Ugly words.  Bitter words.  Words that neither knew they knew flew between them like sparks between steel striking steel.

From him—­“Trouble with you is you haven’t got enough to do.  That’s the trouble with half you women.  Just lay around the house, rotting.  I’m a fool, slaving on the road to keep a good-for-nothing—­”

“I suppose you call sitting around hotel lobbies slaving!  I suppose the house runs itself!  How about my evenings?  Sitting here alone, night after night, when you’re on the road.”

Finally, “Well, if you don’t like it,” he snarled, and lifted his chair by the back and slammed it down, savagely, “if you don’t like it, why don’t you get out, h’m?  Why don’t you get out?”

And from her, her eyes narrowed to two slits, her cheeks scarlet: 

“Why, thanks.  I guess I will.”

Ten minutes later he had flung out of the house to catch the 8.19 for Manitowoc.  He marched down the street, his shoulders swinging rhythmically to the weight of the burden he carried—­his black leather hand-bag and the shiny tan sample case, battle-scarred, both, from many encounters with ruthless porters and ’bus men and bell boys.  For four years, as he left for his semi-monthly trip, he and Terry had observed a certain little ceremony (as had the neighbours).  She would stand in the doorway watching him down the street, the heavier sample-case banging occasionally at his shin.  The depot was only three blocks away.  Terry watched him with fond, but unillusioned eyes, which proves that she really loved him.  He was a dapper, well-dressed fat man, with a weakness for pronounced patterns in suitings, and addicted to brown derbies.  One week on the road, one week at home.  That was his routine.  The wholesale grocery trade liked Platt, and he had for his customers the fondness that a travelling salesman has who is successful in his territory.  Before his marriage to Terry Sheehan his little red address book had been overwhelming proof against the theory that nobody loves a fat man.

Terry, standing in the doorway, always knew that when he reached the corner, just where Schroeder’s house threatened to hide him from view, he would stop, drop the sample case, wave his hand just once, pick up the sample case and go on, proceeding backward for a step or two, until Schroeder’s house made good its threat.  It was a comic scene in the eyes of the onlooker, perhaps because a chubby Romeo offends the sense of fitness.  The neighbours, lurking behind their parlour curtains, had laughed at first.  But after awhile they learned to look for that little scene, and to take it unto themselves, as if it were a personal thing.  Fifteen-year wives whose husbands had long since abandoned flowery farewells used to get a vicarious thrill out of it, and to eye Terry with a sort of envy.