It’s terrible to realize that you don’t learn how to live until you’re ready to die; and, then it’s too late. I know I sound like a selfish old woman, and I am, and I don’t care. I don’t care. I want to be selfish. So will you, too, when you’re sixty, Martha Slocum. You think you’re young. But all of a sudden you’ll be sixty, like me. All of a sudden you’ll realize — — ”

“Mother, you’re not eating a thing.” Ed’s kindly voice.

Marcia, flushed of face, pushed her hair back from her forehead with a little frenzied familiar gesture. “Eat! Who could eat with Joan making that insane racket in there! Ed, will you tell her to stop! Can’t you speak to her just once! After all, she is