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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V2
+#3 in our series by this Winston Churchill
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+Title: The Dwelling Place of Light, V2
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: January, 2003  [Etext #3647]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 07/03/01]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V2,
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+NOTE: This author is a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill the Prime Minister
+of England during World War II.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT
+
+BY WINSTON CHURCHILL
+
+
+VOLUME 2
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension
+her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's
+ingenuity and powers of resistance.  Yet the sense of mastery at being
+able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a young
+woman of her vitality and spirit.  There was always the excitement that
+the leash might break--and then what?  Here was a situation, she knew
+instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of
+possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that
+very reason fascinating.  When she was away from Ditmar and tried to
+think about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of
+anomalies and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond her
+knowledge and experience.  For Janet had been born in an age which is
+rapidly discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet to
+achieve the morality of scientific knowledge, of the individual instance.
+Tradition, convention, the awful examples portrayed for gain in the
+movies, even her mother's pessimistic attitude in regard to the freedom
+with which the sexes mingle to-day were powerless to influence her.  The
+thought, however, that she might fundamentally resemble her sister Lise,
+despite a fancied superiority, did occasionally shake her and bring about
+a revulsion against Ditmar.  Janet's problem was in truth, though she
+failed so to specialize it, the supreme problem of our time: what is the
+path to self-realization? how achieve emancipation from the commonplace?
+
+Was she in love with Ditmar?  The question was distasteful, she avoided
+it, for enough of the tatters of orthodox Christianity clung to her to
+cause her to feel shame when she contemplated the feelings he aroused in
+her.  It was when she asked herself what his intentions were that her
+resentment burned, pride and a sense of her own value convinced her that
+he had deeply insulted her in not offering marriage.  Plainly, he did not
+intend to offer marriage; on the other hand, if he had done so, a
+profound, self-respecting and moral instinct in her would, in her present
+mood, have led her to refuse.  She felt a fine scorn for the woman who,
+under the circumstances, would insist upon a bond and all a man's worldly
+goods in return for that which it was her privilege to give freely; while
+the notion of servility, of economic dependence--though she did not so
+phrase it--repelled her far more than the possibility of social ruin.
+
+This she did not contemplate at all; her impulse to leave Hampton and
+Ditmar had nothing to do with that....
+
+Away from Ditmar, this war of inclinations possessed her waking mind,
+invaded her dreams.  When she likened herself to the other exploited
+beings he drove to run his mills and fill his orders,--of whom Mr.
+Siddons had spoken--her resolution to leave Hampton gained such definite
+ascendancy that her departure seemed only a matter of hours.
+
+In this perspective Ditmar appeared so ruthless, his purpose to use her
+and fling her away so palpable, that she despised herself for having
+hesitated.  A longing for retaliation consumed her; she wished to hurt
+him before she left.  At such times, however, unforeseen events
+invariably intruded to complicate her feelings and alter her plans.  One
+evening at supper, for instance, when she seemed at last to have achieved
+the comparative peace of mind that follows a decision after struggle, she
+gradually became aware of an outburst from Hannah concerning the stove,
+the condition of which for many months had been a menace to the welfare
+of the family.  Edward, it appeared, had remarked mildly on the absence
+of beans.
+
+"Beans!" Hannah cried.  "You're lucky to have any supper at all.  I just
+wish I could get you to take a look at that oven--there's a hole you can
+put your hand through, if you've a mind to.  I've done my best, I've made
+out to patch it from time to time, and to-day I had Mr. Tiernan in.  He
+says it's a miracle I've been able to bake anything.  A new one'll cost
+thirty dollars, and I don't know where the money's coming from to buy it.
+And the fire-box is most worn through."
+
+
+"Well, mother, we'll see what we can do," said Edward.
+
+"You're always seeing what you can do, but I notice you never do
+anything," retorted Hannah; and Edward had the wisdom not to reply.
+Beside his place lay a lengthy, close-written letter, and from time to
+time, as he ate his canned pears, his hand turned over one of its many
+sheets.
+
+"It's from Eben Wheeler, says he's been considerably troubled with
+asthma," he observed presently.  "His mother was a Bumpus, a daughter of
+Caleb-descended from Robert, who went from Dolton to Tewksbury in 1816,
+and fought in the war of 1812.  I've told you about him.  This Caleb was
+born in '53, and he's living now with his daughter's family in
+Detroit....  Son-in-law's named Nott, doing well with a construction
+company.  Now I never could find out before what became of Robert's
+descendants.  He married Sarah Styles" (reading painfully) "`and they had
+issue, John, Robert, Anne, Susan, Eliphalet.  John went to Middlebury,
+Vermont, and married '"
+
+Hannah, gathering up the plates, clattered them together noisily.
+
+"A lot of good it does us to have all that information about Eben
+Wheeler's asthma!" she complained.  "It'll buy us a new stove, I guess.
+Him and his old Bumpus papers!  If the house burned down over our heads
+that's all he'd think of."
+
+As she passed to and fro from the dining-room to the kitchen Hannah's
+lamentations continued, grew more and more querulous.  Accustomed as
+Janet was to these frequent arraignments of her father's inefficiency, it
+was gradually borne in upon her now--despite a preoccupation with her own
+fate--that the affair thus plaintively voiced by her mother was in effect
+a family crisis of the first magnitude.  She was stirred anew to anger
+and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid as to be threatened in
+its continuity by the absurd failure of a stove, when, glancing at her
+sister, she felt a sharp pang of self-conviction, of self-disgust.  Was
+she, also, like that, indifferent and self-absorbed?  Lise, in her
+evening finery, looking occasionally at the clock, was awaiting the hour
+set for a rendezvous, whiling away the time with the Boston evening sheet
+whose glaring red headlines stretched across the page.  When the
+newspaper fell to her lap a dreamy expression clouded Lise's eyes.  She
+was thinking of some man!  Quickly Janet looked away, at her father, only
+to be repelled anew by the expression, almost of fatuity, she discovered
+on his face as he bent over the letter once more.  Suddenly she
+experienced an overwhelming realization of the desperation of Hannah's
+plight,--the destiny of spending one's days, without sympathy, toiling in
+the confinement of these rooms to supply their bodily needs.  Never had a
+destiny seemed so appalling.  And yet Janet resented that pity.  The
+effect of it was to fetter and inhibit; from the moment of its intrusion
+she was no longer a free agent, to leave Hampton and Ditmar when she
+chose.  Without her, this family was helpless.  She rose, and picked up
+some of the dishes.  Hannah snatched them from her hands.
+
+"Leave 'em alone, Janet!" she said with unaccustomed sharpness.  "I guess
+I ain't too feeble to handle 'em yet."
+
+And a flash of new understanding came to Janet.  The dishes were
+vicarious, a substitute for that greater destiny out of which Hannah had
+been cheated by fate.  A substitute, yes, and perhaps become something of
+a mania, like her father's Bumpus papers....  Janet left the room
+swiftly, entered the bedroom, put on her coat and hat, and went out.
+Across the street the light in Mr. Tiernan's shop was still burning, and
+through the window she perceived Mr. Tiernan himself tilted back in his
+chair, his feet on the table, the tip of his nose pointed straight at the
+ceiling.  When the bell betrayed the opening of the door he let down his
+chair on the floor with a bang.
+
+"Why, it's Miss Janet!" he exclaimed.  "How are you this evening, now?  I
+was just hoping some one would pay me a call."
+
+Twinkling at her, he managed, somewhat magically, to dispel her temper of
+pessimism, and she was moved to reply:--
+
+"You know you were having a beautiful time, all by yourself."
+
+"A beautiful time, is it?  Maybe it's because I was dreaming of some
+young lady a-coming to pay me a visit."
+
+"Well, dreams never come up to expectations, do they?"
+
+"Then it's dreaming I am, still," retorted Mr. Tiernan, quickly.
+
+Janet laughed.  His tone, though bantering, was respectful.  One of the
+secrets of Mr. Tiernan's very human success was due to his ability to
+estimate his fellow creatures.  His manner of treating Janet, for
+instance, was quite different from that he employed in dealing with Lise.
+In the course of one interview he had conveyed to Lise, without arousing
+her antagonism, the conviction that it was wiser to trust him than to
+attempt to pull wool over his eyes.  Janet had the intelligence to trust
+him; and to-night, as she faced him, the fact was brought home to her
+with peculiar force that this wiry-haired little man was the person above
+all others of her immediate acquaintance to seek in time of trouble.  It
+was his great quality.  Moreover, Mr. Tiernan, even in his morning
+greetings as she passed, always contrived to convey to her, in some
+unaccountable fashion, the admiration and regard in which he held her,
+and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her a
+certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and
+self-respect.  For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan's eyes
+as he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless
+family in the clay-yellow flat across the street.  And there was nothing,
+she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family.  So she
+said:--
+
+"I've come to see about the stove."
+
+"Sure," he replied, as much as to say that the visit was not unexpected.
+"Well, I've been thinking about it, Miss Janet.  I've got a stove here I
+know'll suit your mother.  It's a Reading, it's almost new.  Ye'd better
+be having a look at it yourself."
+
+He led her into a chaos of stoves, grates, and pipes at the back of the
+store.
+
+"It's in need of a little polish," he added, as he turned on a light,
+"but it's sound, and a good baker, and economical with coal."  He opened
+the oven and took off the lids.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know much about stoves," she told him.  "But I'll
+trust your judgment.  How much is it?" she inquired hesitatingly.
+
+He ran his hand through his corkscrewed hair, his familiar gesture.
+
+"Well, I'm willing to let ye have it for twenty-five dollars.  If that's
+too much--mebbe we can find another."
+
+"Can you put it in to-morrow morning?" she asked.
+
+"I can that," he said.  She drew out her purse.  "Ye needn't be paying
+for it all at once," he protested, laying a hand on her arm.  "You won't
+be running away."
+
+"Oh, I'd rather--I have the money," she declared hurriedly; and she
+turned her back that he might not perceive, when she had extracted the
+bills, how little was left in her purse.
+
+"I'll wager ye won't be wanting another soon," he said, as he escorted
+her to the door.  And he held it open, politely, looking after her, until
+she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had
+in it something of a benediction.  She avoided the dining-room and went
+straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings.  The self-sacrifice had
+brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant.  She had been
+equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,--a part
+which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become
+convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere.  Life was indeed a
+bewildering thing....
+
+The next morning, at breakfast, though her mother's complaints continued,
+Janet was silent as to her purchase, and she lingered on her return home
+in the evening because she now felt a reluctance to appear in the role of
+protector and preserver of the family.  She would have preferred, if
+possible, to give the stove anonymously.  Not that the expression of
+Hannah's gratitude was maudlin; she glared at Janet when she entered the
+dining-room and exclaimed: "You hadn't ought to have gone and done it!"
+
+And Janet retorted, with almost equal vehemence:--
+
+"Somebody had to do it--didn't they?  Who else was there?"
+
+"It's a shame for you to spend your money on such things.  You'd ought to
+save it you'll need it," Hannah continued illogically.
+
+"It's lucky I had the money," said Janet.
+
+Both Janet and Hannah knew that these recriminations, from the other,
+were the explosive expressions of deep feeling.  Janet knew that her
+mother was profoundly moved by her sacrifice.  She herself was moved by
+Hannah's plight, but tenderness and pity were complicated by a renewed
+sense of rebellion against an existence that exacted such a situation.
+
+"I hope the stove's all right, mother," she said.  "Mr. Tiernan seemed to
+think it was a good one."
+
+"It's a different thing," declared Hannah.  "I was just wondering this
+evening, before you came in, how I ever made out to cook anything on the
+other.  Come and see how nice it looks."
+
+Janet followed her into the kitchen.  As they stood close together gazing
+at the new purchase Janet was uncomfortably aware of drops that ran a
+little way in the furrows of Hannah's cheeks, stopped, and ran on again.
+She seized her apron and clapped it to her face.
+
+"You hadn't ought to be made to do it!" she sobbed.
+
+And Janet was suddenly impelled to commit an act rare in their
+intercourse.  She kissed her, swiftly, on the cheek, and fled from the
+room....
+
+Supper was an ordeal.  Janet did not relish her enthronement as a
+heroine, she deplored and even resented her mother's attitude toward her
+father, which puzzled her; for the studied cruelty of it seemed to belie
+her affection for him.  Every act and gesture and speech of Hannah's took
+on the complexion of an invidious reference to her reliability as
+compared with Edward's worthlessness as a provider; and she contrived in
+some sort to make the meal a sacrament in commemoration of her elder
+daughter's act.
+
+"I guess you notice the difference in that pork," she would exclaim, and
+when he praised it and attributed its excellence to Janet's gift Hannah
+observed: "As long as you ain't got a son, you're lucky to have a
+daughter like her!"
+
+Janet squirmed.  Her father's acceptance of his comparative worthlessness
+was so abject that her pity was transferred to him, though she scorned
+him, as on former occasions, for the self-depreciation that made him
+powerless before her mother's reproaches.  After the meal was over he sat
+listlessly on the sofa, like a visitor whose presence is endured,
+pathetically refraining from that occupation in which his soul found
+refreshment and peace, the compilation of the Bumpus genealogy.  That
+evening the papers remained under the lid of the desk in the corner,
+untouched.
+
+What troubled Janet above all, however, was the attitude of Lise, who
+also came in for her share of implied reproach.  Of late Lise had become
+an increased source of anxiety to Hannah, who was unwisely resolved to
+make this occasion an object lesson.  And though parental tenderness had
+often moved her to excuse and defend Lise for an increasing remissness in
+failing to contribute to the household expenses, she was now quite
+relentless in her efforts to wring from Lise an acknowledgment of the
+nobility of her sister's act, of qualities in Janet that she, Lise, might
+do well to cultivate.  Lise was equally determined to withhold any such
+acknowledgment; in her face grew that familiar mutinous look that Hannah
+invariably failed to recognize as a danger signal; and with it another--
+the sophisticated expression of one who knows life and ridicules the lack
+of such knowledge in others.  Its implication was made certain when the
+two girls were alone in their bedroom after supper.  Lise, feverishly
+occupied with her toilet, on her departure broke the silence there by
+inquiring:--
+
+"Say, if I had your easy money, I might buy a stove, too.  How much does
+Ditmar give you, sweetheart?"
+
+Janet, infuriated, flew at her sister.  Lise struggled to escape.
+
+"Leave me go" she whimpered in genuine alarm, and when at length she was
+released she went to the mirror and began straightening her hat, which
+had flopped to one side of her head.  "I didn't mean nothin', I was only
+kiddie' you--what's the use of gettin' nutty over a jest?"
+
+"I'm not like-you," said Janet.
+
+"I was only kiddin', I tell you," insisted Lise, with a hat pin in her
+mouth.  "Forget it."
+
+When Lise had gone out Janet sat down in the rocking-chair and began to
+rock agitatedly.  What had really made her angry, she began to perceive,
+was the realization of a certain amount of truth in her sister's
+intimation concerning Ditmar.  Why should she have, in Lise, continually
+before her eyes a degraded caricature of her own aspirations and ideals?
+or was Lise a mirror--somewhat tarnished, indeed--in which she read the
+truth about herself?  For some time Janet had more than suspected that
+her sister possessed a new lover--a lover whom she refrained from
+discussing; an ominous sign, since it had been her habit to dangle her
+conquests before Janet's eyes, to discuss their merits and demerits with
+an engaging though cynical freedom.  Although the existence of this
+gentleman was based on evidence purely circumstantial, Janet was inclined
+to believe him of a type wholly different from his predecessors; and the
+fact that his attentions were curiously intermittent and irregular
+inclined her to the theory that he was not a resident of Hampton.  What
+was he like?  It revolted her to reflect that he might in some ways
+possibly resemble Ditmar.  Thus he became the object of a morbid
+speculation, especially at such times as this, when Lise attired herself
+in her new winter finery and went forth to meet him.  Janet, also, had
+recently been self-convicted of sharing with Lise the same questionable
+tendency toward self-adornment to please the eye of man.  The very next
+Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad extravagance of the
+blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window of The Paris in Faber
+Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and admiration of Miss Schuler
+and herself, and in front of which they had stood languishing on three
+successive evenings.  In its acquisition Lise had expended almost the
+whole of a week's salary.  Its colour was purple, on three sides were
+massed drooping lilac feathers, but over the left ear the wide brim was
+caught up and held by a crescent of brilliant paste stones.  Shortly
+after this purchase--the next week, in fact,--The Paris had alluringly
+and craftily displayed, for the tempting sum of $6.29, the very cloak
+ordained by providence to "go" with the hat.  Miss Schuler declared it
+would be a crime to fail to take advantage of such an opportunity but the
+trouble was that Lise had had to wait for two more pay-days and endure
+the suspense arising from the possibility that some young lady of taste
+and means might meanwhile become its happy proprietor.  Had not the
+saleslady been obdurate, Lise would have had it on credit; but she did
+succeed, by an initial payment the ensuing Saturday, in having it
+withdrawn from public gaze.  The second Saturday Lise triumphantly
+brought the cloak home; a velvet cloak,--if the eyes could be believed,--
+velvet bordering on plush, with a dark purple ground delicately and
+artistically spotted with a lilac to match the hat feathers, and edged
+with a material which--if not too impudently examined and no questions
+asked--might be mistaken, by the uninitiated male, for the fur of a white
+fox.  Both investments had been made, needless to say, on the strength of
+Janet's increased salary; and Lise, when Janet had surprised her before
+the bureau rapturously surveying the combination, justified herself with
+a defiant apology.
+
+"I just had to have something--what with winter coming on," she declared,
+seizing the hand mirror in order to view the back.  "You might as well
+get your clothes chick, while you're about it--and I didn't have to dig
+up twenty bones, neither--nor anything like it--" a reflection on Janet's
+moest blue suit and her abnormal extravagance.  For it was Lise's habit
+to carry the war into the enemy's country.  "Sadie's dippy about it--says
+it puts her in mind of one of the swells snapshotted in last Sunday's
+supplement.  Well, dearie, how does the effect get you?" and she wheeled
+around for her sister's inspection.
+
+"If you take my advice, you'll be careful not to be caught out in the
+rain."
+
+
+"What's chewin' you now?" demanded Lise.  She was not lacking in
+imagination of a certain sort, and Janet's remark did not fail in its
+purpose of summoning up a somwhat abject image of herself in wet velvet
+and bedraggled feathers--an image suggestive of a certain hunted type of
+woman Lise and her kind held in peculiar horror.  And she was the more
+resentful because she felt, instinctively, that the memory of this
+suggestion would never be completely eradicated: it would persist, like a
+canker, to mar the completeness of her enjoyment of these clothes.  She
+swung on Janet furiously.
+
+"I get you, all right!"  she cried.  "I guess I know what's eatin' you!
+You've got money to burn and you're sore because I spend mine to buy what
+I need.  You don't know how to dress yourself any more than one of them
+Polak girls in the mills, and you don't want anybody else to look nice."
+
+And Janet was impelled to make a retort of almost equal crudity:--
+
+"If I were a man and saw you in those clothes I wouldn't wait for an
+introduction.  You asked me what I thought.  I don't care about the
+money!" she exclaimed passionately.  "I've often told you you were pretty
+enough without having to wear that kind of thing--to make men stare at
+you."
+
+"I want to know if I don't always look like a lady!  And there's no man
+living would try to pick me up more than once."  The nasal note in Lise's
+voice had grown higher and shriller, she was almost weeping with anger.
+"You want me to go 'round lookin' like a floorwasher."
+
+"I'd rather look like a floorwasher than--than another kind of woman,"
+Janet declared.
+
+"Well, you've got your wish, sweetheart," said Lise.  "You needn't be
+scared anybody will pick you up."
+
+"I'm not," said Janet....
+
+This quarrel had taken place a week or so before Janet's purchase of the
+stove.  Hannah, too, was outraged by Lise's costume, and had also been
+moved to protest; futile protest.  Its only effect on Lise was to
+convince her of the existence of a prearranged plan of persecution, to
+make her more secretive and sullen than ever before.
+
+"Sometimes I just can't believe she's my daughter," Hannah said
+dejectedly to Janet when they were alone together in the kitchen after
+Lise had gone out.  "I'm fond of her because she's my own flesh and
+blood--I'm ashamed of it, but I can't help it.  I guess it's what the
+minister in Dolton used to call a visitation.  I suppose I deserve it,
+but sometimes I think maybe if your father had been different he might
+have been able to put a stop to the way she's going on.  She ain't like
+any of the Wenches, nor any of the Bumpuses, so far's I'm able to find
+out.  She just don't seem to have any notion about right and wrong.
+Well, the world has got all jumbled up--it beats me."
+
+Hannah wrung out the mop viciously and hung it over the sink.
+
+"I used to hope some respectable man would come along, but I've quit
+hopin'.  I don't know as any respectable man would want Lise, or that I
+could honestly wish him to have her."
+
+"Mother!" protested Janet.  Sometimes, in those conversations, she was
+somewhat paradoxically impelled to defend her sister.
+
+"Well, I don't," insisted Hannah, "that's a fact.  I'll tell you what she
+looks like in that hat and cloak--a bad woman.  I don't say she is--I
+don't know what I'd do if I thought she was, but I never expected my
+daughter to look like one."
+
+"Oh, Lise can take care of herself," Janet said, in spite of certain
+recent misgivings.
+
+"This town's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one," declared Hannah who,
+from early habit, was occasionally prone to use scriptural parallels.
+And after a moment's silence she inquired: "Who's this man that's payin'
+her attention now?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Janet, "I don't know that there's anybody."
+
+"I guess there is," said Hannah.  "I used to think that that Wiley was
+low enough, but I could see him.  It was some satisfaction.  I could know
+the worst, anyhow....  I guess it's about time for another flood."
+
+This talk had left Janet in one of these introspective states so frequent
+in her recent experience.  Her mother had used the words "right" and
+"wrong."  But what was "right," or "wrong?"  There was no use asking
+Hannah, who--she perceived--was as confused and bewildered as herself.
+Did she refuse to encourage Mr. Ditmar because it was wrong?  because, if
+she acceded to his desires, and what were often her own, she would be
+punished in an after life?  She was not at all sure whether she believed
+in an after life,--a lack of faith that had, of late, sorely troubled her
+friend Eda Rawle, who had "got religion" from an itinerant evangelist and
+was now working off, in a "live" church, some of the emotional idealism
+which is the result of a balked sex instinct in young unmarried women of
+a certain mentality and unendowed with good looks.  This was not, of
+course, Janet's explanation of the change in her friend, of whom she now
+saw less and less.  They had had arguments, in which neither gained any
+ground.  For the first time in their intercourse, ideas had come between
+them, Eda having developed a surprising self-assertion when her new
+convictions were attacked, a dogged loyalty to a scheme of salvation that
+Janet found neither inspiring nor convincing.  She resented being prayed
+for, and an Eda fervent in good works bored her more than ever.  Eda was
+deeply pained by Janet's increasing avoidance of her company, yet her
+heroine-worship persisted.  Her continued regard for her friend might
+possibly be compared to the attitude of an orthodox Baptist who has
+developed a hobby, let us say, for Napoleon Bonaparte.
+
+Janet was not wholly without remorse.  She valued Eda's devotion, she
+sincerely regretted the fact, on Eda's account as well as her own, that
+it was a devotion of no use to her in the present crisis nor indeed in
+any crisis likely to confront her in life: she had felt instinctively
+from the first that the friendship was not founded on, mental harmony,
+and now it was brought home to her that Eda's solution could never be
+hers.  Eda would have been thrilled on learning of Ditmar's attentions,
+would have advocated the adoption of a campaign leading up to matrimony.
+In matrimony, for Eda, the soul was safe.  Eda would have been horrified
+that Janet should have dallied with any other relationship; God would
+punish her.  Janet, in her conflict between alternate longing and
+repugnance, was not concerned with the laws and retributions of God.  She
+felt, indeed, the need of counsel, and knew not where to turn for it,--
+the modern need for other than supernatural sanctions.  She did not
+resist her desire for Ditmar because she believed, in the orthodox sense,
+that it was wrong, but because it involved a loss of self-respect, a
+surrender of the personality from the very contemplation of which she
+shrank.  She was a true daughter of her time.
