From now on, to Saxon, life seemed of its last reason and rhyme. It had become senseless, nightmarish. Anything was possible. There was nothing stable in the anarchic of affairs that swept her on she knew not to what catastrophic end. Had Billy been dependable, all would still have been well. With him to cling to she would have faced everything fearlessly. But he had been whirled away from her in the madness. So was the change in him that he seemed almost an intruder in the house. Spiritually he was such an intruder. Another man looked out of his eyes—a man whose thoughts were of violence and ; a man to whom there was no good in anything, and who had become an of the evil that was and universal. This man no longer Bert, himself muttering of , and , and revolution.  
Saxon strove to maintain that sweetness and coolness of flesh and spirit that Billy had praised in the old days. Once, only, she lost control. He had been in a particularly ugly mood, and a final harshness and unfairness cut her to the quick.
 
“Who are you speaking to?” she flamed out at him.
 
He was speechless and , and could only stare at her face, which was white with anger.
 
“Don't you ever speak to me like that again, Billy,” she commanded.
 
“Aw, can't you put up with a piece of bad temper?” he muttered, half apologetically, yet half . “God knows I got enough to make me cranky.”
 
After he left the house she flung herself on the bed and cried heart-brokenly. For she, who knew so the of love, was a proud woman. Only the proud can be truly , as only the strong may know the fullness of gentleness. But what was the use, she demanded, of being proud and game, when the only person in the world who mattered to her lost his own pride and gameness and fairness and gave her the worse share of their trouble?
 
And now, as she had faced alone the deeper, organic hurt of the loss of her baby, she faced alone another, and, in a way, an even greater personal trouble. Perhaps she loved Billy none the less, but her love was changing into something less proud, less confident, less trusting; it was becoming shot through with pity—with the pity that is parent to contempt. Her own was threatening to weaken, and she and shrank from the contempt she could see creeping in.
 
She struggled to steel herself to face the situation. Forgiveness stole into her heart, and she knew relief until the thought came that in the truest, highest love forgiveness should have no place. And again she cried, and continued her battle. After all, one thing was incontestable: THIS BILLY WAS NOT THE BILLY SHE HAD LOVED. This Billy was another man, a sick man, and no more to be held responsible than a fever-patient in the ravings of . She must be Billy's nurse, without pride, without contempt, with nothing to forgive. Besides, he was really bearing the brunt of the fight, was in the thick of it, dizzy with the striking of blows and the blows he received. If fault there was, it lay elsewhere, somewhere in the scheme of things that made men over jobs like dogs over bones.
 
So Saxon arose and on her armor again for the hardest fight of all in the world's arena—the woman's fight. She ejected from her thought all doubting and distrust. She forgave nothing, for there was nothing requiring forgiveness. She pledged herself to an absoluteness of belief that her love and Billy's was unsullied, unperturbed—severe as it had always been, as it would be when it came back again after the world settled down once more to rational ways.
 
That night, when he came home, she proposed, as an emergency measure, that she should resume her needlework and help keep the pot boiling until the strike was over. But Billy would hear nothing of it.
 
“It's all right,” he assured her repeatedly. “They ain't no call for you to work. I'm goin' to get some money before the week is out. An' I'll turn it over to you. An' Saturday night we'll go to the show—a real show, no movin' pictures. Harvey's nigger minstrels is comin' to town. We'll go Saturday night. I'll have the money before that, as sure as beans is beans.”
 
Friday evening he did not come home to supper, which Saxon regretted, for Maggie Donahue had returned a pan of potatoes and two quarts of flour (borrowed the week before), and it was a meal that awaited him. Saxon kept the stove going till nine o'clock, when, despite her , she went to bed. Her preference would have been to wait up, but she did not dare, knowing full well what the effect would be on him did he come home in liquor.
 
The clock had just struck one, when she heard the click of the gate. Slowly, heavily, , she heard him come up the steps and with his key at the door. He entered the bedroom, and she heard him sigh as he sat down. She remained quiet, for she had learned the hypersensitiveness induced by drink and was fastidiously careful not to hurt him even with the knowledge that she had lain awake for him. It was not easy. Her hands were till the nails the palms, and her body was in her effort for control. Never had he come home as bad as this.
 
“Saxon,” he called thickly. “Saxon.”
 
She stired and yawned.
 
“What is it?” she asked.
 
“Won't you strike a light? My fingers is all thumbs.”
 
Without looking at him, she complied; but so violent was the nervous trembling of her hands that the glass chimney against the globe and the match went out.
 
“I ain't drunk, Saxon,” he said in the darkness, a hint of amusement in his thick voice. “I've only had two or three ... of that sort.”
 
On her second attempt with the lamp she succeeded. When she turned to look at him she screamed with fright. Though she had heard his voice and knew him to be Billy, for the instant she did not recognize him. His face was a face she had never known. , , discolored, every feature had been beaten out of all of familiarity. One eye was closed, the other showed through a narrow of blood-congested flesh. One ear seemed to have lost most of its skin. The whole face was a swollen . His right , in particular, was twice the size of the left. No wonder his speech had been thick, was her thought, as she regarded the fearfully cut and swollen lips that still bled. She was sickened by the sight, and her heart went out to him in a great wave of tenderness. She wanted to put her arms around him, and cuddle and him; but her practical bade otherwise.
 
“You poor, poor boy,” she cried. “Tell me what you want me to do first. I don't know about such things.”
 
“If you could help me get my clothes off,” he suggested and thickly. “I got 'em on before I up.”
 
“And then hot water—that will be good,” she said, as she began gently drawing his coat sleeve over a and helpless hand.
 
“I told you they was all thumbs,” he , holding up his hand and at it with the fraction of sight remaining to him.
 
“You sit and wait,” she said, “till I start the fire and get the hot water going. I won't be a minute. Then I'll finish getting your clothes off.”
 
From the kitchen she could hear him to himself, and when she returned he was repeating over and over:
 
“We needed the money, Saxon. We needed the money.”
 
Drunken he was not, she could see that, and from his she knew he was partly .
 
“He was a surprise box,” he wandered on, while she proceeded to undress him; and bit by bit she was able to piece together what had happened. “He was an unknown from Chicago. They sprang him on me. The secretary of the Club warned me I'd have my hands full. An' I'd a-won if I'd been in condition. But fifteen pounds off without trainin' ain't condition. Then I'd been drinkin' pretty regular, an' I didn't have my wind.”
 
But Saxon, stripping his undershirt, no longer heard him. As with his face, she could not recognize his splendidly muscled back. The white sheath of silken skin was torn and . The lacerations occurred oftenest in horizontal lines, though there were lines as well.
 
“How did you get all that?” she asked.
 
“The ropes. I was up against 'em more times than I like to remember. ! He certainly gave me mine. But I fooled 'm. He couldn't put me out. I lasted the twenty rounds, an' I wanta tell you he's got some marks to remember me by. If he ain't got a couple of broke in the left hand I'm a geezer.—Here, feel my head here. Swollen, eh? Sure thing. He hit that more times than he's wishin' he had right now. But, oh, what a lacin'! What a lacin'! I never had anything like it before. The Chicago Terror, they call 'm. I take my hat off to 'm. He's some bear. But I could a-made 'm take the count if I'd ben in condition an' had my wind.—Oh! Ouch! Watch out! It's like ............