mirror of the bathroom medicine chest.

She was shuddering with one of the hot chills. The needle and little
glass piston out of the hand bag and with a dry little insuck of breath,
pinching up little areas of flesh from her arm, bent on a good firm
perch, as it were.

There were undeniable pockmarks on Mrs. Samstag's right forearm.
Invariably it sickened her to see them. Little graves. Oh! oh! little
graves! For Alma. Herself. And now Louis. Just once. Just one more
little grave--

And Alma, answering her somewhere down in her heartbeats: "No, mamma.
No, mamma! No! No! No!"

But all the little pores gaping. Mouths! The pinching up of the skin.
Here, this little clean and white area.

"No, mamma! No, mamma! No! No! No!"

"Just once, darling?" Oh--oh--little graves for Alma and Louis. No! No!
No!

Somehow, some way, with all the little mouths still parched and gaping
and the clean and quite white area unblemished, Mrs. Samstag found her
back to bed. She was in a drench of sweat when she got there and the
conflagration of neuralgia, curiously enough, was now roaring in her
ears so that it seemed to her she could hear her pain.

Her daughter lay asleep, with her face to the wall, her flowing hair