+
+On Friday afternoon, shortly after Ditmar had begun to dictate his
+correspondence, Mr. Holster, the agent of the Clarendon Mill, arrived and
+interrupted him.  Janet had taken advantage of the opportunity to file
+away some answered letters when her attention was distracted from her
+work by the conversation, which had gradually grown louder.  The two men
+were standing by the window, facing one another, in an attitude that
+struck her as dramatic.  Both were vital figures, dominant types which
+had survived and prevailed in that upper world of unrelenting struggle
+for supremacy into which, through her relation to Ditmar, she had been
+projected, and the significance of which she had now begun to realize.
+She surveyed Holster critically.  He was short, heavily built, with an
+almost grotesque width of shoulder, a muddy complexion, thick lips, and
+kinky, greasy black hair that glistened in the sun.  His nasal voice was
+complaining, yet distinctly aggressive, and he emphasized his words by
+gestures.  The veins stood out on his forehead.  She wondered what his
+history had been.  She compared him to Ditmar, on whose dust-grey face
+she was quick to detect a look she had seen before--a contraction of the
+eyes, a tightening of the muscles of the jaw.  That look, and the
+peculiarly set attitude of the body accompanying it, aroused in her a
+responsive sense of championship.
+
+"All right, Ditmar," she heard the other exclaim.  "I tell you again
+you'll never be able to pull it off."
+
+Ditmar's laugh was short, defiant.
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Why not!  Because the fifty-four hour law goes into effect in January."
+
+"What's that got to do with it?" Ditmar demanded.
+
+"You'll see--you'll remember what I told you fellows at the conference
+after that bill went through and that damned demagogue of a governor
+insisted on signing it.  I said, if we tried to cut wages down to a
+fifty-four hour basis we'd have a strike on our hands in every mill in
+Hampton,--didn't I?  I said it would cost us millions of dollars, and
+make all the other strikes we've had here look like fifty cents.  Didn't
+I say that?  Hammond, our president, backed me up, and Rogers of the wool
+people.  You remember?  You were the man who stood out against it, and
+they listened to you, they voted to cut down the pay and say nothing
+about it.  Wait until those first pay envelopes are opened after that law
+goes into effect.  You'll see what'll happen!  You'll never be able to
+fill that Bradlaugh order in God's world."
+
+"Oh hell," retorted Ditmar, contemptuously.  "You're always for lying
+down, Holster.  Why don't you hand over your mill to the unions and go to
+work on a farm?  You might as well, if you're going to let the unions run
+the state.  Why not have socialism right now, and cut out the agony?
+When they got the politicians to make the last cut from fifty-six to
+fifty-four and we kept on payin' 'em for fifty-six, against my advice,
+what happened?  Did they thank us?  I guess not.  Were they contented?
+Not on your life.  They went right on agitating, throwing scares into the
+party conventions and into the House and Senate Committees,--and now it's
+fifty-four hours.  It'll be fifty in a couple of years, and then we'll
+have to scrap our machinery and turn over the trade to the South and
+donate our mills to the state for insane asylums."
+
+"No, if we handle this thing right, we'll have the public on our side.
+They're getting sick of the unions now."
+
+Ditmar went to the desk for a cigar, bit it off, and lighted it.
+
+"The public!" he exclaimed contemptuously.  "A whole lot of good they'll
+do us."
+
+Holster approached him, menacingly, until the two men stood almost
+touching, and for a moment it seemed to Janet as if the agent of the
+Clarendon were ready to strike Ditmar.  She held her breath, her blood
+ran faster,--the conflict between these two made an elemental appeal.
+
+"All right--remember what I say--wait and see where you come out with
+that order."  Holster's voice trembled with anger.  He hesitated, and
+left the office abruptly.  Ditmar stood gazing after him for a moment and
+then, taking his cigar from his mouth, turned and smiled at Janet and
+seated himself in his chair.  His eyes, still narrowed, had in them a
+gleam of triumph that thrilled her.  Combat seemed to stimulate and
+energize him.
+
+"He thought he could bluff me into splitting that Bradlaugh order with
+the Clarendon," Ditmar exclaimed.  "Well, he'll have to guess again.
+I've got his number."  He began to turn over his letters.  "Let's see,
+where were we?  Tell Caldwell not to let in any more idiots, and shut the
+door."
+
+Janet obeyed, and when she returned Ditmar was making notes with a pencil
+on a pad.  The conversation with Holter had given her a new idea of
+Ditmar's daring in attempting to fill the Bradlaugh order with the
+Chippering Mills alone, had aroused in her more strongly than ever that
+hot loyalty to the mills with which he had inspired her; and that strange
+surge of sympathy, of fellow-feeling for the operatives she had
+experienced after the interview with Mr. Siddons, of rebellion against
+him, the conviction that she also was one of the slaves he exploited, had
+wholly disappeared.  Ditmar was the Chippering Mills, and she, somehow,
+enlisted once again on his side.
+
+"By the way," he said abruptly, "you won't mention this--I know."
+
+"Won't mention what?" she asked.
+
+"This matter about the pay envelopes--that we don't intend to continue
+giving the operatives fifty-six hours' pay for fifty-four when this law
+goes into effect.  They're like animals, most of 'em, they don't reason,
+and it might make trouble if it got out now.  You understand.  They'd
+have time to brood over it, to get the agitators started.  When the time
+comes they may kick a little, but they'll quiet down.  And it'll teach
+'em a lesson."
+
+"I never mention anything I hear in this office," she told him.
+
+"I know you don't," he assured her, apologetically.  "I oughtn't to have
+said that--it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it
+spoken of.  You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator
+might make by getting them stirred up?  You can see what it means to me,
+with this order on my hands.  I've staked everything on it."
+
+"But--when the law goes into effect? when the operatives find out that
+they are not receiving their full wages--as Mr. Holster said?" Janet
+inquired.
+
+"Why, they may grumble a little--but I'll be on the lookout for any move.
+I'll see to that.  I'll teach 'em a lesson as to how far they can push
+this business of shorter hours and equal pay.  It's the unskilled workers
+who are mostly affected, you understand, and they're not organized.  If
+we can keep out the agitators, we're all right.  Even then, I'll show 'em
+they can't come in here and exploit my operatives."
+
+In the mood in which she found herself his self-confidence, his
+aggressiveness continued to inspire and even to agitate her, to compel
+her to accept his point of view.
+
+"Why," he continued, "I trust you as I never trusted anybody else.  I've
+told you that before.  Ever since you've been here you've made life a
+different thing for me--just by your being here.  I don't know what I'd
+do without you.  You've got so much sense about things--about people,--
+and I sometimes think you've got almost the same feeling about these
+mills that I have.  You didn't tell me you went through the mills with
+Caldwell the other day," he added, accusingly.
+
+"I--I forgot," said Janet.  "Why should I tell--you?"  She knew that all
+thought of Holster had already slipped from his mind.  She did not look
+up.  "If you're not going to finish your letters," she said, a little
+faintly, "I've got some copying to do."
+
+"You're a deep one," he said.  And as he turned to the pile of
+correspondence she heard him sigh.  He began to dictate.  She took down
+his sentences automatically, scarcely knowing what she was writing; he
+was making love to her as intensely as though his words had been the
+absolute expression of his desire instead of the commonplace mediums of
+commercial intercourse.  Presently he stopped and began fumbling in one
+of the drawers of his desk.
+
+"Where is the memorandum I made last week for Percy and Company?"
+
+"Isn't it there?" she asked.
+
+But he continued to fumble, running through the papers and disarranging
+them until she could stand it no longer.
+
+"You never know where to find anything," she declared, rising and darting
+around the desk and bending over the drawer, her deft fingers rapidly
+separating the papers.  She drew forth the memorandum triumphantly.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed.  "It was right before your eyes."
+
+As she thrust it at him his hand closed over hers.  She felt him drawing
+her, irresistibly.
+
+"Janet!" he said.  "For God's sake--you're killing me--don't you know it?
+I can't stand it any longer!"
+
+"Don't!" she whispered, terror-stricken, straining away from him.  "Mr.
+Ditmar--let me go!"
+
+A silent struggle ensued, she resisting him with all the aroused strength
+and fierceness of her nature.  He kissed her hair, her neck,--she had
+never imagined such a force as this, she felt herself weakening,
+welcoming the annihilation of his embrace.
+
+"Mr. Ditmar!" she cried.  "Somebody will come in."
+
+Her fingers sank into his neck, she tried to hurt him and by a final
+effort flung herself free and fled to the other side of the room.
+
+"You little--wildcat!" she heard him exclaim, saw him put his
+handkerchief to his neck where her fingers had been, saw a red stain on
+it.  "I'll have you yet!"
+
+But even then, as she stood leaning against the wall, motionless save for
+the surging of her breast, there was about her the same strange, feral
+inscrutableness.  He was baffled, he could not tell what she was
+thinking.  She seemed, unconquered, to triumph over her disarray and the
+agitation of her body.  Then, with an involuntary gesture she raised her
+hands to her hair, smoothing it, and without seeming haste left the room,
+not so much as glancing at him, closing the door behind her.
+
+She reached her table in the outer office and sat down, gazing out of the
+window.  The face of the world--the river, the mills, and the bridge--was
+changed, tinged with a new and unreal quality.  She, too, must be
+changed.  She wasn't, couldn't be the same person who had entered that
+room of Ditmar's earlier in the afternoon!  Mr. Caldwell made a
+commonplace remark, she heard herself answer him.  Her mind was numb,
+only her body seemed swept by fire, by emotions--emotions of fear, of
+anger, of desire so intense as to make her helpless.  And when at length
+she reached out for a sheet of carbon paper her hand trembled so she
+could scarcely hold it.  Only by degrees was she able to get sufficient
+control of herself to begin her copying, when she found a certain relief
+in action--her hands flying over the keys, tearing off the finished
+sheets, and replacing them with others.  She did not want to think, to
+decide, and yet she knew--something was trying to tell her that the
+moment for decision had come.  She must leave, now.  If she stayed on,
+this tremendous adventure she longed for and dreaded was inevitable.
+Fear and fascination battled within her.  To run away was to deny life;
+to remain, to taste and savour it.  She had tasted it--was it sweet?--
+that sense of being swept away, engulfed by an elemental power beyond
+them both, yet in them both?  She felt him drawing her to him, and she
+struggling yet inwardly longing to yield.  And the scarlet stain on his
+handkerchief--when she thought of that her blood throbbed, her face
+burned.
+
+At last the door of the inner office opened, and Ditmar came out and
+stood by the rail.  His voice was queer, scarcely recognizable.
+
+"Miss Bumpus--would you mind coming into my room a moment, before you
+leave?" he said.
+
+She rose instantly and followed him, closing the door behind her, but
+standing at bay against it, her hand on the knob.
+
+"I'm not going to touch you--you needn't be afraid," he said.  Reassured
+by the unsteadiness of his voice she raised her eyes to perceive that his
+face was ashy, his manner nervous, apprehensive, conciliatory,--a Ditmar
+she had difficulty in recognizing.  "I didn't mean to frighten, to offend
+you," he went on.  "Something got hold of me.  I was crazy, I couldn't
+help it--I won't do it again, if you'll stay.  I give you my word."
+
+She did not reply.  After a pause he began again, repeating himself.
+
+"I didn't mean to do it.  I was carried away--it all happened before I
+knew.  I--I wouldn't frighten you that way for anything in the world."
+
+Still she was silent.
+
+"For God's sake, speak to me!" he cried.  "Say you forgive me--give me
+another chance!"
+
+But she continued to gaze at him with widened, enigmatic eyes--whether of
+reproach or contempt or anger he could not say.  The situation
+transcended his experience.  He took an uncertain step toward her, as
+though half expecting her to flee, and stopped.
+
+"Listen!" he pleaded.  "I can't talk to you here.  Won't you give me a
+chance to explain--to put myself right?  You know what I think of you,
+how I respect and--admire you.  If you'll only let me see you somewhere--
+anywhere, outside of the office, for a little while, I can't tell you how
+much I'd appreciate it.  I'm sure you don't understand how I feel--I
+couldn't bear to lose you.  I'll be down by the canal--near the bridge--
+at eight o'clock to-night.  I'll wait for you.  You'll come?  Say you'll
+come, and give me another chance!"
+
+"Aren't you going to finish your letters?" she asked.
+
+He stared at her in sheer perplexity.  "Letters!" he exclaimed.  "Damn
+the letters!  Do you think I could write any letters now?"
+
+As a faint ray in dark waters, a gleam seemed to dance in the shadows of
+her eyes, yet was gone so swiftly that he could not be sure of having
+seen it.  Had she smiled?
+
+"I'll be there," he cried.  "I'll wait for you "
+
+She turned from him, opened the door, and went out.
+
+That evening, as Janet was wiping the dishes handed her by her mother,
+she was repeating to herself "Shall I go--or shan't I?"--just as if the
+matter were in doubt.  But in her heart she was convinced of its
+predetermination by some power other than her own volition.  With this
+feeling, that she really had no choice, that she was being guided and
+impelled, she went to her bedroom after finishing her task.  The hands of
+the old dining-room clock pointed to quarter of eight, and Lise had
+already made her toilet and departed.  Janet opened the wardrobe, looked
+at the new blue suit hanging so neatly on its wire holder, hesitated, and
+closed the door again.  Here, at any rate, seemed a choice.  She would
+not wear that, to-night.  She tidied her hair, put on her hat and coat,
+and went out; but once in the street she did not hurry, though she knew
+the calmness she apparently experienced to be false: the calmness of
+fatality, because she was obeying a complicated impulse stronger than
+herself--an impulse that at times seemed mere curiosity.  Somewhere,
+removed from her immediate consciousness, a storm was raging; she was
+aware of a disturbance that reached her faintly, like the distant
+throbbing of the looms she heard when she turned from Faber into West
+Street She had not been able to eat any supper.  That throbbing of the
+looms in the night!  As it grew louder and louder the tension within her
+increased, broke its bounds, set her heart to throbbing too--throbbing
+wildly.  She halted, and went on again, precipitately, but once more
+slowed her steps as she came to West Street and the glare of light at the
+end of the bridge; at a little distance, under the chequered shadows of
+the bare branches, she saw something move--a man, Ditmar.  She stood
+motionless as he hurried toward her.
+
+"You've come!  You've forgiven me?" he asked.
+
+"Why were you--down there?" she asked.
+
+"Why?  Because I thought--I thought you wouldn't want anybody to know--"
+
+It was quite natural that he should not wish to be seen; although she had
+no feeling of guilt, she herself did not wish their meeting known.  She
+resented the subterfuge in him, but she made no comment because his
+perplexity, his embarrassment were gratifying to her resentment, were
+restoring her self-possession, giving her a sense of power.
+
+"We can't stay here," he went on, after a moment.  "Let's take a little
+walk--I've got a lot to say to you.  I want to put myself right."  He
+tried to take her arm, but she avoided him.  They started along the canal
+in the direction of the Stanley Street bridge.  "Don't you care for me a
+little?" he demanded.
+
+"Why should I?"  she parried.
+
+"Then--why did you come?"
+
+"To hear what you had to say."
+
+"You mean--about this afternoon?"
+
+"Partly," said Janet.
+
+"Well--we'll talk it all over.  I wanted to explain about this afternoon,
+especially.  I'm sorry--"
+
+"Sorry!" she exclaimed.
+
+The vehemence of her rebuke--for he recognized it as such--took him
+completely aback.  Thus she was wont, at the most unexpected moments, to
+betray the passion within her, the passion that made him sick with
+desire.  How was he to conquer a woman of this type, who never took
+refuge in the conventional tactics of her sex, as he had known them?
+
+"I didn't mean that," he explained desperately.  "My God--to feel you, to
+have you in my arms--!  I was sorry because I frightened you.  But when
+you came near me that way I just couldn't help it.  You drove me to it."
+
+"Drove you to it!"
+
+"You don't understand, you don't know how--how wonderful you are.  You
+make me crazy.  I love you, I want you as I've never wanted any woman
+before--in a different way.  I can't explain it.  I've got so that I
+can't live without you."  He flung his arm toward the lights of the
+mills.  "That--that used to be everything to me, I lived for it.  I don't
+say I've been a saint--but I never really cared anything about any woman
+until I knew you, until that day I went through the office and saw you
+what you were.  You don't understand, I tell you.  I'm sorry for what I
+did to-day because it offended you--but you drove me to it.  Most of the
+time you seem cold, you're like an iceberg, you make me think you hate
+me, and then all of a sudden you'll be kind, as you were the other night,
+as you seemed this afternoon--you make me think I've got a chance, and
+then, when you came near me, when you touched my hand--why, I didn't know
+what I was doing.  I just had to have you.  A man like me can't stand
+it."
+
+"Then I'd better go away," she said.  "I ought to have gone long ago."
+
+"Why?" he cried.  "Why?  What's your reason?  Why do you want to ruin my
+life?  You've--you've woven yourself into it--you're a part of it.  I
+never knew what it was to care for a woman before, I tell you.  There's
+that mill," he repeated, naively.  "I've made it the best mill in the
+country, I've got the biggest order that ever came to any mill--if you
+went away I wouldn't care a continental about it.  If you went away I
+wouldn't have any ambition left.  Because you're a part of it, don't you
+see?  You--you sort of stand for it now, in my mind.  I'm not literary, I
+can't express what I'd like to say, but sometimes I used to think of that
+mill as a woman--and now you've come along--" Ditmar stopped, for lack of
+adequate eloquence.
+
+She smiled in the darkness at his boyish fervour,--one of the aspects of
+the successful Ditmar, the Ditmar of great affairs, that appealed to her
+most strongly.  She was softened, touched; she felt, too, a responsive
+thrill to such a desire as his.  Yet she did not reply.  She could not.
+She was learning that emotion is never simple.  And some inhibition, the
+identity of which was temporarily obscured still persisted, pervading her
+consciousness....
+
+They were crossing the bridge at Stanley Street, now deserted, and by
+common consent they paused in the middle of it, leaning on the rail.  The
+hideous chocolate factory on the point was concealed by the night,--only
+the lights were there, trembling on the surface of the river.  Against
+the flushed sky above the city were silhouetted the high chimneys of the
+power plant.  Ditmar's shoulder touched hers.  He was still pleading, but
+she seemed rather to be listening to the symphony of the unseen waters
+falling over the dam.  His words were like that, suggestive of a torrent
+into which she longed to fling herself, yet refrained, without knowing
+why.  Her hands tightened on the rail; suddenly she let it go, and led
+the way toward the unfrequented district of the south side.  It was the
+road to Silliston, but she had forgotten that.  Ditmar, regaining her
+side, continued his pleading.  He spoke of his loneliness, which he had
+never realized.  He needed her.  And she experienced an answering pang.
+It still seemed incredible that he, too, who had so much, should feel
+that gnawing need for human sympathy and understanding that had so often
+made her unhappy.  And because of the response his need aroused in her
+she did not reflect whether he could fulfil her own need, whether he
+could ever understand her; whether, at any time, she could unreservedly
+pour herself out to him.
+
+"I don't see why you want me," she interrupted him at last.  "I've never
+had any advantages, I don't know anything.  I've never had a chance to
+learn.  I've told you that before."
+
+"What difference does that make?  You've got more sense than any woman I
+ever saw," he declared.
+
+"It makes a great deal of difference to me," she insisted--and the sound
+of these words on her own lips was like a summons arousing her from a
+dream.  The sordidness of her life, its cruel lack of opportunity in
+contrast with the gifts she felt to be hers, and on which he had dwelt,
+was swept back into her mind.  Self-pity, dignity, and inherent self-
+respect struggled against her woman's desire to give; an inherited racial
+pride whispered that she was worthy of the best, but because she had
+lacked the chance, he refrained from offering her what he would have laid
+at the feet of another woman.
+
+"I'll give you advantages--there's nothing I wouldn't give you.  Why
+won't you come to me?  I'll take care of you."
+
+"Do you think I want to be taken care of?"  She wheeled on him so swiftly
+that he started back.  "Is that what you think I want?"
+
+"No, no," he protested, when he recovered his speech.
+
+"Do you think I'm after--what you can give me?" she shot at him.  " What
+you can buy for me?"
+
+To tell the truth, he had not thought anything about it, that was the
+trouble.  And her question, instead of enlightening him, only added to
+his confusion and bewilderment.
+
+"I'm always getting in wrong with you," he told her, pathetically.
+"There isn't anything I'd stop at to make you happy, Janet, that's what
+I'm trying to say.  I'd go the limit."
+
+"Your limit!" she exclaimed.
+
+"What do you mean?" he demanded.  But she had become inarticulate--
+cryptic, to him.  He could get nothing more out of her.
+
+"You don't understand me--you never will!" she cried, and burst into
+tears--tears of rage she tried in vain to control.  The world was black
+with his ignorance.  She hated herself, she hated him.  Her sobs shook
+her convulsively, and she scarcely heard him as he walked beside her
+along the empty road, pleading and clumsily seeking to comfort her.  Once
+or twice she felt his hand on her shoulders....  And then, unlooked for
+and unbidden, pity began to invade her.  Absurd to pity him!  She fought
+against it, but the thought of Ditmar reduced to abjectness gained
+ground.  After all, he had tried to be generous, he had done his best, he
+loved her, he needed her--the words rang in her heart.  After all, he did
+not realize how could she expect him to realize? and her imagination
+conjured up the situation in a new perspective.  Her sobs gradually
+ceased, and presently she stopped in the middle of the road and regarded
+him.  He seemed utterly miserable, like a hurt child whom she longed to
+comfort.  But what she said was:--
+
+"I ought to be going home."
+
+"Not yet!" he begged.  "It's early.  You say I don't understand you,
+Janet--my God, I wish I did!  It breaks me all up to see you cry like
+that."
+
+"I'm sorry," she said, after a moment.  "I--I can'tmmake you understand.
+I guess I'm not like anybody else I'm queer--I can't help it.  You must
+let me go, I only make you unhappy."
+
+"Let you go!" he cried--and then in utter self-forgetfulness she yielded
+her lips to his.  A sound penetrated the night, she drew back from his
+arms and stood silhouetted against the glare of the approaching headlight
+of a trolley car, and as it came roaring down on them she hailed it.
+Ditmar seized her arm.
+
+"You're not going--now?" he said hoarsely.
+
+"I must," she whispered.  "I want to be alone--I want to think.  You must
+let me."
+
+"I'll see you to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't know--I want to think.  I'm--I'm tired."
+
+The brakes screamed as the car came joltingly to a stop.  She flew up the
+steps, glancing around to see whether Ditmar had followed her, and saw
+him still standing in the road.  The car was empty of passengers, but the
+conductor must have seen her leaving a man in this lonely spot.  She
+glanced at his face, white and pinched and apathetic--he must have seen
+hundreds of similar episodes in the course of his nightly duties.  He was
+unmoved as he took her fare.  Nevertheless, at the thought that these
+other episodes might resemble hers, her face flamed--she grew hot all
+over.  What should she do now?  She could not think.  Confused with her
+shame was the memory of a delirious joy, yet no sooner would she give
+herself up, trembling, to this memory when in turn it was penetrated by
+qualms of resentment, defiling its purity.  Was Ditmar ashamed of her?...
+When she reached home and had got into bed she wept a little, but her
+tears were neither of joy nor sorrow.  Her capacity for both was
+exhausted.  In this strange mood she fell asleep nor did she waken when,
+at midnight, Lise stealthily crept in beside her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Ditmar stood staring after the trolley car that bore Janet away until it
+became a tiny speck of light in the distance.  Then he started to walk
+toward Hampton; in the unwonted exercise was an outlet for the pent-up
+energy her departure had thwarted; and presently his body was warm with a
+physical heat that found its counterpart in a delicious, emotional glow
+of anticipation, of exultant satisfaction.  After all, he could not
+expect to travel too fast with her.  Had he not at least gained a signal
+victory?  When he remembered her lips--which she had indubitably given
+him!--he increased his stride, and in what seemed an incredibly brief
+time he had recrossed the bridge, covered the long residential blocks of
+Warren Street, and gained his own door.
