The free evening fades, outside the windows fastened with
     decorative iron grilles.
The lamps are lightened; the shades drawn; the nurses are watching a
     little.
It is the hour of the complicated knitting on the safe bone needles;
     of the games of anagrams and bridge;
The deadly game of chess; the book held up like a mask.

The period of the wildest weeping, the fiercest delusion, is over.
The women rest their half-healed hearts; they are almost well.
Some of them will stay almost well always: the blunt-faced women
     whose thinking desolved.
Under academic discipline; the manic-depressive girl
Now leveling off; one paranoiac afflicted with jealously.
Another with persecution. Some alleviation has been possible.

O fortunate bride, who never again will become elated after
     childbirth!
O lucky older man, who has been cured of feeling unwanted!
To the suburban railway station you will return, return,
To forever meet Mary home on the 5:45.
You will be again as normal and selfish and heartless as anybody
    else.

There is life left: the piano says it with its octave smile.
The soft carpets pad the thump and splinter of the suicide to be.
Everything will be splendid: the grandmother will not drink
    habitually.
The fruit salad will bloom on the plate like a bouquet
And the garden produce the blue-ribbon aquilegia.
The cats will be glad; the fathers feel justified; the mothers relieved.
The sons and husbands will no longer need to pay the bills.
Childhood will be put away, the obscene nightmare abated.

At the ends of the corridors the baths are running.
Mrs. O again feels the shadow of the obssesive idea.
Mr. R looks at the mantel-piece, which much mean something.