David Henry Keller

“ Thompson was in the parlor and the lights on. The heavy odor was worse than usual and there were a lot of flies. You could hear them buzz and strike against the electric lights. I got my own supper but I couldn’t eat much, thinking of her in the parlor and the flies settling on her open mouth.
“She just sat there that night in the parlor till I went to her and took her arm to lead her up the stairs. She was cold and on each cheek there was a heavy purple blotch forming. Once she was in her room she seemed to move around so I left her alone and when I went into her room later on she was in bed. ”

“ Perhaps the fact that you are uneasy about the future makes you exaggerate the importance of her symptoms.
“At any rate she became sick, de¬veloped a nasty cough and lost weight. I spoke to her about it and even bought a bottle of beef, wine and iron at the drug store and made her take it. She did so to please me, but she never would admit that she was sick. Said it was fashionable to be thin and that the cough was just nervousness. ”

“ Things looked rather twisted after that. Either I was right and every¬body else wrong, or they were right and I was just about
as wrong men¬tally as a
man could be. But I had to believe my senses. A man just has to believe what he sees and hears and feels, and when I thought over that office visit, and the wife smiling and the doctor sticking her finger for the blood to examine, it just seemed im¬possible. Anaemic! Why—that was a simple word to describe her condition.
“That night the flies were worse than usual. ”

“ At least as much so as most men are. You know that there is a good deal of conflict between the sexes, and there were a few differ¬ences of opinion between Mrs. Thompson and myself. But not enough to cause serious difficulty. ”