+
+The house was quiet, the children having gone to bed, and he groped his
+way through the dark parlour to his den, turning on the electric switch,
+sinking into an armchair, and lighting a cigar.  He liked this room of
+his, which still retained something of that flavour of a refuge and
+sanctuary it had so eminently possessed in the now forgotten days of
+matrimonial conflict.  One of the few elements of agreement he had held
+in common with the late Mrs. Ditmar was a similarity of taste in
+household decoration, and they had gone together to a great emporium in
+Boston to choose the furniture and fittings.  The lamp in the centre of
+the table was a bronze column supporting a hemisphere of heavy red and
+emerald glass, the colours woven into an intricate and bizarre design,
+after the manner of the art nouveau--so the zealous salesman had informed
+them.  Cora Ditmar, when exhibiting this lamp to admiring visitors, had
+remembered the phrase, though her pronunciation of it, according to the
+standard of the Sorbonne, left something to be desired.  The table and
+chairs, of heavy, shiny oak marvellously and precisely carved by
+machines, matched the big panels of the wainscot.  The windows were high
+in the wall, thus preventing any intrusion from the clothes-yard on which
+they looked.  The bookcases, protected by leaded panes, held countless
+volumes of the fiction from which Cora Ditmar had derived her knowledge
+of the great world outside of Hampton, together with certain sets she had
+bought, not only as ornaments, but with a praiseworthy view to future
+culture,--such as Whitmarsh's Library of the Best Literature.  These
+volumes, alas, were still uncut; but some of the pages of the novels--if
+one cared to open them--were stained with chocolate.  The steam radiator
+was a decoration in itself, the fireplace set in the red and yellow tiles
+that made the hearth.  Above the oak mantel, in a gold frame, was a large
+coloured print of a Magdalen, doubled up in grief, with a glory of loose,
+Titian hair, chosen by Ditmar himself as expressing the nearest possible
+artistic representation of his ideal of the female form.  Cora Ditmar's
+objections on the score of voluptuousness and of insufficient clothing
+had been vain.  She had recognized no immorality of sentimentality in the
+art itself; what she felt, and with some justice, was that this
+particular Magdalen was unrepentant, and that Ditmar knew it.  And the
+picture remained an offence to her as long as she lived.  Formerly he had
+enjoyed the contemplation of this figure, reminding him, as it did, of
+mellowed moments in conquests of the past; suggesting also possibilities
+of the future.  For he had been quick to discount the attitude of bowed
+despair, the sop flung by a sensuous artist to Christian orthodoxy.  He
+had been sceptical about despair--feminine despair, which could always be
+cured by gifts and baubles.  But to-night, as he raised his eyes, he felt
+a queer sensation marring the ecstatic perfection of his mood.  That
+quality in the picture which so long had satisfied and entranced him had
+now become repellent, an ugly significant reflection of something--
+something in himself he was suddenly eager to repudiate and deny.
+It was with a certain amazement that he found himself on his feet with
+the picture in his hand, gazing at the empty space where it had hung.
+For he had had no apparent intention of obeying that impulse.  What
+should he do with it?  Light the fire and burn it--frame and all?  The
+frame was an integral part of it.  What would his housekeeper say?  But
+now that he had actually removed it from the wall he could not replace
+it, so he opened the closet door and thrust it into a corner among relics
+which had found refuge there.  He had put his past in the closet; yet the
+relief he felt was mingled with the peculiar qualm that follows the
+discovery of symptoms never before remarked.  Why should this woman have
+this extraordinary effect of making him dissatisfied with himself?  He
+sat down again and tried to review the affair from that first day when he
+had surprised in her eyes the flame dwelling in her.  She had completely
+upset his life, increasingly distracted his mind until now he could
+imagine no peace unless he possessed her.  Hitherto he had recognized in
+his feeling for her nothing but that same desire he had had for other
+women, intensified to a degree never before experienced.  But this sudden
+access of morality--he did not actually define it as such--was
+disquieting.  And in the feverish, semi-objective survey he was now
+making of his emotional tract he was discovering the presence of other
+disturbing symptoms such as an unwonted tenderness, a consideration
+almost amounting to pity which at times he had vaguely sensed yet never
+sought imaginatively to grasp.  It bewildered him by hampering a
+ruthlessness hitherto absolute.  The fierceness of her inflamed his
+passion, yet he recognized dimly behind this fierceness an instinct of
+selfprotection--and he thought of her in this moment as a struggling bird
+that fluttered out of his hands when they were ready to close over her.
+So it had been to-night.  He might have kept her, prevented her from
+taking the car.  Yet he had let her go!  There came again, utterly to
+blot this out, the memory of her lips.
+
+Even then, there had been something sorrowful in that kiss, a quality he
+resented as troubling, a flavour that came to him after the wildness was
+spent.  What was she struggling against?  What was behind her resistance?
+She loved him!  It had never before occurred to him to enter into the
+nature of her feelings, having been so preoccupied with and tortured by
+his own.  This realization, that she loved him, as it persisted, began to
+make him uneasy, though it should, according to all experience, have been
+a reason for sheer exultation.  He began to see that with her it involved
+complications, responsibilities, disclosures, perhaps all of those things
+he had formerly avoided and resented in woman.  He thought of certain
+friends of his who had become tangled up--of one in particular whose bank
+account had been powerless to extricate him....  And he was ashamed of
+himself.
+
+In view of the nature of his sex experience, of his habit of applying his
+imagination solely to matters of business rather than to affairs of the
+heart,--if his previous episodes may be so designated,--his failure to
+surmise that a wish for marriage might be at the back of her resistance
+is not so surprising as it may seem; he laid down, half smoked, his third
+cigar.  The suspicion followed swiftly on his recalling to mind her
+vehement repudiation of his proffered gifts did he think she wanted what
+he could buy for her!  She was not purchasable--that way.  He ought to
+have known it, he hadn't realized what he was saying.  But marriage!
+Literally it had never occurred to him to image her in a relation he
+himself associated with shackles.  One of the unconscious causes of his
+fascination was just her emancipation from and innocence of that herd-
+convention to which most women--even those who lack wedding rings--are
+slaves.  The force of such an appeal to a man of Ditmar's type must not
+be underestimated.  And the idea that she, too, might prefer the sanction
+of the law, the gilded cage as a popular song which once had taken his
+fancy illuminatingly expressed it--seemed utterly incongruous with the
+freedom and daring of her spirit, was a sobering shock.  Was he prepared
+to marry her, if he could obtain her in no other way?  The question
+demanded a survey of his actual position of which he was at the moment
+incapable.  There were his children!  He had never sought to arrive at
+even an approximate estimate of the boy and girl as factors in his life,
+to consider his feelings toward them; but now, though he believed himself
+a man who gave no weight to social considerations--he had scorned this
+tendency in his wife--he was to realize the presence of ambitions for
+them.  He was young, he was astonishingly successful; he had reason to
+think, with his opportunities and the investments he already had made,
+that he might some day be moderately rich; and he had at times even
+imagined himself in later life as the possessor of one of those elaborate
+country places to be glimpsed from the high roads in certain localities,
+which the sophisticated are able to recognize as the seats of the
+socially ineligible, but which to Ditmar were outward and visible emblems
+of success.  He liked to think of George as the inheritor of such a
+place, as the son of a millionaire, as a "college graduate," as an
+influential man of affairs; he liked to imagine Amy as the wife of such
+another.  In short, Ditmar's wife had left him, as an unconscious legacy,
+her aspirations for their children's social prestige....
+
+The polished oak grandfather's clock in the hall had struck one before he
+went to bed, mentally wearied by an unwonted problem involving, in
+addition to self-interest, an element of ethics, of affection not wholly
+compounded of desire.
+
+He slept soundly, however.  He was one of those fortunate beings who come
+into the world with digestive organs and thyroid glands in that condition
+which--so physiologists tell us--makes for a sanguine temperament.  And
+his course of action, though not decided upon, no longer appeared as a
+problem; it differed from a business matter in that it could wait.  As
+sufficient proof of his liver having rescued him from doubts and qualms
+he was able to whistle, as he dressed, and without a tremor of agitation,
+the forgotten tune suggested to his consciousness during the unpleasant
+reverie of the night before,--"Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage!"  It was
+Saturday.  He ate a hearty breakfast, joked with George and Amy, and
+refreshed, glowing with an expectation mingled with just the right amount
+of delightful uncertainty that made the great affairs of life a gamble,
+yet with the confidence of the conqueror, he walked in sunlight to the
+mill.  In view of this firm and hopeful tone of his being he found it all
+the more surprising, as he reached the canal, to be seized by a
+trepidation strong enough to bring perspiration to his forehead.  What if
+she had gone!  He had never thought of that, and he had to admit it would
+be just like her.  You never could tell what she would do.
+
+Nodding at Simmons, the watchman, he hurried up the iron-shod stairs,
+gained the outer once, and instantly perceived that her chair beside the
+window was empty!  Caldwell and Mr. Price stood with their heads together
+bending over a sheet on which Mr. Price was making calculations.
+
+"Hasn't Miss Bumpus come yet?" Ditmar demanded.  He tried to speak
+naturally, casually, but his own voice sounded strange, seemed to strike
+the exact note of sickening apprehension that suddenly possessed him.
+Both men turned and looked at him in some surprise.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Ditmar," Caldwell said.  "Why, yes, she's in your
+room."
+
+"Oh!" said Ditmar.
+
+"The Boston office has just been calling you--they want to know if you
+can't take the nine twenty-two," Caldwell went on.  "It's about that
+lawsuit.  It comes into court Monday morning, and Mr. Sprole is there,
+and they say they have to see you.  Miss Bumpus has the memorandum."
+
+Ditmar looked at his watch.
+
+"Damn it, why didn't they let me know yesterday?" he exclaimed.  "I won't
+see anybody, Caldwell--not even Orcutt--just now.  You understand.  I've
+got to have a little time to do some letters.  I won't be disturbed--by
+any one--for half an hour."
+
+Caldwell nodded.
+
+"All right, Mr. Ditmar."
+
+Ditmar went into his office, closing the door behind him.  She was
+occupied as usual, cutting open the letters and laying them in a pile
+with the deftness and rapidity that characterized all she did.
+
+"Janet!" he exclaimed.
+
+"There's a message for you from Boston.  I've made a note of it," she
+replied.
+
+"I know--Caldwell told me.  But I wanted to see you before I went--I had
+to see you.  I sat up half the night thinking of you, I woke up thinking
+of you.  Aren't you glad to see me?"
+
+She dropped the letter opener and stood silent, motionless, awaiting his
+approach--a pose so eloquent of the sense of fatality strong in her as to
+strike him with apprehension, unused though he was to the appraisal of
+inner values.  He read, darkly, something of this mystery in her eyes as
+they were slowly raised to his, he felt afraid; he was swept again by
+those unwonted emotions of pity and tenderness--but when she turned away
+her head and he saw the bright spot of colour growing in her cheek,
+spreading to her temple, suffusing her throat, when he touched the soft
+contour of her arm, his passion conquered....  Still he was acutely
+conscious of a resistance within her--not as before, physically directed
+against him, but repudiating her own desire.  She became limp in his
+arms, though making no attempt to escape, and he knew that the essential
+self of her he craved still evaded and defied him.  And he clung to her
+the more desperately--as though by crushing her peradventure he might
+capture it.
+
+"You're hurting me," she said at last, and he let her go, standing by
+helplessly while she went through the movements of readjustment
+instinctive to women.  Even in these he read the existence of the
+reservation he was loth to acknowledge.
+
+"Don't you love me?" he said.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You do!" he said.  "You--you proved it--I know it."
+
+She went a little away from him, picking up the paper cutter, but it lay
+idle in her hand.
+
+"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!" he exclaimed.  "I can't
+stand this.  Janet, aren't you happy?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Why not?  I love you.  I--I've never been so happy in my life as I was
+this morning.  Why aren't you happy--when we love each other?"
+
+"Because I'm not."
+
+"Why not?  There's nothing I wouldn't do to make you happy--you know
+that.  Tell me!"
+
+"You wouldn't understand.  I couldn't make you understand."
+
+"Is it something I've done?"
+
+"You don't love me," she said.  "You only want me.  I'm not made that
+way, I'm not generous enough, I guess.  I've got to have work to do."
+
+"Work to do!  But you'll share my work--it's nothing without you."
+
+She shook her head.  "I knew you couldn't understand.  You don't realize
+how impossible it is.  I don't blame you--I suppose a man can't."
+
+She was not upbraiding him, she spoke quietly, in a tone almost lifeless,
+yet the emotional effect of it was tremendous.
+
+"But," he began, and stopped, and was swept on again by an impulse that
+drowned all caution, all reason.  "But you can help me--when we are
+married."
+
+"Married!" she repeated.  "You want to marry me?"
+
+"Yes, yes--I need you."  He took her hands, he felt them tremble in his,
+her breath came quickly, but her gaze was so intent as seemingly to
+penetrate to the depths of him.  And despite his man's amazement at her
+hesitation now that he had offered her his all, he was moved, disturbed,
+ashamed as he had never been in his life.  At length, when he could stand
+no longer the suspense of this inquisition, he stammered out: "I want you
+to be my wife."
+
+"You've wanted to marry me all along?" she asked.
+
+"I didn't think, Janet.  I was mad about you.  I didn't know you."
+
+"Do you know me now?"
+
+"That's just it," he cried, with a flash of clairvoyance, "I never will
+know you--it's what makes you different from any woman I've ever seen.
+You'll marry me?"
+
+"I'm afraid," she said.  "Oh, I've thought over it, and you haven't.  A
+woman has to think, a man doesn't, so much.  And now you're willing to
+marry me, if you can't get me any other way."  Her hand touched his coat,
+checking his protest.  "It isn't that I want marriage--what you can give
+me--I'm not like that, I've told you so before.  But I couldn't live as
+your--mistress."
+
+The word on her lips shocked him a little--but her courage and candour
+thrilled him.
+
+"If I stayed here, it would be found out.  I wouldn't let you keep me.
+I'd have to have work, you see, or I'd lose my self-respect--it's all
+I've got--I'd kill myself."  She spoke as calmly as though she were
+reviewing the situation objectively.  "And then, I've thought that you
+might come to believe you really wanted to marry me--you wouldn't realize
+what you were doing, or what might happen if we were married.  I've tried
+to tell you that, too, only you didn't seem to understand what I was
+saying.  My father's only a gatekeeper, we're poor--poorer than some of
+the operatives in the mill, and the people you know here in Hampton
+wouldn't understand.  Perhaps you think you wouldn't care, but--" she
+spoke with more effort, "there are your children.  When I've thought of
+them, it all seems impossible.  I'd make you unhappy--I couldn't bear it,
+I wouldn't stay with you.  You see, I ought to have gone away long ago."
+
+Believing, as he did, that marriage was the goal of all women, even of
+the best, the immediate capitulation he had expected would have made
+matters far less difficult.  But these scruples of hers, so startlingly
+his own, her disquieting insight into his entire mental process had a
+momentary checking effect, summoned up the vague presage of a future that
+might become extremely troublesome and complicated.  His very reluctance
+to discuss with her the problem she had raised warned him that he had
+been swept into deep waters.  On the other hand, her splendid resistance
+appealed to him, enhanced her value.  And accustomed as he had been to a
+lifelong self-gratification, the thought of being balked in this supreme
+desire was not to be borne.  Such were the shades of his feeling as he
+listened to her.
+
+"That's nonsense!" he exclaimed, when she had finished.  "You're a lady--
+I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when your
+father came here--it's as good as any in New England.  What do you
+suppose I care, Janet?  We love each other--I've got to have you.  We'll
+be married in the spring, when the rush is over."
+
+He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that
+embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax--as though, against her
+will--and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own.  Her
+lithe body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him
+and hid her face in his shoulder.  His sensations in the presence of this
+thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing any he
+had ever known.  It was no longer a woman he held in his arms, the woman
+he craved, but something greater, more fearful, the mystery of sorrow and
+suffering, of creation and life--of the universe itself.
+
+"Janet--aren't you happy?" he said again.
+
+She released herself and smiled at him wistfully through her tears.
+
+"I don't know.  What I feel doesn't seem like happiness.  I can't believe
+in it, somehow."
+
+"You must believe in it," he said.
+
+"I can't,--perhaps I may, later.  You'd better go now," she begged.
+"You'll miss your train."
+
+He glanced at the office clock.  "Confound it, I have to.  Listen!  I'll
+be back this evening, and I'll get that little car of mine--"
+
+"No, not to-night--I don't want to go--to-night."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Not to-night," she repeated.
+
+ Well then, to-morrow.  To-morrow's Sunday.  Do you know where the Boat
+Club is on the River Boulevard?  I'll be there, to-morrow morning at ten.
+I'd come for you, to your house," he added quickly, "but we don't want
+any one to know, yet--do we?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"We must keep it secret for a while," he said.  "Wear your new dress--the
+blue one.  Good-bye--sweetheart."
+
+He kissed her again and hurried out of the office....  Boarding the train
+just as it was about to start, he settled himself in the back seat of the
+smoker, lit a cigar, inhaling deep breaths of the smoke and scarcely
+noticing an acquaintance who greeted him from the aisle.  Well, he had
+done it!  He was amazed.  He had not intended to propose marriage, and
+when he tried to review the circumstances that had led to this he became
+confused.  But when he asked himself whether indeed he were willing to
+pay such a price, to face the revolution marriage--and this marriage in
+particular--would mean in his life, the tumult in his blood beat down his
+incipient anxieties.  Besides, he possessed the kind of mind able to
+throw off the consideration of possible consequences, and by the time the
+train had slowed down in the darkness of the North Station in Boston all
+traces of worry had disappeared.  The future would take care of itself.
+
+For the Bumpus family, supper that evening was an unusually harmonious
+meal.  Hannah's satisfaction over the new stove had by no means subsided,
+and Edward ventured, without reproof, to praise the restored quality of
+the pie crust.  And in contrast to her usual moroseness and self-
+absorption, even Lise was gay--largely because her pet aversion, the
+dignified and allegedly amorous Mr. Waiters, floor-walker at the
+Bagatelle, had fallen down the length of the narrow stairway leading from
+the cashier's cage.  She became almost hysterical with glee as she
+pictured him lying prone beneath the counter dedicated to lingerie,
+draped with various garments from the pile that toppled over on him.
+"Ruby Nash picked a brassiere off his whiskers!" Lise shrieked.  "She
+gave the pile a shove when he landed.  He's got her number all right.
+But say, it was worth the price of admission to see that old mutt when he
+got up, he looked like Santa Claus.  All the girls in the floor were
+there we nearly split trying to keep from giving him the ha-ha.  And Ruby
+says, sympathetic, as she brushed him off, `I hope you ain't hurt, Mr.
+Waiters.' He was sore!  He went around all afternoon with a bunch on his
+coco as big as a potato."  So vivid was Lise's account of this affair
+which apparently she regarded as compensation for many days of drudgery-
+that even Hannah laughed, though deploring a choice of language symbolic
+of a world she feared and detested.
+
+"If I talked like you," said Lise, "they wouldn't understand me."
+
+Janet, too, was momentarily amused, drawn out of that reverie in which
+she had dwelt all day, ever since Ditmar had left for Boston.  Now she
+began to wonder what would happen if she were suddenly to announce "I'm
+going to marry Mr. Ditmar."  After the first shock of amazement, she
+could imagine her father's complete and complacent acceptance of the news
+as a vindication of au inherent quality in the Bumpus blood.  He would
+begin to talk about the family.  For, despite what might have been deemed
+a somewhat disillusionizing experience, in the depths of his being he
+still believed in the Providence who had presided over the perilous
+voyage of the Mayflower and the birth of Peregrine White, whose
+omniscient mind was peculiarly concerned with the family trees of
+Puritans.  And what could be a more striking proof of the existence of
+this Providence, or a more fitting acknowledgment on his part of the
+Bumpus virtues, than that Janet should become the wife of the agent of
+the Chippering Mills?  Janet smiled.  She was amused, too, by the thought
+that Lise's envy would be modified by the prospect of a heightened social
+status; since Lise, it will be remembered, had her Providence likewise.
+Hannah's god was not a Providence, but one deeply skilled in persecution,
+in ingenious methods of torture; one who would not hesitate to dangle
+baubles before the eyes of his children--only to snatch them away again.
+Hannah's pessimism would persist as far as the altar, and beyond!
+
+On the whole, such was Janet's notion of the Deity, though deep within
+her there may have existed a hope that he might be outwitted; that, by
+dint of energy and brains, the fair things of life might be obtained
+despite a malicious opposition.  And she loved Ditmar.  This must be love
+she felt, this impatience to see him again, this desire to be with him,
+this agitation possessing her so utterly that all day long she had dwelt
+in an unwonted state like a somnambulism: it must be love, though not
+resembling in the least the generally accepted, virginal ideal.  She saw
+him as he was, crude, powerful, relentless in his desire; his very faults
+appealed.  His passion had overcome his prudence, he had not intended to
+propose, but any shame she felt on this score was put to flight by a
+fierce exultation over the fact that she had brought him to her feet,
+that he wanted her enough to marry her.  It was wonderful to be wanted
+like that!  But she could not achieve the mental picture of herself as
+Ditmar's wife--especially when, later in the evening, she walked up
+Warren Street and stood gazing at his house from the opposite pavement.
+She simply could not imagine herself living in that house as its
+mistress.  Notwithstanding the testimony of the movies, such a
+Cinderella-like transition was not within the realm of probable facts;
+things just didn't happen that way.
+
+She recalled the awed exclamation of Eda when they had walked together
+along Warren Street on that evening in summer: "How would you like to
+live there!"--and hot with sudden embarrassment and resentment she had
+dragged her friend onward, to the corner.  In spite of its size, of the
+spaciousness of existence it suggested, the house had not appealed to her
+then.  Janet did not herself realize or estimate the innate if
+undeveloped sense of form she possessed, the artist-instinct that made
+her breathless on first beholding Silliston Common.  And then the vision
+of Silliston had still been bright; but now the light of a slender moon
+was as a gossamer silver veil through which she beheld the house, as in a
+stage setting, softening and obscuring its lines, lending it qualities of
+dignity and glamour that made it seem remote, unreal, unattainable.  And
+she felt a sudden, overwhelming longing, as though her breast would
+burst....
+
+Through the drawn blinds the lights in the second storey gleamed yellow.
+A dim lamp burned in the deep vestibule, as in a sanctuary.  And then, as
+though some supernaturally penetrating ray had pierced a square hole in
+the lower walls, a glimpse of the interior was revealed to her, of the
+living room at the north end of the house.  Two figures chased one
+another around the centre table--Ditmar's children!  Was Ditmar there?
+Impelled irresistibly by a curiosity overcoming repugnance and fear, she
+went forward slowly across the street, gained the farther pavement,
+stepped over the concrete coping, and stood, shivering violently, on the
+lawn, feeling like an interloper and a thief, yet held by morbid
+fascination.  The children continued to romp.  The boy was strong and
+swift, the girl stout and ungainly in her movements, not mistress of her
+body; he caught her and twisted her arm, roughly--Janet could hear her
+cries through the window-=when an elderly woman entered, seized him,
+struggling with him.  He put out his tongue at her, but presently
+released his sister, who stood rubbing her arm, her lips moving in
+evident recrimination and complaint.  The faces of the two were plain
+now; the boy resembled Ditmar, but the features of the girl, heavy and
+stamped with self-indulgence, were evidently reminiscent of the woman who
+had been his wife.  Then the shade was pulled down, abruptly; and Janet,
+overcome by a sense of horror at her position, took to flight....
+
+When, after covering the space of a block she slowed down and tried to
+imagine herself as established in that house, the stepmother of those
+children, she found it impossible.  Despite the fact that her attention
+had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had
+included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the
+farther wall, the music rack.  Evidently the girl was learning to play.
+She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot: she was
+aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the
+woman who had been her mother had possessed--that in her, Janet, had
+lacked the advantages of development.  Could it--could it ever be
+developed now?  Had this love which had come to her brought her any
+nearer to the unknown realm of light she craved?...
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Though December had come, Sunday was like an April day before whose
+sunlight the night-mists of scruples and morbid fears were scattered and
+dispersed.  And Janet, as she fared forth from the Fillmore Street flat,
+felt resurging in her the divine recklessness that is the very sap of
+life.  The future, save of the immediate hours to come, lost its power
+over her.  The blue and white beauty of the sky proclaimed all things
+possible for the strong; and the air was vibrant with the sweet music of
+bells, calling her to happiness.  She was going to meet happiness, to
+meet love--to meet Ditmar!  The trolley which she took in Faber Street,
+though lagging in its mission, seemed an agent of that happiness as it
+left the city behind it and wound along the heights beside the tarvia
+roadway above the river, bright glimpses of which she caught through the
+openings in the woods.  And when she looked out of the window on her
+right she beheld on a little forested rise a succession of tiny "camps"
+built by residents of Hampton whose modest incomes could not afford more
+elaborate summer places; camps of all descriptions and colours, with
+queer names that made her smile: "The Cranny," "The Nook," "Snug
+Harbour," "Buena Vista,"--of course,--which she thought pretty, though
+she did not know its meaning; and another, in German, equally perplexing,
+"Klein aber Mein."  Though the windows of these places were now boarded
+up, though the mosquito netting still clung rather dismally to the
+porches, they were mutely suggestive of contentment and domestic joy.
