for many more evenings of this winter, you’ll find yourself with a raving maniac on your hands.  That’s how restless I am!” He rustled his paper again.  “Don’t read!” she cried.  “Don’t you dare read!”

He sat staring ahead, in a heavy kind of silence, breathing outward and passing his hand across his brow.

Her breathing, too, was distinctly audible.

“Lay down a bit, Hanna.  I’ll cover you—­”