White Ash

There is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice. She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door. Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice . . . but these are some of her thoughts : The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron. The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke. The love of a young man whose sweetheart married an older man for money burns with a sputtering uncertain flame. And there is a love . . . one in a thousand . . ., burns clean and is gone leaving a white ash. . . . And this is a thought she never explains to the parrot and goldfish and two white mice.