+
+Scarcely had she alighted from the car at the rendezvous he had
+mentioned, beside the now deserted boathouse where in the warm weather
+the members of the Hampton Rowing Club disported themselves, when she saw
+an automobile approaching--and recognized it as the gay "roadster" Ditmar
+had exhibited to her that summer afternoon by the canal; and immediately
+Ditmar himself, bringing it to a stop and leaping from it, stood before
+her in the sunlight, radiating, as it seemed, more sunlight still.  With
+his clipped, blond moustache and his straw-coloured hair--as yet but
+slightly grey at the temples--he looked a veritable conquering berserker
+in his huge coat of golden fur.  Never had he appeared to better
+advantage.
+
+"I was waiting for you," he said, "I saw you in the car."  Turning to the
+automobile, he stripped the tissue paper from a cluster of dark red roses
+with the priceless long stems of which Lise used to rave when she worked
+in the flower store.  And he held the flowers against her suit her new
+suit she had worn for this meeting.
+
+"Oh," she cried, taking a deep, intoxicating breath of their fragrance.
+"You brought these--for me?"
+
+"From Boston--my beauty!"
+
+"But I can't wear all of them!"
+
+"Why not?" he demanded.  "Haven't you a pin?"
+
+She produced one, attaching them with a gesture that seemed habitual,
+though the thought of their valuerevealing in some degree her own worth
+in his eyes-unnerved her.  She was warmly conscious of his gaze.  Then he
+turned, and opening a compartment at the back of the car drew from it a
+bright tweed motor coat warmly lined.
+
+"Oh, no!" she protested, drawing back.  "I'll--I'll be warm enough."  But
+laughingly, triumphantly, he seized her and thrust her arms in the
+sleeves, his fingers pressing against her.  Overcome by shyness, she drew
+away from him.
+
+"I made a pretty good guess at the size--didn't I, Janet?" he cried,
+delightedly surveying her.  "I couldn't forget it!"  His glance grew more
+concentrated, warmer, penetrating.
+
+"You mustn't look at me like that!" she pleaded with lowered eyes.
+
+"Why not--you're mine--aren't you?  You're mine, now."
+
+"I don't know.  There are lots of things I want to talk about," she
+replied, but her protest sounded feeble, unconvincing, even to herself.
+He fairly lifted her into the automobile--it was a caress, only tempered
+by the semipublicity of the place.  He was giving her no time to think--
+but she did not want to, think.  Starting the engine, he got in and
+leaned toward her.
+
+"Not here!" she exclaimed.
+
+"All right--I'll wait," he agreed, tucking the robe about her deftly,
+solicitously, and she sank back against the seat, surrendering herself to
+the luxury, the wonder of being cherished, the caressing and sheltering
+warmth she felt of security and love, the sense of emancipation from
+discontent and sordidness and struggle.  For a moment she closed her
+eyes, but opened them again to behold the transformed image of herself
+reflected in the windshield to confirm the illusion--if indeed it were
+one!  The tweed coat seemed startlingly white in the sunlight, and the
+woman she saw, yet recognized as herself, was one of the fortunately
+placed of the earth with power and beauty at her command!  And she could
+no longer imagine herself as the same person who the night before had
+stood in front of the house in Warren Street.  The car was speeding over
+the smooth surface of the boulevard; the swift motion, which seemed to
+her like that of flying, the sparkling air, the brightness of the day,
+the pressure of Ditmar's shoulder against hers, thrilled her.  She
+marvelled at his sure command over the machine, that responded like a
+live thing to his touch.  On the wide, straight stretches it went at a
+mad pace that took her breath, and again, in turning a corner or passing
+another car, it slowed down, purring in meek obedience.  Once she gasped:
+"Not so fast!  I can't stand it."
+
+He laughed and obeyed her.  They glided between river and sky across the
+delicate fabric of a bridge which but a moment before she had seen in the
+distance.  Running through the little village on the farther bank, they
+left the river.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, for a little spin," he answered indulgently, turning into a side
+road that wound through the woods and suddenly stopping.  "Janet, we've
+got this day--this whole day to ourselves."  He seized and drew her to
+him, and she yielded dizzily, repaying the passion of his kiss, forgetful
+of past and future while he held her, whispering brokenly endearing
+phrases.
+
+"You'll ruin my roses," she protested breathlessly, at last, when it
+seemed that she could no longer bear this embrace, nor the pressure of
+his lips.  "There! you see you're crushing them!"  She undid them, and
+buttoning the coat, held them to her face.  Their odour made her faint:
+her eyes were clouded.
+
+"Listen, Claude!" she said at last,--it was the first time she had called
+him so--getting free.  "You must be sensible! some one might come along."
+
+"I'll never get enough of you!" he said.  "I can't believe it yet."  And
+added irrelevantly: "Pin the roses outside."
+
+She shook her head.  Something in her protested against this too public
+advertisement of their love.
+
+"I'd rather hold them," she answered.  "Let's go on."  He started the car
+again.  "Listen, I want to talk to you, seriously.  I've been thinking."
+
+"Don't I know you've been thinking!" he told her exuberantly.  "If I
+could only find out what's always going on in that little head of yours!
+If you keep on thinking you'll dry up, like a New England school-marm.
+And now do you know what you are?  One of those dusky red roses just
+ready to bloom.  Some day I'll buy enough to smother you in 'em."
+
+"Listen!" she repeated, making a great effort to calm herself, to regain
+something of that frame of mind in which their love had assumed the
+proportions of folly and madness, to summon up the scruples which, before
+she had left home that morning, she had resolved to lay before him, which
+she knew would return when she could be alone again.  "I have to think--
+you won't," she exclaimed, with a fleeting smile.
+
+"Well, what is it?" he assented.  "You might as well get it off now."
+
+And it took all her strength to say: "I don't see how I can marry you.
+I've told you the reasons.  You're rich, and you have friends who
+wouldn't understand--and your children--they wouldn't understand.  I--I'm
+nothing, I know it isn't right, I know you wouldn't be happy.  I've never
+lived--in the kind of house you live in and known the kind of people you
+know, I shouldn't know what to do."
+
+He took his eyes off the road and glanced down at her curiously.  His
+smile was self-confident, exultant.
+
+"Now do you feel better--you little Puritan?" he said.
+
+And perforce she smiled in return, a pucker appearing between her
+eyebrows.
+
+"I mean it," she said.  "I came out to tell you so.  I know--it just
+isn't possible."
+
+"I'd marry you to-day if I could get a license," he declared.  "Why,
+you're worth any woman in America, I don't care who she is, or how much
+money she has."
+
+In spite of herself she was absurdly pleased.
+
+"Now that is over, we won't discuss it again, do you understand?  I've
+got you," he said, "and I mean to hold on to you."
+
+She sighed.  He was driving slowly now along the sandy road, and with his
+hand on hers she simply could not think.  The spell of his nearness, of
+his touch, which all nature that morning conspired to deepen, was too
+powerful to be broken, and something was calling to her, "Take this day,
+take this day," drowning out the other voice demanding an accounting.
+She was living--what did it all matter?  She yielded herself to the
+witchery of the hour, the sheer delight of forthfaring into the unknown.
+
+They turned away from the river, crossing the hills of a rolling country
+now open, now wooded, passing white farmhouses and red barns, and
+ancient, weather-beaten dwellings with hipped roofs and "lean-tos" which
+had been there in colonial days when the road was a bridle-path.  Cows
+and horses stood gazing at them from warm paddocks, where the rich, black
+mud glistened, melted by the sun; chickens scratched and clucked in the
+barnyards or flew frantically across the road, sometimes within an ace of
+destruction.  Janet flinched, but Ditmar would laugh, gleefully,
+boyishly.
+
+"We nearly got that one!" he would exclaim.  And then he had to assure
+her that he wouldn't run over them.
+
+"I haven't run over one yet,--have I?" he would demand.
+
+"No, but you will, it's only luck."
+
+"Luck!" he cried derisively.  "Skill!  I wish I had a dollar for every
+one I got when I was learning to drive.  There was a farmer over here in
+Chester--" and he proceeded to relate how he had had to pay for two
+turkeys.  "He got my number, the old hayseed, he was laying for me, and
+the next time I went back that way he held me up for five dollars.  I can
+remember the time when a man in a motor was an easy mark for every reuben
+in the county.  They got rich on us."
+
+She responded to his mood, which was wholly irresponsible, exuberant, and
+they laughed together like children, every little incident assuming an
+aspect irresistibly humorous.  Once he stopped to ask an old man standing
+in his dooryard how far it was to Kingsbury.
+
+"Wal, mebbe it's two mile, they mostly call it two," said the patriarch,
+after due reflection, gathering his beard in his band.  "Mebbe it's
+more."  His upper lip was blue, shaven, prehensile.
+
+"What did you ask him for, when you know?" said Janet, mirthfully, when
+they had gone on, and Ditmar was imitating him.  Ditmar's reply was to
+wink at her.  Presently they saw another figure on the road.
+
+"Let's see what he'll say," Ditmar proposed.  This man was young, the
+colour of mahogany, with glistening black hair and glistening black eyes
+that regarded the too palpable joyousness of their holiday humour in mute
+surprise.
+
+"I no know--stranger," he said.
+
+"No speaka Portugueso?" inquired Ditmar, gravely.
+
+"The country is getting filthy with foreigners," he observed, when he had
+started the car.  "I went down to Plymouth last summer to see the old
+rock, and by George, it seemed as if there wasn't anybody could speak
+American on the whole cape.  All the Portuguese islands are dumped there-
+-cranberry pickers, you know."
+
+"I didn't know that," said Janet.
+
+"Sure thing!" he exclaimed.  "And when I got there, what do you think?
+there was hardly enough of the old stone left to stand on, and that had a
+fence around it like an exhibit in an exposition.  It had all been
+chipped away by souvenir hunters."
+
+She gazed at him incredulously.
+
+"You don't believe me!  I'll take you down there sometime.  And another
+thing, the rock's high and dry--up on the land.  I said to Charlie Crane,
+who was with me, that it must have been a peach of a jump for old Miles
+Standish and Priscilla what's her name."
+
+"How I'd love to see the ocean again!"  Janet exclaimed.
+
+"Why, I'll take you--as often as you like," he promised.  "We'll go out
+on it in summer, up to Maine, or down to the Cape."
+
+Her enchantment was now so great that nothing seemed impossible.
+
+"And we'll go down to Plymouth, too, some Sunday soon, if this weather
+keeps up.  If we start early enough we can get there for lunch, easy.
+We'll see the rock.  I guess some of your ancestors must have come over
+with that Mayflower outfit--first cabin, eh?  You look like it."
+
+Janet laughed.  "It's a joke on them, if they did.  I wonder what they'd
+think of Hampton, if they could see it now.  I counted up once, just to
+tease father--he's the seventh generation from Ebenezer Bumpus, who came
+to Dolton.  Well, I proved to him he might have one hundred and twenty-
+six other ancestors besides Ebenezer and his wife."
+
+"That must have jarred him some," was Ditmar's comment.  "Great old man,
+your father.  I've talked to him--he's a regular historical society all
+by himself.  Well, there must be something in it, this family business.
+Now, you can tell he comes from fine old American stock-he looks it."
+
+Janet flushed.  "A lot of good it does!" she exclaimed.
+
+"I don't know," said Ditmar.  "It's something to fall back on--a good
+deal.  And he hasn't got any of that nonsense in his head about labour
+unions--he's a straight American.  And you look the part," he added.
+"You remind me--I never thought of it until now--you remind me of a
+picture of Priscilla I saw once in a book of poems Longfellow's, you
+know.  I'm not much on literature, but I remember that, and I remember
+thinking she could have me.  Funny isn't it, that you should have come
+along?  But you've got more ginger than the woman in that picture.  I'm
+the only man that ever guessed it isn't that so?" he asked jealously.
+
+"You're wonderful!" retorted Janet, daringly.
+
+"You just bet I am, or I couldn't have landed you," he asserted.  "You're
+chock full of ginger, but it's been all corked up.  You're so prim-so
+Priscilla."  He was immensely pleased with the adjective he had coined,
+repeating it.  "It's a great combination.  When I think of it, I want to
+shake you, to squeeze you until you scream."
+
+"Then please don't think of it," she said.
+
+"That's easy!" he exclaimed, mockingly.
+
+At a quarter to one they entered a sleepy village reminiscent of a New
+England of other days.  The long street, deeply shaded in summer, was
+bordered by decorous homes, some of which had stood there for a century
+and a half; others were of the Mansard period.  The high school, of
+strawberry-coloured brick, had been the pride and glory of the Kingsbury
+of the '70s: there were many churches, some graceful and some hideous.
+At the end of the street they came upon a common, surrounded by stone
+posts and a railing, with a monument in the middle of it, and facing the
+common on the north side was a rambling edifice with many white gables,
+in front of which, from an iron arm on a post, swung a quaint sign,
+"Kingsbury Tavern."  In revolutionary and coaching days the place bad
+been a famous inn; and now, thanks to the enterprise of a man who had
+foreseen the possibilities of an era of automobiles, it had become even
+more famous.  A score of these modern vehicles were drawn up before it
+under the bare, ancient elms; there was a scene of animation on the long
+porch, where guests strolled up and down or sat in groups in the rocking-
+chairs which the mild weather had brought forth again.  Ditmar drew up in
+line with the other motors, and stopped.
+
+"Well, here we are!" he exclaimed, as he pulled off his gauntlets.  "I
+guess I could get along with something to eat.  How about you?  They
+treat you as well here as any place I know of in New England."
+
+He assumed their lunching together at a public place as a matter of
+course to which there could not possibly be an objection, springing out
+of the car, removing the laprobe from her knees, and helping her to
+alight.  She laid the roses on the seat.
+
+"Aren't you going to bring them along?" he demanded.
+
+"I'd rather not," she said.  "Don't you think they'll be safe here?"
+
+"Oh, I guess so," he replied.  She was always surprising him; but her
+solicitation concerning them was a balm, and he found all such
+instinctive acts refreshing.
+
+"Afraid of putting up too much of a front, are you?" he asked smilingly.
+
+"I'd rather leave them here," she replied.  As she walked beside Ditmar
+to the door she was excited, unwontedly self-conscious, painfully aware
+of inspection by the groups on the porch.  She had seen such people as
+these hurrying in automobiles through the ugliness of Faber Street in
+Hampton toward just such delectable spots as this village of Kingsbury--
+people of that world of freedom and privilege from which she was
+excluded; Ditmar's world.  He was at home here.  But she?  The delusion
+that she somehow had been miraculously snatched up into it was marred by
+their glances.  What were they thinking of her?  Her face was hot as she
+passed them and entered the hall, where more people were gathered.  But
+Ditmar's complacency, his ease and self-confidence, his manner of owning
+the place, as it were, somewhat reassured her.  He went up to the desk,
+behind which, stood a burly, red-complexioned man who greeted him
+effusively, yet with the air of respect accorded the powerful.
+
+"Hullo, Eddie," said Ditmar.  "You've got a good crowd here to-day.  Any
+room for me?"
+
+"Sure, Mr. Ditmar, we can always make room for you.  Well, I haven't laid
+eyes on you for a dog's age.  Only last Sunday Mr. Crane was here, and I
+was asking him where you'd been keeping yourself."
+
+"Why, I've been busy, Eddie.  I've landed the biggest order ever heard of
+in Hampton.  Some of us have to work, you know; all you've got to do is
+to loaf around this place and smoke cigars and rake in the money."
+
+The proprietor of the Kingsbury Tavern smiled indulgently at this
+persiflage.
+
+"Let me present you to Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar.  "This is my friend,
+Eddie Hale," he added, for Janet's benefit.  "And when you've eaten his
+dinner you'll believe me when I say he's got all the other hotel men
+beaten a mile."
+
+Janet smiled and flushed.  She had been aware of Mr. Hale's discreet
+glance.
+
+"Pleased to meet you, Miss Bumpus," he said, with a somewhat elaborate
+bow.
+
+"Eddie," said Ditmar, "have you got a nice little table for us?"
+
+"It's a pity I didn't know you was coming, but I'll do my best," declared
+Mr. Hale, opening the door in the counter.
+
+"Oh, I guess you can fix us all right, if you want to, Eddie."
+
+"Mr. Ditmar's a great josher," Mr. Hale told Janet confidentially as he
+escorted them into the dining-room.  And Ditmar, gazing around over the
+heads of the diners, spied in an alcove by a window a little table with
+tilted chairs.
+
+"That one'll do," he said.
+
+"I'm sorry, but it's engaged," apologized Mr. Hale.
+
+"Forget it, Eddie--tell 'em they're late," said Ditmar, making his way
+toward it.
+
+The proprietor pulled out Janet's chair.
+
+"Say," he remarked, "it's no wonder you get along in business."
+
+"Well, this is cosy, isn't it?" - said Ditmar to Janet when they were
+alone.  He handed her the menu, and snapped his fingers for a waitress.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me you were coming to this place?" she asked.
+
+"I wanted to surprise you.  Don't you like it?"
+
+"Yes," she replied.  "Only--"
+
+"Only, what?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't look at me like that--here."
+
+"All right.  I'll try to be good until we get into the car again.  You
+watch me!  I'll behave as if we'd been married ten years."
+
+He snapped his fingers again, and the waitress hurried up to take their
+orders.
+
+"Kingsbury's still dry, I guess," he said to the girl, who smiled
+sympathetically, somewhat ruefully.  When she had gone he began to talk
+to Janet about the folly, in general, of prohibition, the fusel oil
+distributed on the sly.  "I'll bet I could go out and find half a dozen
+rum shops within a mile of here!" he declared.
+
+Janet did not doubt it.  Ditmar's aplomb, his faculty of getting what he
+wanted, had amused and distracted her.  She was growing calmer, able to
+scrutinize, at first covertly and then more boldly the people at the
+other tables, only to discover that she and Ditmar were not the objects
+of the universal curiosity she had feared.  Once in a while, indeed, she
+encountered and then avoided the glance of some man, felt the admiration
+in it, was thrilled a little, and her sense of exhilaration returned as
+she regained her poise.  She must be nice looking--more than that--in her
+new suit.  On entering the tavern she had taken off the tweed coat, which
+Ditmar had carried and laid on a chair.  This new and amazing adventure
+began to go to her head like wine....
+
+When luncheon was over they sat in a sunny corner of the porch while
+Ditmar smoked his cigar.  His digestion was good, his spirits high, his
+love-making--on account of the public nature of the place--surreptitious
+yet fervent.  The glamour to which Janet had yielded herself was on
+occasions slightly troubled by some new and enigmatic element to be
+detected in his voice and glances suggestive of intentions vaguely
+disquieting.  At last she said:
+
+"Oughtn't we to be going home?"
+
+"Home!" he ridiculed the notion.  "I'm going to take you to the prettiest
+road you ever saw--around by French's Lower Falls.  I only wish it was
+summer."
+
+"I must be home before dark," she told him.  "You see, the family don't
+know where I am.  I haven't said anything to them about--about this."
+
+"That's right," he said, after a moment's hesitation:
+
+"I didn't think you would.  There's plenty of time for that--after things
+get settled a little--isn't there?"
+
+She thought his look a little odd, but the impression passed as they
+walked to the motor.  He insisted now on her pinning the roses on the
+tweed coat, and she humoured him.  The winter sun had already begun to
+drop, and with the levelling rays the bare hillsides, yellow and brown in
+the higher light, were suffused with pink; little by little, as the sun
+fell lower, imperceptible clouds whitened the blue cambric of the sky,
+distant copses were stained lilac.  And Janet, as she gazed, wondered at
+a world that held at once so much beauty, so much joy and sorrow,--such
+strange sorrow as began to invade her now, not personal, but cosmic.  At
+times it seemed almost to suffocate her; she drew in deep breaths of air:
+it was the essence of all things--of the man by her side, of herself, of
+the beauty so poignantly revealed to her.
+
+Gradually Ditmar became conscious of this detachment, this new evidence
+of an extraordinary faculty of escaping him that seemed unimpaired.
+Constantly he tried by leaning closer to her, by reaching out his hand,
+to reassure himself that she was at least physically present.  And though
+she did not resent these tokens, submitting passively, he grew perplexed
+and troubled; his optimistic atheism concerning things unseen was
+actually shaken by the impression she conveyed of beholding realities
+hidden from him.  Shadows had begun to gather in the forest, filmy mists
+to creep over the waters.  He asked if she were cold, and she shook her
+head and sighed as one coming out of a trance, smiling at him.
+
+"It's been a wonderful day!" she said.
+
+"The greatest ever!" he agreed.  And his ardour, mounting again, swept
+away the unwonted mood of tenderness and awe she had inspired in him,
+made him bold to suggest the plan which had been the subject of an
+ecstatic contemplation.
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said, "we'll take a little run down to
+Boston and have dinner together.  We'll be there in an hour, and back by
+ten o'clock."
+
+"To Boston!" she repeated.  "Now?"
+
+"Why not?" he said, stopping the car.  "Here's the road--it's a boulevard
+all the way."
+
+It was not so much the proposal as the passion in his voice, in his
+touch, the passion to which she felt herself responding that filled her
+with apprehension and dismay, and yet aroused her pride and anger.
+
+"I told you I had to be home," she said.
+
+"I'll have you home by ten o'clock; I promise.  We're going to be
+married, Janet," he whispered.
+
+"Oh, if you meant to marry me you wouldn't ask me to do this!" she cried.
+"I want to go back to Hampton.  If you won't take me, I'll walk."
+
+She had drawn away from him, and her hand was on the door.  He seized her
+arm.
+
+"For God's sake, don't take it that way!" he cried, in genuine alarm.
+"All I meant was--that we'd have a nice little dinner.  I couldn't bear
+to leave you, it'll be a whole week before we get another day.  Do you
+suppose I'd--I'd do anything to insult you, Janet?"
+
+With her fingers still tightened over the door-catch she turned and
+looked at him.
+
+"I don't know," she said slowly.  "Sometimes I think you would.  Why
+shouldn't you?  Why should you marry me?  Why shouldn't you try to do
+with me what you've done with other women?  I don't know anything about
+the world, about life.  I'm nobody.  Why shouldn't you?"
+
+"Because you're not like the other women--that's why.  I love you--won't
+you believe it?" He was beside himself with anxiety.  "Listen--I'll take
+you home if you want to go.  You don't know how it hurts me to have you
+think such things!"
+
+"Well, then, take me home," she said.  It was but gradually that she
+became pacified.  A struggle was going on within her between these doubts
+of him he had stirred up again and other feelings aroused by his
+pleadings.  Night fell, and when they reached the Silliston road the
+lights of Hampton shone below them in the darkness.
+
+"You'd better let me out here," she said.  "You can't drive me home."
+
+He brought the car to a halt beside one of the small wooden shelters
+built for the convenience of passengers.
+
+"You forgive me--you understand, Janet?" he asked.
+
+"Sometimes I don't know what to think," she said, and suddenly clung to
+him.  "I--I forgive you.  I oughtn't to suspect such things, but I'm like
+that.  I'm horrid and I can't help it."  She began to unbutton the coat
+he had bought for her.
+
+"Aren't you going to take it?" he said.  "It's yours."
+
+"And what do you suppose my family would say if I told them Mr. Ditmar
+had given it to me?"
+
+"Come on, I'll drive you home, I'll tell them I gave it to you, that
+we're going to be married," he announced recklessly.
+
+"Oh, no!" she exclaimed in consternation.  "You couldn't.  You said so
+yourself--that you didn't want, any one to know, now.  I'll get on the
+trolley."
+
+"And the roses?" he asked.
+
+She pressed them to her face, and chose one.  "I'll take this," she said,
+laying the rest on the seat....
+
+He waited until he saw her safely on the trolley car, and then drove
+slowly homeward in a state of amazement.  He had been on the verge of
+announcing himself to the family in Fillmore Street as her prospective
+husband!  He tried to imagine what that household was like; and again he
+found himself wondering why she had not consented to his proposal.  And
+the ever-recurring question presented itselfwas he prepared to go that
+length?  He didn't know.  She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she
+was to him as mysterious as a symphony.  Certain strains of her moved him
+intensely--the rest was beyond his grasp....  At supper, while his
+children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, and in
+spite of their presence the house seemed appallingly empty.
+
+When Janet returned home she ran to her bedroom, and taking from the
+wardrobe the tissue paper that had come with her new dress, and which she
+had carefully folded, she wrapped the rose in it, and put it away in the
+back of a drawer.  Thus smothered, its fragrance stifled, it seemed
+emblematic, somehow, of the clandestine nature of her love....
+
+The weeks that immediately followed were strange ones.  All the elements
+of life that previously had been realities, trivial yet fundamental, her
+work, her home, her intercourse with the family, became fantastic.  There
+was the mill to which she went every day: she recognized it, yet it was
+not the same mill, nor was Fillmore Street the Fillmore Street of old.
+Nor did the new and feverish existence over whose borderland she had been
+transported seem real, save in certain hours she spent in Ditmar's
+company, when he made her forget--hers being a temperament to feel the
+weight of an unnatural secrecy.  She was aware, for instance, that her
+mother and even her father thought her conduct odd, were anxious as to
+her absences on certain nights and on Sundays.  She offered no
+explanation.  It was impossible.  She understood that the reason why they
+refrained from questioning her was due to a faith in her integrity as
+well as to a respect for her as a breadwinner who lead earned a right to
+independence.  And while her suspicion of Hannah's anxiety troubled her,
+on the occasions when she thought of it, Lise's attitude disturbed her
+even more.  From Lise she had been prepared for suspicion, arraignment,
+ridicule.  What a vindication if it were disclosed that she, Janet, had a
+lover--and that lover Ditmar!  But Lise said nothing.  She was remote,
+self-absorbed.  Hannah spoke about it on the evenings Janet stayed at
+home.
+
+She would not consent to meet Ditmar every evening.  Yet, as the days
+succeeded one another, Janet was often astonished by the fact that their
+love remained apparently unsuspected by Mr. Price and Caldwell and others
+in the office.  They must have noticed, on some occasions, the manner in
+which Ditmar looked at her; and in business hours she had continually to
+caution him, to keep him in check.  Again, on the evening excursions to
+which she consented, though they were careful to meet in unfrequented
+spots, someone might easily have recognized him; and she did not like to
+ponder over the number of young women in the other offices who knew her
+by sight.  These reflections weighed upon her, particularly when she
+seemed conscious of curious glances.  But what caused her the most
+concern was the constantly recurring pressure to which Ditmar himself
+subjected her, and which, as time went on, she found increasingly
+difficult to resist.  He tried to take her by storm, and when this method
+failed, resorted to pleadings and supplications even harder to deny
+because of the innate feminine pity she felt for him.  To recount these
+affairs would be a mere repetition of identical occurrences.  On their
+second Sunday excursion he had actually driven her, despite her
+opposition, several miles on the Boston road; and her resistance only
+served to inflame him the more.  It seemed, afterwards, as she sat
+unnerved, a miracle that she had stopped him.  Then came reproaches: she
+would not trust him; they could not be married at once; she must
+understand that!--an argument so repugnant as to cause her to shake with
+sobs of inarticulate anger.  After this he would grow bewildered, then
+repentant, then contrite.  In contrition--had he known it--he was nearest
+to victory.
+
+As has been said, she did not intellectualize her reasons, but the core
+of her resistance was the very essence of an individuality having its
+roots in a self-respecting and self-controlling inheritance--an element
+wanting in her sister Lise.  It must have been largely the thought of
+Lise, the spectacle of Lise--often perhaps unconsciously present that
+dominated her conduct; yet reinforcing such an ancestral sentiment was
+another, environmental and more complicated, the result in our modern
+atmosphere of an undefined feminism apt to reveal itself in many
+undesirable ways, but which in reality is a logical projection of the
+American tradition of liberty.  To submit was not only to lose her
+liberty, to become a dependent, but also and inevitably, she thought, to
+lose Ditmar's love....
+
+No experience, however, is emotionally continuous, nor was their intimacy
+by any means wholly on this plane of conflict.  There were hours when,
+Ditmar's passion leaving spent itself, they achieved comradeship, in the
+office and out of it; revelations for Janet when he talked of himself,
+relating the little incidents she found most illuminating.  And thus by
+degrees she was able to build up a new and truer estimate of him.  For
+example, she began to perceive that his life outside of his interest in
+the mills, instead of being the romance of privileged joys she had once
+imagined, had been almost as empty as her own, without either unity or
+direction.  Her perception was none the less keen because definite terms
+were wanting for its expression.  The idea of him that first had
+captivated her was that of an energized and focussed character
+controlling with a sure hand the fortunes of a great organization; of a
+power in the city and state, of a being who, in his leisure moments,
+dwelt in a delectable realm from which she was excluded.  She was still
+acutely conscious of his force, but what she now felt was its lack of
+direction--save for the portion that drove the Chippering Mills.  The
+rest of it, like the river, flowed away on the line of least resistance
+to the sea.
+
+As was quite natural, this gradual discovery of what he was--or of what
+he wasn't--this truer estimate, this partial disillusionment, merely
+served to deepen and intensify the feeling he had aroused in her; to
+heighten, likewise, the sense of her own value by confirming a belief in
+her possession of certain qualities, of a kind of fibre he needed in a
+helpmate.  She dwelt with a woman's fascination upon the prospect of
+exercising a creative influence--even while she acknowledged the fearful
+possibility of his power in unguarded moments to overwhelm and destroy
+her.  Here was another incentive to resist the gusts of his passion.  She
+could guide and develop him by helping and improving herself.  Hope and
+ambition throbbed within her, she felt a contempt for his wife, for the
+women who had been her predecessors.  He had not spoken of these, save
+once or twice by implication, but with what may seem a surprising
+leniency she regarded them as consequences of a life lacking in content.
+If only she could keep her head, she might supply that content, and bring
+him happiness!  The thought of his children troubled her most, but she
+was quick to perceive that he got nothing from them; and even though it
+were partly his own fault, she was inclined to lay the heavier blame on
+the woman who had been their mother.  The triviality, the emptiness of
+his existence outside of the walls of the mill made her heart beat with
+pure pity.  For she could understand it.
+
+One of the many, and often humorous, incidents that served to bring about
+this realization of a former aimlessness happened on their second Sunday
+excursion.  This time he had not chosen the Kingsbury Tavern, but another
+automobilists' haunt, an enlightening indication of established habits
+involving a wide choice of resorts.  While he was paying for luncheon and
+chatting with the proprietor, Ditmar snatched from the change he had
+flung down on the counter a five dollar gold coin.
+
+"Now how in thunder did that get into my right-hand pocket?  I always
+keep it in my vest," he exclaimed; and the matter continued to disturb
+him after they were in the automobile.  "It's my lucky piece.  I guess I
+was so excited at the prospect of seeing you when I dressed this morning
+I put it into my change.  Just see what you do to me!"
+
+"Does it bring you luck?" she inquired smilingly.
+
+"How about you!  I call you the biggest piece of luck I ever had."
+
+"You'd better not be too sure," she warned him.
+
+"Oh, I'm not worrying.  I has that piece in my pocket the day I went down
+to see old Stephen Chippering, when he made me agent, and I've kept it
+ever since.  And I'll tell you a funny thing--it's enough to make any man
+believe in luck.  Do you remember that day last summer I was tinkering
+with the car by the canal and you came along?"
+
+"The day you pretended to be tinkering," she corrected him.
+
+He laughed.  "So you were on to me?" he said.  "You're a foxy one!"
+
+"Anyone could see you were only pretending.  It made me angry, when I
+thought of it afterwards."
+
+"I just had to do it--I wanted to talk to you.  But listen to what I'm
+going to tell you!  It's a miracle, all right,--happening just at that
+time--that very morning.  I was coming back to Boston from New York on
+the midnight, and when the train ran into Back Bay and I was putting on
+my trousers the piece rolled out among the bed clothes.  I didn't know
+I'd lost it until I sat down in the Parker House to eat my breakfast, and
+I suddenly felt in my pocket.  It made me sick to think it was gone.
+Well, I started to telephone the Pullman office, and then I made up my
+mind I'd take a taxi and go down to the South Station myself, and just as
+I got out of the cab there was the nigger porter, all dressed up in his
+glad rags, coming out of the station!  I knew him, I'd been on his car
+lots of times.  `Say, George,' I said, `I didn't forget you this morning,
+did I?'
+
+"`No, suh,' said George, 'you done give me a quarter.'
+
+"`I guess you're mistaken, George,' says I, and I fished out a ten dollar
+bill.  You ought to have seen that nigger's eyes."
+
+"`What's this for, Mister Ditmar?' says he.
+
+"`For that lucky gold piece you found in lower seven,' I told him.
+`We'll trade.'
+
+"`Was you in lower seven? --so you was!' says George.  Well, he had it
+all right--you bet he had it.  Now wasn't that queer?  The very day you
+and I began to know each other!"
+
+"Wonderful!" Janet agreed.  "Why don't you put it on your watch chain?"
+
+"Well, I've thought of that," he replied, with the air of having
+considered all sides of the matter.  "But I've got that charm of the
+secret order I belong to--that's on my chain.  I guess I'll keep it in my
+vest pocket."
+
+"I didn't know you were so superstitious," she mocked.
+
+"Pretty nearly everybody's superstitious," he declared.  And she thought
+of Lise.
+
+"I'm not.  I believe if things are going to happen well, they're going to
+happen.  Nothing can prevent it."
+
+"By thunder" he exclaimed, struck by her remark.  "You are like that
+You're different from any person I ever knew...."
+
+From such anecdotes she pieced together her new Ditmar.  He spoke of a
+large world she had never seen, of New York and Washington and Chicago,
+where he intended to take her.  In the future he would never travel
+alone.  And he told her of his having been a delegate to the last
+National Republican Convention, explaining what a delegate was.  He
+gloried in her innocence, and it was pleasant to dazzle her with
+impressions of his cosmopolitanism.  In this, perhaps, he was not quite
+so successful as he imagined, but her eyes shone.  She had never even
+been in a sleeping car!  For her delectation he launched into an
+enthusiastic description of these vehicles, of palatial compartment cars,
+of limited, transcontinental trains, where one had a stenographer and a
+barber at one's disposal.
+
+"Neither of them would do me any good," she complained.
+
+"You could go to the manicure," he said.
+
+There had been in Ditmar's life certain events which, in his anecdotal
+moods, were magnified into matters of climacteric importance; high,
+festal occasions on which it was sweet to reminisce, such as his visit as
+Delegate at Large to that Chicago Convention.  He had travelled on a
+special train stocked with cigars and White Seal champagne, in the
+company of senators and congressmen and ex-governors, state treasurers,
+collectors of the port, mill owners, and bankers to whom he referred, as
+the French say, in terms of their "little" names.  He dwelt on the
+magnificence of the huge hotel set on the borders of a lake like an
+inland sea, and related such portions of the festivities incidental to
+"the seeing of Chicago" as would bear repetition.  No women belonged to
+this realm; no women, at least, who were to be regarded as persons.
+Ditmar did not mention them, but no doubt they existed, along with the
+cigars and the White Seal champagne, contributing to the amenities.  And
+the excursion, to Janet, took on the complexion of a sort of glorified
+picnic in the course of which, incidentally, a President of the United
+States had been chosen.  In her innocence she had believed the voters to
+perform this function.  Ditmar laughed.
+
+"Do you suppose we're going to let the mob run this country?" he
+inquired.  "Once in a while we can't get away with it as we'd like, we
+have to take the best we can."
+
+Thus was brought home to her more and more clearly that what men strove
+and fought for were the joys of prominence, privilege, and power.
+Everywhere, in the great world, they demanded and received consideration.
+It was Ditmar's boast that if nobody else could get a room in a crowded
+New York hotel, he could always obtain one.  And she was fain to concede-
+-she who had never known privilege--a certain intoxicating quality to
+this eminence.  If you could get the power, and refused to take it, the
+more fool you!  A topsy-turvy world, in which the stupid toiled day by
+day, week by week, exhausting their energies and craving joy, while
+others adroitly carried off the prize; and virtue had apparently as
+little to do with the matter as fair hair or a club foot.  If Janet had
+ever read Darwin, she would have recognized in her lover a creature
+rather wonderfully adapted to his environment; and what puzzled her,
+perhaps, was the riddle that presents itself to many better informed than
+herself--the utter absence in this environment of the sign of any being
+who might be called God.  Her perplexities--for she did have them--took
+the form of an instinctive sense of inadequacy, of persistently recurring
+though inarticulate convictions of the existence of elements not included
+in Ditmar's categories--of things that money could not buy; of things,
+too, alas! that poverty was as powerless to grasp.  Stored within her,
+sometimes rising to the level of consciousness, was that experience at
+Silliston in the May weather when she had had a glimpse--just a glimpse!
+of a garden where strange and precious flowers were in bloom.  On the
+other hand, this mysterious perception by her of things unseen and
+hitherto unguessed, of rays of delight in the spectrum of values to which
+his senses were unattuned, was for Ditmar the supreme essence of her
+fascination.  At moments he was at once bewildered and inebriated by the
+rare delicacy of fabric of the woman whom he had somehow stumbled upon
+and possessed.
+
+Then there were the hours when they worked together in the office.  Here
+she beheld Ditmar at his best.  It cannot be said that his infatuation
+for her was ever absent from his consciousness: he knew she was there
+beside him, he betrayed it continually.  But here she was in the presence
+of what had been and what remained his ideal, the Chippering Mill; here
+he acquired unity.  All his energies were bent toward the successful
+execution of the Bradlaugh order, which had to be completed on the first
+of February.  And as day after day went by her realization of the
+magnitude of the task he had undertaken became keener.  Excitement was in
+the air.  Ditmar seemed somehow to have managed to infuse not only
+Orcutt, the superintendent, but the foremen and second hands and even the
+workers with a common spirit of pride and loyalty, of interest, of
+determination to carry off this matter triumphantly.  The mill seemed
+fairly to hum with effort.  Janet's increasing knowledge of its
+organization and processes only served to heighten her admiration for the
+confidence Ditmar had shown from the beginning.  It was superb.  And now,
+as the probability of the successful execution of the task tended more
+and more toward certainty, he sometimes gave vent to his boyish,
+exuberant spirits.
+
+"I told Holster, I told all those croakers I'd do it, and by thunder I
+will do it, with three days' margin, too!  I'll get the last shipment off
+on the twenty-eighth of January.  Why, even George Chippering was afraid
+I couldn't handle it.  If the old man was alive he wouldn't have had cold
+feet."  Then Ditmar added, half jocularly, half seriously, looking down
+on her as she sat with her note-book, waiting for him to go on with his
+dictation: "I guess you've had your share in it, too.  You've been a
+wonder, the way you've caught on and taken things off my shoulders.  If
+Orcutt died I believe you could step right into his shoes."
+
+"I'm sure I could step into his shoes," she replied.  "Only I hope he
+won't die."
+
+"I hope he won't, either," said Ditmar.  "And as for you--"
+
+"Never mind me, now," she said.
+
+He bent over her.
+
+"Janet, you're the greatest girl in the world."
+
+Yes, she was happiest when she felt she was helping him, it gave her
+confidence that she could do more, lead him into paths beyond which they
+might explore together.  She was useful.  Sometimes, however, he seemed
+to her oversanguine; though he had worked hard, his success had come too
+easily, had been too uniform.  His temper was quick, the prospect of
+opposition often made him overbearing, yet on occasions he listened with
+surprising patience to his subordinates when they ventured to differ from
+his opinions.  At other times Janet had seen him overrule them
+ruthlessly; humiliate them.  There were days when things went wrong, when
+there were delays, complications, more matters to attend to than usual.
+On one such day, after the dinner hour, Mr. Orcutt entered the office.
+His long, lean face wore a certain expression Janet had come to know, an
+expression that always irritated Ditmar--the conscientious superintendent
+having the unfortunate faculty of exaggerating annoyances by his very
+bearing.  Ditmar stopped in the midst of dictating a peculiarly difficult
+letter, and looked up sharply.
+
+"Well," he asked, "what's the trouble now?"
+
+Orcutt seemed incapable of reading storm signals.  When anything
+happened, he had the air of declaring, "I told you so."
+
+"You may remember I spoke to you once or twice, Mr. Ditmar, of the talk
+over the fifty-four hour law that goes into effect in January."
+
+"Yes, what of it?" Ditmar cut in.  "The notices have been posted, as the
+law requires."
+
+"The hands have been grumbling, there are trouble makers among them.  A
+delegation came to me this noon and wanted to know whether we intended to
+cut the pay to correspond to the shorter working hours."
+
+"Of course it's going to be cut," said Ditmar.  "What do they suppose?
+That we're going to pay 'em for work they don't do?  The hands not paid
+by the piece are paid practically by the hour, not by the day.  And
+there's got to be some limit to this thing.  If these damned demagogues
+in the legislature keep on cutting down the hours of women and children
+every three years or so--and we can't run the mill without the women and
+children--we might as well shut down right now.  Three years ago,  when
+they made it fifty-six hours, we were fools to keep up the pay.  I said
+so then, at the conference, but they wouldn't listen to me.  They
+listened this time.  Holster and one or two others croaked, but we shut
+'em up.  No, they won't get any more pay, not a damned cent."
+
+Orcutt had listened patiently, lugubriously.
+
+"I told them that."
+
+"What did they say?"
+
+"They said they thought there'd be a strike."
+
+"Pooh!  Strike!" exclaimed Ditmar with contemptuous violence.  "Do you
+believe that?  You're always borrowing trouble, you are.  They may have a
+strike at one mill, the Clarendon.  I hope they do, I hope Holster gets
+it in the neck--he don't know how to run a mill anyway.  We won't have
+any strike, our people understand when they're well off, they've got all
+the work they can do, they're sending fortunes back to the old country or
+piling them up in the banks.  It's all bluff."
+
+"There was a meeting of the English branch of the I. W. W.  last night.
+A committee was appointed," said Orcutt, who as usual took a gloomy
+satisfaction in the prospect of disaster.
+
+"The I. W. W.!  My God, Orcutt, don't you know enough not to come in here
+wasting my time talking about the I. W. W.?  Those anarchists haven't got
+any organization.  Can't you get that through your head?"
+
+"All right," replied Orcutt, and marched off.  Janet felt rather sorry
+for him, though she had to admit that his manner was exasperating.  But
+Ditmar's anger, instead of cooling, increased: it all seemed directed
+against the unfortunate superintendent.
+
+"Would you believe that a man who's been in this mill twenty-five years
+could be such a fool?" he demanded.  "The I. W. W.!  Why not the Ku Klux?
+He must think I haven't anything to do but chin.  I don't know why I keep
+him here, sometimes I think he'll drive me crazy."
+
+His eyes seemed to have grown small and red, as was always the case when
+his temper got the better of him.  Janet did not reply, but sat with her
+pencil poised over her book.
+
+"Let's see, where was I?" he asked.  "I can't finish that letter now.  Go
+out and do the others."
+
+Mundane experience, like a badly mixed cake, has a tendency to run in
+streaks, and on the day following the incident related above Janet's
+heart was heavy.  Ditmar betrayed an increased shortness of temper and
+preoccupation; and the consciousness that her love had lent her a
+clairvoyant power to trace the source of his humours though these were
+often hidden from or unacknowledged by himself--was in this instance
+small consolation.  She saw clearly enough that the apprehensions
+expressed by Mr. Orcutt, whom he had since denounced as an idiotic old
+woman, had made an impression, aroused in him the ever-abiding concern
+for the mill which was his life's passion and which had been but
+temporarily displaced by his infatuation with her.  That other passion
+was paramount.  What was she beside it?  Would he hesitate for a moment
+to sacrifice her if it came to a choice between them?  The
+tempestuousness of these thoughts, when they took possession of her,
+hinting as they did of possibilities in her nature hitherto unguessed and
+unrevealed, astonished and frightened her; she sought to thrust them
+away, to reassure herself that his concern for the successful delivery of
+the Bradlaugh order was natural.  During the morning, in the intervals
+between interviews with the superintendents, he was self-absorbed, and
+she found herself inconsistently resenting the absence of those
+expressions of endearment--the glances and stolen caresses--for
+indulgence in which she had hitherto rebuked him: and though pride came
+to her rescue, fuel was added to her feeling by the fact that he did not
+seem to notice her coolness.  Since he failed to appear after lunch, she
+knew he must be investigating the suspicions Orcutt had voiced; but at
+six o'clock, when he had not returned, she closed up her desk and left
+the office.  An odour of cheap perfume pervading the corridor made her
+aware of the presence of Miss Lottie Myers.
+
+"Oh, it's you!" said that young woman, looking up from the landing of the
+stairs.  "I might have known it you never make a get-away until after
+six, do you?"
+
+"Oh, sometimes," said Janet.
+
+"I stayed as a special favour to-night," Miss Myers declared.  "But I'm
+not so stuck on my job that I can't tear myself away from it."
+
+"I don't suppose you are," said Janet.
+
+For a moment Miss Myers looked as if she was about to be still more
+impudent, but her eye met Janet's, and wavered.  They crossed the bridge
+in silence.  "Well, ta-ta," she said.  "If you like it, it's up to you.
+Five o'clock for mine,"--and walked away, up the canal, swinging her hips
+defiantly.  And Janet, gazing after her, grew hot with indignation and
+apprehension.  Her relations with Ditmar were suspected, after all, made
+the subject of the kind of comment indulged in, sotto voce, by Lottie
+Myers and her friends at the luncheon hour.  She felt a mad, primitive
+desire to run after the girl, to spring upon and strangle her and compel
+her to speak what was in her mind and then retract it; and the motor
+impulse, inhibited, caused a sensation of sickness, of unhappiness and
+degradation as she turned her steps slowly homeward.  Was it a
+misinterpretation, after all--what Lottie Myers had implied and feared to
+say?...
+
+In Fillnore Street supper was over, and Lise, her face contorted, her
+body strained, was standing in front of the bureau "doing" her hair, her
+glance now seeking the mirror, now falling again to consult a model in
+one of those periodicals of froth and fashion that cause such numberless
+heart burnings in every quarter of our democracy, and which are filled
+with photographs of "prominent" persons at race meetings, horse shows,
+and resorts, and with actresses, dancers,--and mannequins.  Janet's eyes
+fell on the open page to perceive that the coiffure her sister so
+painfully imitated was worn by a young woman with an insolent, vapid face
+and hard eyes, whose knees were crossed, revealing considerably more than
+an ankle.  The picture was labelled, "A dance at Palm Beach--A flashlight
+of Mrs. 'Trudy' Gascoigne-Schell,"--one of those mysterious, hybrid names
+which, in connection with the thoughts of New York and the visible rakish
+image of the lady herself, cause involuntary shudders down the spine of
+the reflecting American provincial.  Some such responsive quiver, akin to
+disgust, Janet herself experienced.
+
+"It's the very last scream," Lise was saying.  "And say, if I owned a
+ball dress like that I'd be somebody's Lulu all right!  Can I have the
+pleasure of the next maxixe, Miss Bumpus?"  With deft and rapid fingers
+she lead parted her hair far on the right side and pulled it down over
+the left eyebrow, twisted it over her ear and tightly around her head,
+inserting here and there a hairpin, seizing the hand mirror with the
+cracked back, and holding it up behind her.  Finally, when the operation
+was finished to
+
+her satisfaction she exclaimed, evidently to the paragon in the picture,
+"I get you!"  Whereupon, from the wardrobe, she produced a hat.  "You
+sure had my number when you guessed the feathers on that other would get
+draggled," she observed in high good humour, generously ignoring their
+former unpleasantness on the subject.  When she had pinned it on she bent
+mockingly over her sister, who sat on the bed.  "How d'you like my new
+toque?  Peekaboo!  That's the way the guys rubberneck to see if you're
+good lookin'."
+
+Lise was exalted, feverish, apparently possessed by some high secret; her
+eyes shone, and when she crossed the room she whistled bars of ragtime
+and executed mincing steps of the maxixe.  Fumbling in the upper drawer
+for a pair of white gloves (also new), she knocked off the corner of the
+bureau her velvet bag; it opened as it struck the floor, and out of it
+rolled a lilac vanity case and a yellow coin.  Casting a suspicious,
+lightning glance at Janet, she snatched up the vanity case and covered
+the coin with her foot.
+
+"Lock the doors!" she cried, with an hysteric giggle.  Then removing her
+foot she picked up the coin surreptitiously.  To her amazement her sister
+made no comment, did not seem to have taken in the significance of the
+episode.  Lise had expected a tempest of indignant, searching questions,
+a "third degree," as she would have put it.  She snapped the bag
+together, drew on her gloves, and, when she was ready to leave, with
+characteristic audacity crossed the room, taking her sister's face
+between her hands and kissing her.
+
+"Tell me your troubles, sweetheart!" she said--and did not wait to hear
+them.
+
+Janet was incapable of speech--nor could she have brought herself to ask
+Lise whether or not the money had been earned at the Bagatelle, and
+remained miraculously unspent.  It was possible, but highly incredible.
+And then, the vanity case and the new hat were to be accounted for!  The
+sight of the gold piece, indeed, had suddenly revived in Janet the queer
+feeling of faintness, almost of nausea she had experienced after parting
+with Lottie Myers.  And by some untoward association she was reminded of
+a conversation she had had with Ditmar on the Saturday afternoon
+following their first Sunday excursion, when, on opening her pay
+envelope, she had found twenty dollars.
+
+"Are you sure I'm worth it?" she had demanded--and he had been quite
+sure.  He had added that she was worth more, much more, but that he could
+not give her as yet, without the risk of comment, a sum commensurate with
+the value of her services....  But now she asked herself again, was she
+worth it? or was it merely--part of her price?  Going to the wardrobe and
+opening a drawer at the bottom she searched among her clothes until she
+discovered the piece of tissue paper in which she had wrapped the rose
+rescued from the cluster he had given her.  The petals were dry, yet they
+gave forth, still, a faint, reminiscent fragrance as she pressed them to
+her face.  Janet wept....
+
+The following morning as she was kneeling in a corner of the room by the
+letter files, one of which she had placed on the floor, she recognized
+his step in the outer office, heard him pause to joke with young
+Caldwell, and needed not the visual proof--when after a moment he halted
+on the threshold--of the fact that his usual, buoyant spirits were
+restored.  He held a cigar in his hand, and in his eyes was the eager
+look with which she had become familiar, which indeed she had learned to
+anticipate as they swept the room in search of her.  And when they fell
+on her he closed the door and came forward impetuously.  But her
+exclamation caused him to halt in bewilderment.
+
+"Don't touch me!" she said.
+
+And he stammered out, as he stood over her:--
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Everything.  You don't love me--I was a fool to believe you did."
+
+"Don't love you!" he repeated.  "My God, what's the trouble now?  What
+have I done?"
+
+"Oh, it's nothing you've done, it's what you haven't done, it's what you
+can't do.  You don't really care for me--all you care for is this mill--
+when anything happens here you don't know I'm alive."
+
+He stared at her, and then an expression of comprehension, of intense
+desire grew in his eyes; and his laugh, as he flung his cigar out of the
+open window and bent down to seize her, was almost brutal.  She fought
+him, she tried to hurt him, and suddenly, convulsively pressed herself to
+him.
+
+"You little tigress!" he said, as he held her.  "You were jealous--were
+you--jealous of the mill?"  And he laughed again.  "I'd like to see you
+with something really to be jealous about.  So you love me like that, do
+you?"
+
+She could feel his heart beating against her.
+
+"I won't be neglected," she told him tensely.  "I want all of you--if I
+can't have all of you, I don't want any.  Do you understand?"
+
+"Do I understand?  Well, I guess I do."
+
+"You didn't yesterday," she reproached him, somewhat dazed by the
+swiftness of her submission, and feeling still the traces of a lingering
+resentment.  She had not intended to surrender.  "You forgot all about
+me, you didn't know I was here, much less that I was hurt.  Oh, I was
+hurt!  And you--I can tell at once when anything's wrong with you--I know
+without your saying it."
+
+He was amazed, he might indeed have been troubled and even alarmed by
+this passion he had aroused had his own passion not been at the flood.
+And as he wiped away her tears with his handkerchief he could scarcely
+believe his senses that this was the woman whose resistance had demanded
+all his force to overcome.  Indeed, although he recognized the symptoms
+she betrayed as feminine, as having been registered--though feebly
+compared to this! by incidents in his past, precisely his difficulty
+seemed to be in identifying this complex and galvanic being as a woman,
+not as something almost fearful in her significance, outside the bounds
+of experience....
+
+Presently she ceased to tremble, and he drew her to the window.  The day
+was as mild as autumn, the winter sun like honey in its mellowness; a
+soft haze blurred the outline of the upper bridge.
+
+"Only two more days until Sunday," he whispered, caressingly,
+exultantly....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+It had been a strange year in Hampton, unfortunate for coal merchants,
+welcome to the poor.  But Sunday lacked the transforming touch of
+sunshine.  The weather was damp and cold as Janet set out from Fillmore
+Street.  Ditmar, she knew, would be waiting for her, he counted on her,
+and she could not bear to disappoint him, to disappoint herself.  And all
+the doubts and fears that from time to time had assailed her were
+banished by this impulse to go to him, to be with him.  He loved her!
+The words, as she sat in the trolley car, ran in her head like the lilt
+of a song.  What did the weather matter?
+
+When she alighted at the lonely cross-roads snow had already begun to
+fall.  But she spied the automobile, with its top raised, some distance
+down the lane, and in a moment she was in it, beside him, wrapped in the
+coat she had now come to regard as her own.  He buttoned down the
+curtains and took her in his arms.
+
+"What shall we do to-day," she asked, "if it snows?"
+
+"Don't let that worry you, sweetheart," he said.  "I have the chains on,
+I can get through anything in this car."
+
+He was in high, almost turbulent spirits as he turned the car and drove
+it out of the rutty lane into the state road.  The snow grew thicker and
+thicker still, the world was blotted out by swiftly whirling, feathery
+flakes that melted on the windshield, and through the wet glass Janet
+caught distorted glimpses of black pines and cedars beside the highway.
+
+The ground was spread with fleece.  Occasionally, and with startling
+suddenness, other automobiles shot like dark phantoms out of the
+whiteness, and like phantoms disappeared.  Presently, through the veil,
+she recognized Silliston--a very different Silliston from that she had
+visited on the fragrant day in springtime, when the green on the common
+had been embroidered with dandelions, and the great elms whose bare
+branches were now fantastically traced against the flowing veil of white-
+-heavy with leaf.  Vignettes emerged--only to fade!--of the old-world
+houses whose quaint beauty had fascinated and moved her.  And she found
+herself wondering what had become of the strange man she had mistaken for
+a carpenter.  All that seemed to have taken place in a past life.  She
+asked Ditmar where he was going.
+
+"Boston," he told her.  "There's no other place to go."
+
+"But you'll never get back if it goes on snowing like this."
+
+"Well, the trains are still running," he assured her, with a quizzical
+smile.  "How about it, little girl?"  It was a term of endearment
+derived, undoubtedly, from a theatrical source, in which he sometimes
+indulged.
+
+She did not answer.  Surprisingly, to-day, she did not care.  All she
+could think of, all she wanted was to go on and on beside him with the
+world shut out--on and on forever.  She was his--what did it matter?
+They were on their way to Boston!  She began, dreamily, to think about
+Boston, to try to restore it in her imagination to the exalted place it
+had held before she met Ditmar; to reconstruct it from vague memories of
+childhood when, in two of the family peregrinations, she had crossed it.
+Traces remained of emotionally-toned impressions acquired when she had
+walked about the city holding Edward's hand--of a long row of stately
+houses with forbidding fronts, set on a hillside, of a wide, tree-covered
+space where children were playing.  And her childish verdict, persisting
+to-day, was one of inaccessibility, impenetrability, of jealously guarded
+wealth and beauty.  Those houses, and the treasures she was convinced
+they must contain, were not for her!  Some of the panes of glass in their
+windows were purple--she remembered a little thing like that, and asking
+her father the reason!  He hadn't known.  This purple quality had somehow
+steeped itself into her memory of Boston, and even now the colour stood
+for the word, impenetrable.  That was extraordinary.  Even now!  Well,
+they were going to Boston; if Ditmar had said they were going to Bagdad
+it would have been quite as credible--and incredible.  Wherever they were
+going, it was into the larger, larger life, and walls were to crumble
+before them, walls through which they would pass, even as they rent the
+white veil of the storm, into regions of beauty....
+
+And now the world seemed abandoned to them alone, so empty, so still were
+the white villages flitting by; so empty, so still the great parkway of
+the Fells stretching away and away like an enchanted forest under the
+snow, like the domain of some sleeping king.  And the flakes melted
+silently into the black waters.  And the wide avenue to which they came
+led to a sleeping palace!  No, it was a city, Somerville, Ditmar told
+her, as they twisted in and out of streets, past stores, churches and
+fire-engine houses, breasted the heights, descended steeply on the far
+side into Cambridge, and crossed the long bridge over the Charles.  And
+here at last was Boston--Beacon Street, the heart or funnel of it, as one
+chose.  Ditmar, removing one of the side curtains that she might see,
+with just a hint in his voice of a reverence she was too excited to
+notice, pointed out the stern and respectable facades of the twin
+Chippering mansions standing side by side.  Save for these shrines--for
+such in some sort they were to him--the Back Bay in his eyes was nothing
+more than a collection of houses inhabited by people whom money and
+social position made unassailable.  But to-day he, too, was excited.
+Never had he been more keenly aware of her sensitiveness to experience;
+and he to whom it had not occurred to wonder at Boston wondered at her,
+who seemed able to summon forth a presiding, brooding spirit of the place
+from out of the snow.  Deep in her eyes, though they sparkled, was the
+reflection of some mystic vision; her cheeks were flushed.  And in her
+delight, vicariously his own, he rejoiced; in his trembling hope of more
+delight to come, which this mentorship would enhance,--despite the fast
+deepening snow he drove her up one side of Commonwealth Avenue and down
+the other, encircling the Common and the Public Garden; stopping at the
+top of Park Street that she might gaze up at the State House, whose
+golden dome, seen through the veil, was tinged with blue.  Boston!  Why
+not Russia?  Janet was speechless for sheer lack of words to describe
+what she felt....
+
+At length he brought the car to a halt opposite an imposing doorway in
+front of which a glass roof extended over the pavement, and Janet
+demanded where they were.
+
+"Well, we've got to eat, haven't we?" Ditmar replied.  She noticed that
+he was shivering.
+
+"Are you cold?" she inquired with concern.
+
+"I guess I am, a little," he replied.  "I don't know why I should be, in
+a fur coat.  But I'll be warm soon enough, now."
+
+A man in blue livery hurried toward them across the sidewalk, helping
+them to alight.  And Ditmar, after driving the car a few paces beyond the
+entrance, led her through the revolving doors into a long corridor, paved
+with marble and lighted by bulbs glowing from the ceiling, where benches
+were set against the wall, overspread by the leaves of potted plants set
+in the intervals between them.
+
+"Sit down a moment," he said to her.  "I must telephone to have somebody
+take that car, or it'll stay there the rest of the winter."
+
+She sat down on one of the benches.  The soft light, the warmth, the
+exotic odour of the plants, the well-dressed people who trod softly the
+strip of carpet set on the marble with the air of being at home--all
+contributed to an excitement, intense yet benumbing.  She could not
+think.  She didn't want to think--only to feel, to enjoy, to wring the
+utmost flavour of enchantment from these new surroundings; and her face
+wore the expression of one in a dream.  Presently she saw Ditmar
+returning followed by a boy in a blue uniform.
+
+"All right," he said.  At the end of the corridor was an elevator in
+which they were shot to one of the upper floors; and the boy, inserting a
+key in a heavy mahogany door, revealed a sitting-room.  Between its
+windows was a table covered with a long, white cloth reaching to the
+floor, on which, amidst the silverware and glass, was set a tall vase
+filled with dusky roses.  Janet, drawing in a deep breath of their
+fragrance, glanced around the room.  The hangings, the wall-paper, the
+carpet, the velvet upholstery of the mahogany chairs, of the wide lounge
+in the corner were of a deep and restful green; the marble mantelpiece,
+with its English coal grate, was copied--had she known it--from a mansion
+of the Georgian period.  The hands of a delicate Georgian clock pointed
+to one.  And in the large mirror behind the clock she beheld an image she
+supposed, dreamily, to be herself.  The bell boy was taking off her coat,
+which he hung, with Ditmar's, on a rack in a corner.
+
+"Shall I light the fire, sir?" he asked.
+
+"Sure," said Ditmar.  "And tell them to hurry up with lunch."
+
+The boy withdrew, closing the door silently behind him.
+
+"We're going to have lunch here!" Janet exclaimed.
+
+"Why not?  I thought it would be nicer than a public dining-room, and
+when I got up this morning and saw what the weather was I telephoned."
+He placed two chairs before the fire, which had begun to blaze.  "Isn't
+it cosy?" he said, taking her hands and pulling her toward him.  His own
+hands trembled, the tips of his fingers were cold.
+
+"You are cold!" she said.
+
+"Not now--not now," he replied.  The queer vibrations were in his voice
+that she had heard before.  "Sweetheart!  This is the best yet, isn't it?
+And after that trip in the storm!"
+
+"It's beautiful!" she murmured, gently drawing away from him and looking
+around her once more.  "I never was in a room like this."
+
+"Well, you'll be in plenty more of them," he exulted.  "Sit down beside
+the fire, and get warm yourself."
+
+She obeyed, and he took the chair at her side, his eyes on her face.  As
+usual, she was beyond him; and despite her exclamations of surprise, of
+appreciation and pleasure she maintained the outward poise, the
+inscrutability that summed up for him her uniqueness in the world of
+woman.  She sat as easily upright in the delicate Chippendale chair as
+though she had been born to it.  He made wild surmises as to what she
+might be thinking.  Was she, as she seemed, taking all this as a matter
+of course?  She imposed on him an impelling necessity to speak, to say
+anything--it did not matter what--and he began to dwell on the
+excellences of the hotel.  She did not appear to hear him, her eyes
+lingering on the room, until presently she asked:--
+
+"What's the name of this hotel?"
+
+He told her.
+
+"I thought they only allowed married people to come, like this, in a
+private room."
+
+"Oh!" he began--and the sudden perception that she had made this
+statement impartially added to his perplexity.  "Well," he was able to
+answer, "we're as good as married, aren't we, Janet?"  He leaned toward
+her, he put his hand on hers.  "The manager here is an old friend of
+mine.  He knows we're as good as married."
+
+"Another old friend!" she queried.  And the touch of humour, in spite of
+his taut nerves, delighted him.
+
+"Yes, yes," he laughed, rather uproariously.  "I've got 'em everywhere,
+as thick as landmarks."
+
+"You seem to," she said.
+
+"I hope you're hungry," he said.
+
+"Not very," she replied.  "It's all so strange--this day, Claude.  It's
+like a fairy story, coming here to Boston in the snow, and this place,
+and--and being with you."
+
+"You still love me?" he cried, getting up.
+
+"You must know that I do," she answered simply, raising her face to his.
+And he stood gazing down into it, with an odd expression she had never
+seen before...."What's the matter?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing--nothing," he assured her, but continued to look at her.
+"You're so--so wonderful," he whispered, "I just can't believe it."
+
+"And if it's hard for you," she answered, "think what it must be for me!"
+And she smiled up at him.
+
+Ditmar had known a moment of awe....  Suddenly he took her face between
+his hands and pressed his rough cheek against it, blindly.  His hands
+trembled, his body was shaken, as by a spasm.
+
+"Why, you're still cold, Claude!" she cried anxiously.
+
+And he stammered out: "I'm not--it's you--it's having you!"
+
+Before she could reply to this strange exclamation, to which,
+nevertheless, some fire in her leaped in response, there came a knock at
+the door, and he drew away from her as he answered it.  Two waiters
+entered obsequiously, one bearing a serving table, the other holding
+above his head a large tray containing covered dishes and glasses.
+
+"I could do with a cocktail!" Ditmar exclaimed, and the waiter smiled as
+he served them.  "Here's how!" he said, giving her a glass containing a
+yellow liquid.
+
+She tasted it, made a grimace, and set it down hastily.
+
+"What's the trouble?" he asked, laughing, as she hurried to the table and
+took a drink of water.
+
+"It's horrid!" she cried.
+
+"Oh, you'll get over that idea," he told her.  "You'll be crazy about
+'em."
+
+"I never want to taste another," she declared.
+
+He laughed again.  He had taken his at a swallow, but almost nullifying
+its effect was this confirmation--if indeed he had needed it--of the
+extent of her inexperience.  She was, in truth, untouched by the world--
+the world in which he had lived.  He pulled out her chair for her and she
+sat down, confronted by a series of knives, forks, and spoons on either
+side of a plate of oysters.  Oysters served in this fashion, needless to
+say, had never formed part of the menu in Fillmore Street, or in any
+Hampton restaurant where she had lunched.  But she saw that Ditmar had
+chosen a little fork with three prongs, and she followed his example.
+
+"You mustn't tell me you don't like Cotuits!" he exclaimed.
+
+She touched one, delicately, with her fork.
+
+"They're alive!" she exclaimed, though the custom of consuming them thus
+was by no means unknown to her.  Lise had often boasted of a taste for
+oysters on the shell, though really preferring them smothered with red
+catsup in a "cocktail."
+
+"They're alive, but they don't know it.  They won't eat you," Ditmar
+replied gleefully.  "Squeeze a little lemon on one."  Another sort of
+woman, he reflected, would have feigned a familiarity with the dish.
+
+She obeyed him, put one in her mouth, gave a little shiver, and swallowed
+it quickly.
+
+"Well?" he said.  "It isn't bad, is it?"
+
+"It seems so queer to eat anything alive, and enjoy it," she said, as she
+ate the rest of them.
+
+"If you think they're good here you ought to taste them on the Cape,
+right out of the water," he declared, and went on to relate how he had
+once eaten a fabulous number in a contest with a friend of his, and won a
+bet.  He was fond of talking about wagers he had won.  Betting had lent a
+zest to his life.  "We'll roll down there together some day next summer,
+little girl.  It's a great place.  You can go in swimming three times a
+day and never feel it.  And talk about eating oysters, you can't swallow
+'em as fast as a fellow I know down there, Joe Pusey, can open 'em.  It's
+some trick to open 'em."
+
+He described the process, but she--scarcely listened.  She was striving
+to adjust herself to the elements of a new and revolutionary experience;
+to the waiters who came and went, softly, deferentially putting hot
+plates before her, helping her to strange and delicious things; a creamy
+soup, a fish with a yellow sauce whose ingredients were artfully
+disguised, a breast of guinea fowl, a salad, an ice, and a small cup of
+coffee.  Instincts and tastes hitherto unsuspected and ungratified were
+aroused in her.  What would it be like always to be daintily served, to
+eat one's meals in this leisurely and luxurious manner?  As her physical
+hunger was satisfied by the dainty food, even as her starved senses drank
+in the caressing warmth and harmony of the room, the gleaming fire, the
+heavy scent of the flowers, the rose glow of the lights in contrast to
+the storm without,--so the storm flinging itself against the windows,
+powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence of cold,
+black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil and
+limitations.  Had her existence been like that?  or was it a dream, a
+nightmare from which she had awakened at last?  From time to time, deep
+within her, she felt persisting a conviction that that was reality, this
+illusion, but she fought it down.  She wanted--oh, how she wanted to
+believe in the illusion!
+
+Facing her was the agent, the genius, the Man who had snatched her from
+that existence, who had at his command these delights to bestow.  She
+loved him, she belonged to him, he was to be her husband--yet there were
+moments when the glamour of this oddly tended to dissolve, when an
+objective vision intruded and she beheld herself, as though removed from
+the body, lunching with a strange man in a strange place.  And once it
+crossed her mind--what would she think of another woman who did this?
+What would she think if it were Lise?  She could not then achieve a sense
+of identity; it was as though she had partaken of some philtre lulling
+her, inhibiting her power to grasp the fact in its enormity.  And little
+by little grew on her the realization of what all along she had known,
+that the spell of these surroundings to which she had surrendered was an
+expression of the man himself.  He was the source of it.  More and more,
+as he talked, his eyes troubled and stirred her; the touch of his hand,
+as he reached across the table and laid it on hers, burned her.  When the
+waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer, and she
+rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the curtains,
+the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused the light;
+and she paused before the grand piano in the corner.
+
+"I'd like to be able to play!" she said.
+
+"You can learn," he told her.
+
+"I'm too old!"
+
+He laughed.  And as he sat smoking his eyes followed her ceaselessly.
+
+Above the sofa hung a large print of the Circus Maximus, with crowded
+tiers mounting toward the sky, and awninged boxes where sat the Vestal
+Virgins and the Emperor high above a motley, serried group on the sand.
+At the mouth of a tunnel a lion stood motionless, menacing, regarding
+them.  The picture fascinated Janet.
+
+"It's meant to be Rome, isn't it?"  she asked.
+
+"What?  That?  I guess so."  He got up and came over to her.  "Sure," he
+said.  "I'm not very strong on history, but I read a book once, a novel,
+which told how those old fellows used to like to see Christians thrown to
+the lions just as we like to see football games.  I'll get the book
+again--we'll read it together."
+
+Janet shivered....  "Here's another picture," he said, turning to the
+other side of the room.  It was, apparently, an engraved copy of a modern
+portrait, of a woman in evening dress with shapely arms and throat and a
+small, aristocratic head.  Around her neck was hung a heavy rope of
+pearls.
+
+"Isn't she beautiful!" Janet sighed.
+
+"Beautiful!"  He led her to the mirror.  "Look!" he said.  "I'll buy you
+pearls, Janet, I want to see them gleaming against your skin.  She can't
+compare to you.  I'll--I'll drape you with pearls."
+
+"No, no," she cried.  "I don't want them, Claude.  I don't want them.
+Please!"  She scarcely knew what she was saying.  And as she drew away
+from him her hands went out, were pressed together with an imploring,
+supplicating gesture.  He seized them.  His nearness was suffocating her,
+she flung herself into his arms, and their lips met in a long, swooning
+kiss.  She began instinctively but vainly to struggle, not against him--
+but against a primal thing stronger than herself, stronger than he,
+stronger than codes and conventions and institutions, which yet she
+craved fiercely as her being's fulfilment.  It was sweeping them dizzily
+--whither?  The sheer sweetness and terror of it!
+
+"Don't, don't!" she murmured desperately.  "You mustn't!"
+
+"Janet--we're going to be married, sweetheart,--just as soon as we can.
+Won't you trust me?  For God's sake, don't be cruel.  You're my wife,
+now--"
+
+His voice seemed to come from a great distance.  And from a great
+distance, too, her own in reply, drowned as by falling waters.
+
+"Do you love me? --will you love me always--always?"
+
+And he answered hoarsely, "Yes--always--I swear it, Janet."  He had found
+her lips again, he was pulling her toward a door on the far side of the
+room, and suddenly, as he opened it, her resistance ceased....
+
+The snow made automobiling impossible, and at half past nine that evening
+Ditmar had escorted Janet to the station in a cab, and she had taken the
+train for Hampton.  For a while she sat as in a trance.  She knew that
+something had happened, something portentous, cataclysmic, which had
+irrevocably changed her from the Janet Bumpus who had left Hampton that
+same morning--an age ago.  But she was unable to realize the
+metamorphosis.  In the course of a single day she had lived a lifetime,
+exhausted the range of human experience, until now she was powerless to
+feel any more.  The car was filled with all sorts and conditions of
+people returning to homes scattered through the suburbs and smaller
+cities north of Boston--a mixed, Sunday-night crowd; and presently she
+began, in a detached way, to observe them.  Their aspects, their speech
+and manners had the queer effect of penetrating her consciousness without
+arousing the emotional judgments of approval or disapproval which
+normally should have followed.  Ordinarily she might have felt a certain
+sympathy for the fragile young man on the seat beside her who sat moodily
+staring through his glasses at the floor: and the group across the aisle
+would surely have moved her to disgust.  Two couples were seated vis-a-
+vis, the men apparently making fun of a "pony" coat one of the girls was
+wearing.  In spite of her shrieks, which drew general attention, they
+pulled it from her back--an operation regarded by the conductor himself
+with tolerant amusement.  Whereupon her companion, a big, blond Teuton
+with an inane guffaw, boldly thrust an arm about her waist and held her
+while he presented the tickets.  Janet beheld all this as one sees
+dancers through a glass, without hearing the music.
+
+Behind her two men fell into conversation.
+
+"I guess there's well over a foot of snow.  I thought we'd have an open
+winter, too."
+
+"Look out for them when they start in mild!"
+
+"I was afraid this darned road would be tied up if I waited until
+morning.  I'm in real estate, and there's a deal on in my town I've got
+to watch every minute...."
+
+Even the talk between two slouch-hatted millhands, foreigners, failed at
+the time to strike Janet as having any significance.  They were
+discussing with some heat the prospect of having their pay reduced by the
+fifty-four hour law which was to come into effect on Monday.  They
+denounced the mill owners.
+
+"They speed up the machine and make work harder," said one.  "I think we
+goin' to have a strike sure."
+
+"Bad sisson too to have strike," replied the second pessimistically.  "It
+will be cold winter, now."
+
+Across the black square of the window drifted the stray lights of the
+countryside, and from time to time, when the train stopped, she gazed
+out, unheeding, at the figures moving along the dim station platforms.
+Suddenly, without premeditation or effort, she began to live over again
+the day, beginning with the wonders, half revealed, half hidden, of that
+journey through the whiteness to Boston....  Awakened, listening, she
+heard beating louder and louder on the shores of consciousness the waves
+of the storm which had swept her away--waves like crashing chords of
+music.  She breathed deeply, she turned her face to the window, seeming
+to behold reflected there, as in a crystal, all her experiences, little
+and great, great and little.  She was seated once more leaning back in
+the corner of the carriage on her way to the station, she felt Ditmar's
+hand working in her own, and she heard his voice pleading forgiveness--
+for her silence alarmed him.  And she heard herself saying:--
+
+"It was my fault as much as yours."
+
+And his vehement reply:--
+
+"It wasn't anybody's fault--it was natural, it was wonderful, Janet.  I
+can't bear to see you sad."
+
+To see her sad!  Twice, during the afternoon and evening, he had spoken
+those words--or was it three times?  Was there a time she had forgotten?
+And each time she had answered: "I'm not sad."  What she had felt indeed
+was not sadness,--but how could she describe it to him when she herself
+was amazed and dwarfed by it?  Could he not feel it, too?  Were men so
+different?...  In the cab his solicitation, his tenderness were only to
+be compared with his bewilderment, his apparent awe of the feeling he
+himself had raised up in her, and which awed her, likewise.  She had
+actually felt that bewilderment of his when, just before they had reached
+the station, she had responded passionately to his last embrace.  Even as
+he returned her caresses, it had been conveyed to her amazingly by the
+quality of his touch.  Was it a lack all women felt in men? and were
+these, even in supreme moments, merely the perplexed transmitters of
+life?--not life itself?  Her thoughts did not gain this clarity, though
+she divined the secret.  And yet she loved him--loved him with a
+fierceness that frightened her, with a tenderness that unnerved her....
+
+At the Hampton station she took the trolley, alighting at the Common,
+following the narrow path made by pedestrians in the heavy snow to
+Fillmore Street.  She climbed the dark stairs, opened the dining-room
+door, and paused on the threshold.  Hannah and Edward sat there under the
+lamp, Hannah scanning through her spectacles the pages of a Sunday
+newspaper.  On perceiving Janet she dropped it hastily in her lap.
+
+"Well, I was concerned about you, in all this storm!" she exclaimed.
+"Thank goodness you're home, anyway.  You haven't seen Lise, have you?"
+
+"Lise?" Janet repeated.  "Hasn't she been home?"
+
+"Your father and I have been alone all day long.  Not that it is so
+uncommon for Lise to be gone.  I wish it wasn't!  But you!  When you
+didn't come home for supper I was considerably worried."
+
+Janet sat down between her mother and father and began to draw off her
+gloves.
+
+"I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar," she announced.
+
+For a few moments the silence was broken only by the ticking of the old-
+fashioned clock.
+
+"Mr. Ditmar!" said Hannah, at length.  "You're going to marry Mr.
+Ditmar!"
+
+Edward was still inarticulate.  His face twitched, his eyes watered as he
+stared at her.
+
+"Not right away," said Janet.
+
+ Well, I must say you take it rather cool," declared Hannah, almost
+resentfully.  "You come in and tell us you're going to marry Mr. Ditmar
+just like you were talking about the weather."
+
+Hannah's eyes filled with tears.  There had been indeed an unconscious
+lack of consideration in Janet's abrupt announcement, which had fallen
+like a spark on the dry tinder of Hannah's hope.  The result was a
+suffocating flame.  Janet, whom love had quickened, had a swift
+perception of this.  She rose quickly and took Hannah in her arms and
+kissed her.  It was as though the relation between them were reversed,
+and the daughter had now become the mother and the comforter.
+
+"I always knew something like this would happen!" said Edward.  His words
+incited Hannah to protest.
+
+"You didn't anything of the kind, Edward Bumpus," she exclaimed.
+
+"Just to think of Janet livin' in that big house up in Warren Street!"
+he went on, unheeding, jubilant.  "You'll drop in and see the old people
+once in a while, Janet, you won't forget us?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, father," said Janet.
+
+"Well, he's a fine man, Claude Ditmar, I always said that.  The way he
+stops and talks to me when he passes the gate--"
+
+"That doesn't make him a good man," Hannah declared, and added: "If he
+wasn't a good man, Janet wouldn't be marrying him."
+
+"I don't know whether he's good or not," said Janet.
+
+"That's so, too," observed Hannah, approvingly.  "We can't any of us tell
+till we've tried 'em, and then it's too late to change.  I'd like to see
+him, but I guess he wouldn't care to come down here to Fillmore Street."
+The difference between Ditmar's social and economic standing and their
+own suggested appalling complications to her mind.  "I suppose I won't
+get a sight of him till after you're married, and not much then."
+
+"There's plenty of time to think about that, mother," answered Janet.
+
+"I'd want to have everything decent and regular," Hannah insisted.  "We
+may be poor, but we come of good stock, as your father says."
+
+"It'll be all right--Mr. Ditmar will behave like a gentleman," Edward
+assured her.
+
+"I thought I ought to tell you about it," Janet said, "but you mustn't
+mention it, yet, not even to Lise.  Lise will talk.  Mr. Ditmar's very
+busy now,--he hasn't made any plans."
+
+"I wish Lise could get married!" exclaimed Hannah, irrelevantly.  "She's
+been acting so queer lately, she's not been herself at all."
+
+"Now there you go, borrowing trouble, mother," Edward exclaimed.  He
+could not take his eyes from Janet, but continued to regard her with
+benevolence.  "Lise'll get married some day.  I don't suppose we can
+expect another Mr. Ditmar...."
+
+"Well," said Hannah, presently, "there's no use sitting up all night."
+She rose and kissed Janet again.  "I just can't believe it," she
+declared, "but I guess it's so if you say it is."
+
+"Of course it's so," said Edward.
+
+"I so want you should be happy, Janet," said Hannah....
+
+Was it so?  Her mother and father, the dwarfed and ugly surroundings of
+Fillmore Street made it seem incredible once more.  And--what would they
+say if they knew what had happened to her this day?  When she had reached
+her room, Janet began to wonder why she had told her parents.  Had it not
+been in order to relieve their anxiety--especially her mother's--on the
+score of her recent absences from home?  Yes, that was it, and because
+the news would make them happy.  And then the mere assertion to them that
+she was to marry Ditmar helped to make it more real to herself.  But, now
+that reality was fading again, she was unable to bring it within the
+scope of her imagination, her mind refused to hold one remembered
+circumstance long enough to coordinate it with another: she realized that
+she was tired--too tired to think any more.  But despite her exhaustion
+there remained within her, possessing her, as it were overshadowing her,
+unrelated to future or past, the presence of the man who had awakened her
+to an intensity of life hitherto unconceived.  When her head touched the
+pillow she fell asleep....
+
+When the bells and the undulating scream of the siren awoke her, she lay
+awhile groping in the darkness.  Where was she?  Who was she?  The
+discovery of the fact that the nail of the middle finger on her right
+hand was broken, gave her a clew.  She had broken that nail in reaching
+out to save something--a vase of roses--that was it!--a vase of roses on
+a table with a white cloth.  Ditmar had tipped it over.  The sudden
+flaring up of this trivial incident served to re-establish her identity,
+to light a fuse along which her mind began to run like fire, illuminating
+redly all the events of the day before.  It was sweet to lie thus, to
+possess, as her very own, these precious, passionate memories of life
+lived at last to fulness, to feel that she had irrevocably given herself
+and taken--all.  A longing to see Ditmar again invaded her: he would take
+an early train, he would be at the office by nine.  How could she wait
+until then?
+
+With a movement that had become habitual, subconscious, she reached out
+her hand to arouse her sister.  The coldness of the sheets on the right
+side of the bed sent a shiver through her--a shiver of fear.
+
+"Lise!" she called.  But there was no answer from the darkness.  And
+Janet, trembling, her heart beating wildly, sprang from the bed, searched
+for the matches, and lit the gas.  There was no sign of Lise; her
+clothes, which she had the habit of flinging across the chairs, were
+nowhere to be seen.  Janet's eyes fell on the bureau, marked the absence
+of several knick-knacks, including a comb and brush, and with a sudden
+sickness of apprehension she darted to the wardrobe and flung open the
+doors.  In the bottom were a few odd garments, above was the hat with the
+purple feather, now shabby and discarded, on the hooks a skirt and jacket
+Lise wore to work at the Bagatelle in bad weather.  That was all....
+Janet sank down in the rocking-chair, her hands clasped together,
+overwhelmed by the sudden apprehension of the tragedy that had lurked,
+all unsuspected, in the darkness: a tragedy, not of Lise alone, but in
+which she herself was somehow involved.  Just why this was so, she could
+not for the moment declare.  The room was cold, she was clad only in a
+nightdress, but surges of heat ran through her body.  What should she do?
+She must think.  But thought was impossible.  She got up and closed the
+window and began to dress with feverish rapidity, pausing now and again
+to stand motionless.  In one such moment there entered her mind an
+incident that oddly had made little impression at the time of its
+occurrence because she, Janet, had been blinded by the prospect of her
+own happiness--that happiness which, a few minutes ago, had seemed so
+real and vital a thing!  And it was the memory of this incident that
+suddenly threw a glaring, evil light on all of Lise's conduct during the
+past months--her accidental dropping of the vanity case and the gold
+coin!  Now she knew'for a certainty what had happened to her sister.
+
+Having dressed herself, she entered the kitchen, which was warm, filled
+with the smell of frying meat.  Streaks of grease smoke floated
+fantastically beneath the low ceiling, and Hannah, with the fryingpan in
+one hand and a fork in the other, was bending over the stove.  Wisps of
+her scant, whitening hair escaped from the ridiculous, tightly drawn knot
+at the back of her head; in the light of the flickering gas-jet she
+looked so old and worn that a sudden pity smote Janet and made her dumb--
+pity for her mother, pity for herself, pity for Lise; pity that lent a
+staggering insight into life itself.  Hannah had once been young,
+desirable, perhaps, swayed by those forces which had swayed her.  Janet
+wondered why she had never guessed this before, and why she had guessed
+it now.  But it was Hannah who, looking up and catching sight of Janet's
+face, was quick to divine the presage in it and gave voice to the
+foreboding that had weighed on her for many weeks.
+
+"Where's Lise?"
+
+And Janet could not answer.  She shook her head.  Hannah dropped the
+fork, the handle of the frying pan and crossed the room swiftly, seizing
+Janet by the shoulders.
+
+"Is she gone?  I knew it, I felt it all along.  I thought she'd done
+something she was afraid to tell about--I tried to ask her, but I
+couldn't--I couldn't!  And now she's gone.  Oh, my God, I'll never
+forgive myself!"
+
+The unaccustomed sight of her mother's grief was terrible.  For an
+instant only she clung to Janet, then becoming mute, she sat down in the
+kitchen chair and stared with dry, unseeing eyes at the wall.  Her face
+twitched.  Janet could not bear to look at it, to see the torture in her
+mother's eyes.  She, Janet, seemed suddenly to have grown old herself, to
+have lived through ages of misery and tragedy....  She was aware of a
+pungent odour, went to the stove, picked up the fork, and turned the
+steak.  Now and then she glanced at Hannah.  Grief seemed to have frozen
+her.  Then, from the dining-room she heard footsteps, and Edward stood in
+the doorway.
+
+"Well, what's the matter with breakfast?" he asked.  From where he stood
+he could not see Hannah's face, but gradually his eyes were drawn to her
+figure.  His intuition was not quick, and some moments passed before the
+rigidity of the pose impressed itself upon him.
+
+"Is mother sick?" he asked falteringly.
+
+Janet went to him.  But it was Hannah who spoke.
+
+"Lise has gone," she said.
+
+"Lise--gone," Edward repeated.  "Gone where?"
+
+"She's run away--she's disgraced us," Hannah replied, in a monotonous,
+dulled voice.
+
+Edward did not seem to understand, and presently Janet felt impelled to
+break the silence.
+
+"She didn't come home last night, father."
+
+"Didn't come home?  Mebbe she spent the night with a friend," he said.
+
+It seemed incredible, at such a moment, that he could still be hopeful.
+
+"No, she's gone, I tell you, she's lost, we'll never lay eyes on her
+again.  My God, I never thought she'd come to this, but I might have
+guessed it.  Lise! Lise! To think it's my Lise!"
+
+Hannah's voice echoed pitifully through the silence of the flat.  So
+appealing, so heartbroken was the cry one might have thought that Lise,
+wherever she was, would have heard it.  Edward was dazed by the shock,
+his lower lip quivered and fell.  He walked over to Hannah's chair and
+put his hand on her shoulder.
+
+"There, there, mother," he pleaded.  "If she's gone, we'll find her,
+we'll bring her back to you."
+
+Hannah shook her head.  She pushed back her chair abruptly and going over
+to the stove took the fork from Janet's hand and put the steak on the
+dish.
+
+"Go in there and set down, Edward," she said.  "I guess we've got to have
+breakfast just the same, whether she's gone or not."
+
+It was terrible to see Hannah, with that look on her face, going about
+her tasks automatically.  And Edward, too, seemed suddenly to have become
+aged and broken; his trust in the world, so amazingly preserved through
+many vicissitudes, shattered at last.  He spilled his coffee when he
+tried to drink, and presently he got up and wandered about the room,
+searching for his overcoat.  It was Janet who found it and helped him on
+with it.  He tried to say something, but failing, departed heavily for
+the mill.  Janet began to remove the dishes from the table.
+
+"You've got to eat something, too, before you go to work," said Hannah.
+
+"I've had all I want," Janet replied.
+
+Hannah followed her into the kitchen.  The scarcely touched food was laid
+aside, the coffee-pot emptied, Hannah put the cups in the basin in the
+sink and let the water run.  She turned to Janet and seized her hands
+convulsively.
+
+"Let me do this, mother," said Janet.  She knew her mother was thinking
+of the newly-found joy that Lise's disgrace had marred, but she released
+her hands, gently, and took the mop from the nail on which it hung.
+
+"You sit down, mother," she said.
+
+Hannah would not.  They finished the dishes together in silence while the
+light of the new day stole in through the windows.  Janet went into her
+room, set it in order, made up the bed, put on her coat and hat and
+rubbers.  Then she returned to Hannah, who seized her.
+
+"It ain't going to spoil your happiness?"
+
+But Janet could not answer.  She kissed her mother, and went out, down
+the stairs into the street.  The day was sharp and cold and bracing, and
+out of an azure sky the sun shone with dazzling brightness on the snow,
+which the west wind was whirling into little eddies of white smoke,
+leaving on the drifts delicate scalloped designs like those printed by
+waves on the sands of the sea.  They seemed to Janet that morning
+hatefully beautiful.  In front of his tin shop, whistling cheerfully and
+labouring energetically with a shovel to clean his sidewalk, was Johnny
+Tiernan, the tip of his pointed nose made very red by the wind.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Bumpus," he said.  "Now, if you'd only waited awhile,
+I'd have had it as clean as a parlour.  It's fine weather for coal
+bills."
+
+She halted.
+
+"Can I see you a moment, Mr. Tiernan?"
+
+Johnny looked at her.
+
+"Why sure," he said.  Leaning his shovel against the wall, he gallantly
+opened the door that she might pass in before him and then led the way to
+the back of the shop where the stove was glowing hospitably.  He placed a
+chair for her.  "Now what can I be doing to serve you?" he asked.
+
+"It's about my sister," said Janet.
+
+"Miss Lise?"
+
+"I thought you might know what man she's been going with lately," said
+Janet.
+
+Mr. Tiernan had often wondered how much Janet knew about her sister.  In
+spite of a momentary embarrassment most unusual in him, the courage of
+her question made a strong appeal, and his quick sympathies suspected the
+tragedy behind her apparent calmness.  He met her magnificently.
+
+"Why," he said, "I have seen Miss Lise with a fellow named Duval--Howard
+Duval--when he's been in town.  He travels for a Boston shoe house,
+Humphrey and Gillmount."
+
+"I'm afraid Lise has gone away with him," said Janet.  "I thought you
+might be able to find out something about him, and--whether any one had
+seen them.  She left home yesterday morning."
+
+For an instant Mr. Tiernan stood silent before her, his legs apart, his
+fingers running through his bristly hair.
+
+"Well, ye did right to come straight to me, Miss Janet.  It's me that can
+find out, if anybody can, and it's glad I am to help you.  Just you stay
+here--make yourself at home while I run down and see some of the boys.
+I'll not be long--and don't be afraid I'll let on about it."
+
+He seized his overcoat and departed.  Presently the sun, glinting on the
+sheets of tin, started Janet's glance straying around the shop, noting
+its disorderly details, the heaped-up stovepipes, the littered work-bench
+with the shears lying across the vise.  Once she thought of Ditmar
+arriving at the office and wondering what had happened to her....  The
+sound of a bell made her jump.  Mr. Tiernan had returned.
+
+"She's gone with him," said Janet, not as a question, but as one stating
+a fact.
+
+Mr. Tiernan nodded.
+
+"They took the nine-thirty-six for Boston yesterday morning.  Eddy
+Colahan was at the depot."
+
+Janet rose.  "Thank you," she said simply.
+
+"What are you going to do?" he asked.
+
+"I'm going to Boston," she answered.  "I'm going to find out where she
+is."
+
+"Then it's me that's going with you," he announced.
+
+"Oh no, Mr. Tiernan!" she protested.  "I couldn't let you do that."
+
+"And why not?" he demanded.  "I've got a little business there myself.
+I'm proud to go with you.  It's your sister you want, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, what would you be doing by yourself--a young lady?  How will you
+find your sister?"
+
+"Do you think you can find her?"
+
+"Sure I can find her," he proclaimed, confidently.  He had evidently made
+up his mind that casual treatment was what the affair demanded.  "Haven't
+I good friends in Boston?"  By friendship he swayed his world: nor was he
+completely unknown--though he did not say so--to certain influential
+members of his race of the Boston police department.  Pulling out a large
+nickel watch and observing that they had just time to catch the train, he
+locked up his shop, and they set out together for the station.  Mr.
+Tiernan led the way, for the path was narrow.  The dry snow squeaked
+under his feet.
+
+After escorting her to a seat on the train, he tactfully retired to the
+smoking car, not to rejoin her until they were on the trestle spanning
+the Charles River by the North Station.  All the way to Boston she had
+sat gazing out of the window at the blinding whiteness of the fields,
+incapable of rousing herself to the necessity of thought, to a degree of
+feeling commensurate with the situation.  She did not know what she would
+say to Lise if she should find her; and in spite of Mr. Tiernan's
+expressed confidence, the chances of success seemed remote.  When the
+train began to thread the crowded suburbs, the city, spreading out over
+its hills, instead of thrilling her, as yesterday, with a sense of
+dignity and power, of opportunity and emancipation, seemed a labyrinth
+with many warrens where vice and crime and sorrow could hide.  In front
+of the station the traffic was already crushing the snow into filth.
+They passed the spot where, the night before, the carriage had stopped,
+where Ditmar had bidden her good-bye.  Something stirred within her,
+became a shooting pain....  She asked Mr. Tiernan what he intended to do.
+
+"I'm going right after the man, if he's here in the city," he told her.
+And they boarded a street car, which almost immediately shot into the
+darkness of the subway.  Emerging at Scollay Square, and walking a few
+blocks, they came to a window where guns, revolvers, and fishing tackle
+were displayed, and on which was painted the name, "Timothy Mulally."
+Mr. Tiernan entered.
+
+"Is Tim in?" he inquired of one of the clerks, who nodded his head
+towards the rear of the store, where a middle-aged, grey-haired Irishman
+was seated at a desk under a drop light.
+
+"Is it you, Johnny?" he exclaimed, looking up.
+
+"It's meself," said Mr. Tiernan.  "And this is Miss Bumpus, a young lady
+friend of mine from Hampton."
+
+Mr. Mulally rose and bowed.
+
+"How do ye do, ma'am," he said.
+
+"I've got a little business to do for her," Mr. Tiernan continued.  "I
+thought you might offer her a chair and let her stay here, quiet, while I
+was gone."
+
+"With pleasure, ma'am," Mr. Mulally replied, pulling forward a chair with
+alacrity.  "Just sit there comfortable--no one will disturb ye."
+
+When, in the course of half an hour, Mr. Tiernan returned, there was a
+grim yet triumphant look in his little blue eyes, but it was not until
+Janet had thanked Mr. Mulally for his hospitality and they had reached
+the sidewalk that he announced the result of his quest.
+
+"Well, I caught him.  It's lucky we came when we did--he was just going
+out on the road again, up to Maine.  I know where Miss Lise is."
+
+"He told you!" exclaimed Janet.
+
+"He told me indeed, but it wasn't any joy to him.  He was all for
+bluffing at first.  It's easy to scare the likes of him.  He was as white
+as his collar before I was done with him.  He knows who I am, all right
+he's heard of me in Hampton," Mr. Tiernan added, with a pardonable touch
+of pride.
+
+"What did you say?" inquired Janet, curiously.
+
+"Say?" repeated Mr. Tiernan.  "It's not much I had to say, Miss Janet.  I
+was all ready to go to Mr. Gillmount, his boss.  I'm guessing he won't
+take much pleasure on this trip."
+
+She asked for no more details.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Once more Janet and Mr. Tiernan descended into the subway, taking a car
+going to the south and west, which finally came out of the tunnel into a
+broad avenue lined with shabby shops, hotels and saloons, and long rows
+of boarding--and rooming-houses.  They alighted at a certain corner,
+walked a little way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan
+scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a
+basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps.  Climbing these, he
+pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed
+vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; the door was
+cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a woman in
+a loose wrapper, with an untidy mass of bleached hair and a puffy face
+like a fungus grown in darkness.
+
+"I want to see Miss Lise Bumpus," Mr. Tiernan demanded.
+
+"You've got the wrong place.  There ain't no one of that name here," said
+the woman.
+
+"There ain't!  All right," he insisted aggressively, pushing open the
+door in spite of her.  "If you don't let this young lady see her quick,
+there's trouble coming to you."
+
+"Who are you?" asked the woman, impudently, yet showing signs of fear.
+
+"Never mind who I am," Mr. Tiernan declared.  "I know all about you, and
+I know all about Duval.  If you don't want any trouble you won't make
+any, and you'll take this young lady to her sister.  I'll wait here for
+you, Miss Janet," he added.
+
+"I don't know nothing about her--she rented my room that's all I know,"
+the woman replied sullenly.  "If you mean that couple that came here
+yesterday--"
+
+She turned and led the way upstairs, mounting slowly, and Janet followed,
+nauseated and almost overcome by the foul odours of dead cigarette smoke
+which, mingling with the smell of cooking cabbage rising from below,
+seemed the very essence and reek of hitherto unimagined evil.  A terror
+seized her such as she had never known before, an almost overwhelming
+impulse to turn and regain the air and sunlight of the day.  In the dark
+hallway of the second story the woman knocked at the door of a front
+room.
+
+"She's in there, unless she's gone out."  And indeed a voice was heard
+petulantly demanding what was wanted--Lise's voice!  Janet hesitated, her
+hand on the knob, her body fallen against the panels.  Then, as she
+pushed open the door, the smell of cigarette smoke grew stronger, and she
+found herself in a large bedroom, the details of which were instantly
+photographed on her mind--the dingy claret-red walls, the crayon over the
+mantel of a buxom lady in a decollete costume of the '90's, the outspread
+fan concealing the fireplace, the soiled lace curtains.  The bed was
+unmade, and on the table beside two empty beer bottles and glasses and
+the remains of a box of candy--suggestive of a Sunday purchase at a drug
+store--she recognized Lise's vanity case.  The effect of all this,
+integrated at a glance, was a paralyzing horror.  Janet could not speak.
+She remained gazing at Lise, who paid no attention to her entrance, but
+stood with her back turned before an old-fashioned bureau with a marble
+top and raised sides.  She was dressed, and engaged in adjusting her hat.
+It was not until Janet pronounced her name that she turned swiftly.
+
+"You!" she exclaimed.  "What the--what brought you here?"
+
+"Oh, Lise!" Janet repeated.
+
+"How did you get here?" Lise demanded, coming toward her.  "Who told you
+where I was?  What business have you got sleuthing 'round after me like
+this?"
+
+For a moment Janet was speechless once more, astounded that Lise could
+preserve her effrontery in such an atmosphere, could be insensible to the
+evils lurking in this house--evils so real to Janet that she seemed
+actually to feel them brushing against her.
+
+"Lise, come away from here," she pleaded, "come home with me!"
+
+"Home!" said Lise, defiantly, and laughed.  "What do you take me for?
+Why would I be going home when I've been trying to break away for two
+years?  I ain't so dippy as that--not me!  Go home like a good little
+girl and march back to the Bagatelle and ask 'em to give me another show
+standing behind a counter all day.  Nix!  No home sweet home for me!  I'm
+all for easy street when it comes to a home like that."
+
+Heartless, terrific as the repudiation was, it struck a self-convicting,
+almost sympathetic note in Janet.  She herself had revolted against the
+monotony and sordidness of that existence  She herself !  She dared not
+complete the thought, now.
+
+"But this!" she exclaimed.
+
+"What's the matter with it?" Lise demanded.  "It ain't Commonwealth
+Avenue, but it's got Fillmore Street beat a mile.  There ain't no
+whistles hereto get you out of bed at six a.m., for one thing.  There
+ain't no geezers, like Walters, to nag you 'round all day long.  What's
+the matter with it?"
+
+Something in Lise's voice roused Janet's spirit to battle.
+
+"What's the matter with it?" she cried.  "It's hell--that's the matter
+with it.  Can't you see it?  Can't you feel it?  You don't know what it
+means, or you'd come home with me."
+
+"I guess I know what it means as well as you do," said Lise, sullenly.
+"We've all got to croak sometime, and I'd rather croak this way than be
+smothered up in Hampton.  I'll get a run for my money, anyway."
+
+"No, you don't know what it means," Janet repeated, "or you wouldn't talk
+like that.  Do you think this man will support you, stick to you?  He
+won't, he'll desert you, and you'll have to go on the streets."
+
+A dangerous light grew in Lise's eyes.
+
+"He's as good as any other man, he's as good as Ditmar," she said.
+"They're all the same, to girls like us."
+
+Janet's heart caught, it seemed to stop beating.  Was this a hazard on
+Lise's part, or did she speak from knowledge?  And yet what did it matter
+whether Lise knew or only suspected, if her words were true, if men were
+all alike?  Had she been a dupe as well as Lise? and was the only
+difference between them now the fact that Lise was able, without
+illusion, to see things as they were, to accept the consequences, while
+she, Janet, had beheld visions and dreamed dreams? was there any real
+choice between the luxurious hotel to which Ditmar had taken her and this
+detestable house?  Suddenly, seemingly by chance, her eyes fell on the
+box of drug-store candy from which the cheap red ribbon had been torn,
+and by some odd association of ideas it suggested and epitomized Lise's
+Sunday excursion with a mama hideous travesty on the journey of wonders
+she herself had taken.  Had that been heaven, and this of Lise's,
+hell?...  And was.  Lise's ambition to be supported in idleness and
+luxury to be condemned because she had believed her own to be higher?
+Did not both lead to destruction?  The weight that had lain on her breast
+since the siren had awakened her that morning and she had reached out and
+touched the chilled, empty sheets now grew almost unsupportable.
+
+"It's true," said Janet, "all men are the same."
+
+Lise was staring at her.
+
+"My God!" she exclaimed.  "You?"
+
+"Yes-me," cried Janet.--"And what are you going to do about it?  Stay
+here with him in this filthy place until he gets tired of you and throws
+you out on the street?  Before I'd let any man do that to me I'd kill
+him."
+
+Lise began to whimper, and suddenly buried her face in the pillow.  But a
+new emotion had begun to take possession of Janet--an emotion so strong
+as to give her an unlookedfor sense of detachment.  And the words Lise
+had spoken between her sobs at first conveyed no meaning.
+
+"I'm going to have a baby...."
+
+Lise was going to have a child!  Why hadn't she guessed it?  A child!
+Perhaps she, Janet, would have a child!  This enlightenment as to Lise's
+condition and the possibility it suggested in regard to herself brought
+with it an overwhelming sympathy which at first she fiercely resented
+then yielded to.  The bond between them, instead of snapping, had
+inexplicably strengthened.  And Lise, despite her degradation, was more
+than ever her sister!  Forgetting her repugnance to the bed, Janet sat
+down beside Lise and put an arm around her.
+
+"He said he'd marry me, he swore he was rich--and he was a spender all
+right.  And then some guy came up to me one night at Gruber's and told me
+he was married already."
+
+"What?" Janet exclaimed.
+
+"Sure!  He's got a wife and two kids here in Boston.  That was a twenty-
+one round knockout!  Maybe I didn't have something to tell him when he
+blew into Hampton last Friday!  But he said he couldn't help it--he loved
+me."  Lise sat up, seemingly finding relief in the relation of her
+wrongs, dabbing her eyes with a cheap lace handkerchief.  "Well, while
+he'd been away--this thing came.  I didn't know what was the matter at
+first, and when I found out I was scared to death, I was ready to kill
+myself.  When I told him he was scared too, and then he said he'd fix it.
+Say, I was a goat to think he'd marry me!" Lise laughed hysterically.
+
+"And then--" Janet spoke with difficulty, "and then you came down here?"
+
+"I told him he'd have to see me through, I'd start something if he
+didn't.  Say, he almost got down on his knees, right there in Gruber's!
+But he came back inside of ten seconds--he's a jollier, for sure, he was
+right there with the goods, it was because he loved me, he couldn't help
+himself, I was his cutie, and all that kind of baby talk."
+
+Lise's objective manner of speaking about her seducer amazed Janet.
+
+"Do you love him?" she asked.
+
+"Say, what is love?" Lise demanded.  "Do you ever run into it outside of
+the movies?  Do I love him?  Well, he's a good looker and a fancy
+dresser, he ain't a tight wad, and he can start a laugh every minute.  If
+he hadn't put it over on me I wouldn't have been so sore.  I don't know
+he ain't so bad.  He's weak, that's the trouble with him."
+
+This was the climax!  Lise's mental processes, her tendency to pass from
+wild despair to impersonal comment, her inability, her courtesan's
+temperament that prevented her from realizing tragedy for more than a
+moment at a time--even though the tragedy were her own--were
+incomprehensible to Janet.
+
+"Get on to this," Lise adjured her.  "When I first was acquainted with
+him he handed me a fairy tale that he was taking five thousand a year
+from Humphrey and Gillmount, he was going into the firm.  He had me
+razzle-dazzled.  He's some hypnotizes as a salesman, too, they say.
+Nothing was too good for me; I saw myself with a house on the avenue
+shopping in a limousine.  Well, he blew up, but I can't help liking him."
+
+"Liking him!" cried Janet passionately.  "I'd kill him that's what I'd
+do."
+
+Lise regarded her with unwilling admiration.
+
+"That's where you and me is different," she declared.  "I wish I was like
+that, but I ain't.  And where would I come in?  Now you're wise why I
+can't go back to Hampton.  Even if I was stuck on the burg and cryin' my
+eyes out for the Bagatelle I couldn't go back."
+
+"What are you going to do?" Janet demanded.
+
+"Well," said Lise, "he's come across--I'll say that for him.  Maybe it's
+because he's scared, but he's stuck on me, too.  When you dropped in I
+was just going down town to get a pair of patent leathers, these are all
+wore out," she explained, twisting her foot, "they ain't fit for Boston.
+And I thought of lookin' at blouses--there's a sale on I was reading
+about in the paper.  Say, it's great to be on easy street, to be able to
+stay in bed until you're good and ready to get up and go shopping, to
+gaze at the girls behind the counter and ask the price of things.  I'm
+going to Walling's and give the salesladies the ha-ha--that's what I'm
+going to do."
+
+"But--?"  Janet found words inadequate.
+
+Lise understood her.
+
+"Oh, I'm due at the doctor's this afternoon."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"The doctor's.  Don't you get me?--it's a private hospital."  Lise gave a
+slight shudder at the word, but instantly recovered her sang-froid.
+"Howard fixed it up yesterday--and they say it ain't very bad if you take
+it early."
+
+For a space Janet was too profoundly shocked to reply.
+
+"Lise!  That's a crime!" she cried.
+
+"Crime, nothing!"  retorted Lise, and immediately became indignant.
+"Say, I sometimes wonder how you could have lived all these years without
+catching on to a few things!  What do you take me for!  What'd I do with
+a baby?"
+
+What indeed!  The thought came like an avalanche, stripping away the
+veneer of beauty from the face of the world, revealing the scarred rock
+and crushed soil beneath.  This was reality!  What right had society to
+compel a child to be born to degradation and prostitution? to beget,
+perhaps, other children of suffering?  Were not she and Lise of the
+exploited, of those duped and tempted by the fair things the more
+fortunate enjoyed unscathed?  And now, for their natural cravings, their
+family must be disgraced, they must pay the penalty of outcasts!  Neither
+Lise nor she had had a chance.  She saw that, now.  The scorching
+revelation of life's injustice lighted within her the fires of anarchy
+and revenge.  Lise, other women might submit tamely to be crushed, might
+be lulled and drugged by bribes: she would not.  A wild desire seized her
+to get back to Hampton.
+
+"Give me the address of the hospital," she said.
+
+"Come off!" cried Lise, in angry bravado.  "Do you think I'm going to let
+you butt into this?  I guess you've got enough to do to look out for your
+own business."
+
+Janet produced a pencil from her bag, and going to the table tore off a
+piece of the paper in which had been wrapped the candy box.
+
+"Give me the address," she insisted.
+
+"Say, what are you going to do?"
+
+"I want to know where you are, in case anything happens to you."
+
+"Anything happens!  What do you mean?"  Janet's words had frightened
+Lise, the withdrawal of Janet's opposition bewildered her.  But above
+all, she was cowed by the sudden change in Janet herself, by the attitude
+of steely determination eloquent of an animus persons of Lise's type are
+incapable of feeling, and which to them is therefore incomprehensible.
+"Nothing's going to happen to me," she whined.  "The place is all right--
+he'd be scared to send me there if it wasn't.  It costs something, too.
+Say, you ain't going to tell 'em at home?" she cried with a fresh access
+of alarm.
+
+"If you do as I say, I won't tell anybody," Janet replied, in that odd,
+impersonal tone her voice had acquired.  "You must write me as soon--as
+soon as it is over.  Do you understand?"
+
+"Honest to God I will," Lise assured her.
+
+"And you mustn't come back to a house like this."
+
+"Where'll I go?" Lise asked.
+
+"I don't know.  We'll find out when the time comes," said Janet,
+significantly.
+
+"You've seen him!" Lise exclaimed.
+
+"No," said Janet, "and I don't want to see him unless I have to.  Mr.
+Tiernan has seen him.  Mr. Tiernan is downstairs now, waiting for me."
+
+"Johnny Tiernan!  Is Johnny Tiernan downstairs?"
+
+Janet wrote the address, and thrust the slip of paper in her bag.
+
+"Good-bye, Lise," she said.  "I'll come down again I'll come down
+whenever you want me."  Lise suddenly seized her and clung to her,
+sobbing.  For a while Janet submitted, and then, kissing her, gently
+detached herself.  She felt, indeed, pity for Lise, but something within
+her seemed to have hardened--something that pity could not melt,
+possessing her and thrusting heron to action.  She knew not what action.
+So strong was this thing that it overcame and drove off the evil spirits
+of that darkened house as she descended the stairs to join Mr. Tiernan,
+who opened the door for her to pass out.  Once in the street, she
+breathed deeply of the sunlit air.  Nor did she observe Mr. Tiernan's
+glance of comprehension....  When they arrived at the North Station he
+said:--
+
+"You'll be wanting a bite of dinner, Miss Janet," and as she shook her
+head he did not press her to eat.  He told her that a train for Hampton
+left in ten minutes.  "I think I'll stay in Boston the rest of the day,
+as long as I'm here," he added.
+
+She remembered that she had not thanked him, she took his hand, but he
+cut her short.
+
+"It's glad I was to help you," he assured her.  "And if there's anything
+more I can do, Miss Janet, you'll be letting me know--you'll call on
+Johnny Tiernan, won't you?"
+
+He left her at the gate.  He had intruded with no advice, he had offered
+no comment that she had come downstairs alone, without Lise.  His
+confidence in her seemed never to have wavered.  He had respected,
+perhaps partly imagined her feelings, and in spite of these now a sense
+of gratitude to him stole over her, mitigating the intensity of their
+bitterness.  Mr. Tiernan alone seemed stable in a chaotic world.  He was
+a man.
+
+No sooner was she in the train, however, than she forgot Mr. Tiernan
+utterly.  Up to the present the mental process of dwelling upon her own
+experience of the last three months had been unbearable, but now she was
+able to take a fearful satisfaction in the evolving of parallels between
+her case and Lise's.  Despite the fact that the memories she had
+cherished were now become hideous things, she sought to drag them forth
+and compare them, ruthlessly, with what must have been the treasures of
+Lise.  Were her own any less tawdry?  Only she, Janet, had been the
+greater fool of the two, the greater dupe because she had allowed herself
+to dream, to believe that what she had done had been for love, for light!
+because she had not listened to the warning voice within her!  It had
+always been on the little, unpremeditated acts of Ditmar that she had
+loved to linger, and now, in the light of Lise's testimony, of Lise's
+experience, she saw them all as false.  It seemed incredible, now, that
+she had ever deceived herself into thinking that Ditmar meant to marry
+her, that he loved her enough to make her his wife.  Nor was it necessary
+to summon and marshal incidents to support this view, they came of
+themselves, crowding one another, a cumulative and appalling array of
+evidence, before which she stood bitterly amazed at her former stupidity.
+And in the events of yesterday, which she pitilessly reviewed, she beheld
+a deliberate and prearranged plan for her betrayal.  Had he not
+telephoned to Boston for the rooms, rehearsed in his own mind every
+detail of what had subsequently happened?  Was there any essential
+difference between the methods of Ditmar and Duval?  Both were skilled in
+the same art, and Ditmar was the cleverer of the two.  It had only needed
+her meeting with Lise, in that house, to reveal how he had betrayed her
+faith and her love, sullied and besmirched them.  And then came the odd
+reflection,--how strange that that same Sunday had been so fateful for
+herself and Lise!
+
+The agony of these thoughts was mitigated by the scorehing hatred that
+had replaced her love, the desire for retaliation, revenge.
+Occasionally, however, that stream of consciousness was broken by the
+recollection of what she had permitted and even advised her sister to do;
+and though the idea of the place to which Lise was going sickened her,
+though she achieved a certain objective amazement at the transformation
+in herself enabling her to endorse such a course, she was glad of having
+endorsed it, she rejoiced that Lise's child would not be born into a
+world that had seemed--so falsely--fair and sweet, and in reality was
+black and detestable.  Her acceptance of the act--for Lise--was a
+function of the hatred consuming her, a hatred which, growing in bigness,
+had made Ditmar merely the personification of that world.  From time to
+time her hands clenched, her brow furrowed, powerful waves of heat ran
+through her, the craving for action became so intense she could scarcely
+refrain from rising in her seat.
+
+By some odd whim of the weather the wind had backed around into the east,
+gathering the clouds once more.  The brilliancy of the morning had given
+place to greyness, the high slits of windows seemed dirtier than ever as
+the train pulled into the station at Hampton, shrouded in Gothic gloom.
+As she left the car Janet was aware of the presence on the platform of an
+unusual number of people; she wondered vaguely, as she pushed her way
+through them, why they were there, what they were talking about?  One
+determination possessed her, to go to the Chippering Mill, to Ditmar.
+Emerging from the street, she began to walk rapidly, the change from
+inaction to exercise bringing a certain relief, starting the working of
+her mind, arousing in her a realization of the necessity of being
+prepared for the meeting.  Therefore, instead of turning at Faber Street,
+she crossed it.  But at the corner of the Common she halted, her glance
+drawn by a dark mass of people filling the end of Hawthorne Street, where
+it was blocked by the brick-coloured facade of the Clarendon Mill.  In
+the middle distance men and boys were running to join this crowd.  A
+girl, evidently an Irish-American mill hand of the higher paid sort,
+hurried toward her from the direction of the mill itself.  Janet accosted
+her.
+
+"It's the strike," she explained excitedly, evidently surprised at the
+question.  "The Polaks and the Dagoes and a lot of other foreigners quit
+when they got their envelopes--stopped their looms and started through
+the mill, and when they came into our room I left.  I didn't want no
+trouble with 'em.  It's the fifty-four hour law--their pay's cut two
+hours.  You've heard about it, I guess."
+
+Janet nodded.
+
+"They had a big mass meeting last night in Maxwell Hall," the girl
+continued, "the foreigners--not the skilled workers.  And they voted to
+strike.  They tell me they're walking out over at the Patuxent, too."
+
+"And the Chippering?" asked Janet, eagerly.
+
+"I don't know--I guess it'll spread to all of 'em, the way these
+foreigners are going on--they're crazy.  But say," the girl added, "it
+ain't right to cut our pay, either, is it?  They never done it two years
+ago when the law came down to fifty-six."
+
+Janet did not wait to reply.  While listening to this explanation,
+excitement had been growing in her again, and some fearful, overpowering
+force of attraction emanating from that swarm in the distance drew her
+until she yielded, fairly running past the rows of Italian tenements in
+their strange setting of snow, not to pause until she reached the fruit
+shop where she and Eda had eaten the olives.  Now she was on the
+outskirts of the crowd that packed itself against the gates of the
+Clarendon.  It spread over the width of East Street, growing larger every
+minute, until presently she was hemmed in.  Here and there hoarse shouts
+of approval and cheers arose in response to invisible orators haranging
+their audiences in weird, foreign tongues; tiny American flags were
+waved; and suddenly, in one of those unforeseen and incomprehensible
+movements to which mobs are subject, a trolley car standing at the end of
+the Hawthorne Street track was surrounded, the desperate clanging of its
+bell keeping pace with the beating of Janet's heart.  A dark Sicilian,
+holding aloft the green, red, and white flag of Italy, leaped on the rear
+platform and began to speak, the Slav conductor regarding him stupidly,
+pulling the bellcord the while.  Three or four policemen fought their way
+to the spot, striving to clear the tracks, bewildered and impotent in the
+face of the alien horde momentarily growing more and more conscious of
+power.
+
+Janet pushed her way deeper and deeper into the crowd.  She wanted to
+savour to the full its wrath and danger, to surrender herself to be
+played upon by these sallow, stubbybearded exhorters, whose menacing
+tones and passionate gestures made a grateful appeal, whose wild, musical
+words, just because they were uncomprehended, aroused in her dim
+suggestions of a race-experience not her own, but in which she was now
+somehow summoned to share.  That these were the intruders whom she, as a
+native American, had once resented and despised did not occur to her.
+The racial sense so strong in her was drowned in a sense of fellowship.
+Their anger seemed to embody and express, as nothing else could have
+done, the revolt that had been rising, rising within her soul; and the
+babel to which she listened was not a confusion of tongues, but one voice
+lifted up to proclaim the wrongs of all the duped, of all the exploited
+and oppressed.  She was fused with them, their cause was her cause, their
+betrayers her betrayers.
+
+Suddenly was heard the cry for which she had been tensely but
+unconsciously awaiting.  Another cry like that had rung out in another
+mob across the seas more than a century before.  "Ala Bastille!" became
+"To the Chippering!"  Some man shouted it out in shrill English, hundreds
+repeated it; the Sicilian leaped from the trolley car, and his path could
+be followed by the agitated progress of the alien banner he bore.  "To
+the Chippering!"  It rang in Janet's ears like a call to battle.  Was she
+shouting it, too?  A galvanic thrill ran through the crowd, an impulse
+that turned their faces and started their steps down East Street toward
+the canal, and Janet was irresistibly carried along.  Nay, it seemed as
+if the force that second by second gained momentum was in her, that she
+herself had released and was guiding it!  Her feet were wet as she
+ploughed through the trampled snow, but she gave no thought to that.  The
+odour of humanity was in her nostrils.  On the left a gaunt Jew pressed
+against her, on the right a solid Ruthenian woman, one hand clasping her
+shawl, the other holding aloft a miniature emblem of New World liberty.
+Her eyes were fixed on the grey skies, and from time to time her lips
+were parted in some strange, ancestral chant that could be heard above
+the shouting.  All about Janet were dark, awakening faces....
+
+It chanced that an American, a college graduate, stood gazing down from a
+point of vantage upon this scene.  He was ignorant of anthropology,
+psychology, and the phenomena of environment; but bits of "knowledge"--
+which he embodied in a newspaper article composed that evening stuck wax-
+like in his brain.  Not thus, he deplored, was the Anglo-Saxon wont to
+conduct his rebellions.  These Czechs and Slavs, Hebrews and Latins and
+Huns might have appropriately been clad in the skins worn by the hordes
+of Attila.  Had they not been drawn hither by the renown of the
+Republic's wealth?  And how essentially did they differ from those other
+barbarians before whose bewildered, lustful gaze had risen the glittering
+palaces on the hills of the Tiber?  The spoils of Rome!  The spoils of
+America!  They appeared to him ferocious, atavistic beasts as they broke
+into the lumberyard beneath his window to tear the cord-wood from the
+piles and rush out again, armed with billets....
+
+Janet, in the main stream sweeping irresistibly down the middle of the
+street, was carried beyond the lumberyard into the narrow roadway beside
+the canal--presently to find herself packed in the congested mass in
+front of the bridge that led to the gates of the Chippering Mill.  Across
+the water, above the angry hum of human voices could be heard the
+whirring of the looms, rousing the mob to a higher pitch of fury.  The
+halt was for a moment only.  The bridge rocked beneath the weight of
+their charge, they battered at the great gates, they ran along the snow-
+filled tracks by the wall of the mill.  Some, in a frenzy of passion,
+hurled their logs against the windows; others paused, seemingly to
+measure the distance and force of the stroke, thus lending to their act a
+more terrible and deliberate significance.  A shout of triumph announced
+that the gates, like a broken dam, had given way, and the torrent poured
+in between the posts, flooding the yard, pressing up the towered
+stairways and spreading through the compartments of the mill.  More
+ominous than the tumult seemed the comparative silence that followed this
+absorption of the angry spirits of the mob.  Little by little, as the
+power was shut off, the antiphonal throbbing of the looms was stilled.
+Pinioned against the parapet above the canal--almost on that very spot
+where, the first evening, she had met Ditmar--Janet awaited her chance to
+cross.  Every crashing window, every resounding blow on the panels gave
+her a fierce throb of joy.  She had not expected the gates to yield--her
+father must have insecurely fastened them.  Gaining the farther side of
+the canal, she perceived him flattened against the wall of the gatehouse
+shaking his fist in the faces of the intruders, who rushed past him
+unheeding.  His look arrested her.  His face was livid, his eyes were red
+with anger, he stood transformed by a passion she had not believed him to
+possess.  She had indeed heard him give vent to a mitigated indignation
+against foreigners in general, but now the old-school Americanism in
+which he had been bred, the Americanism of individual rights, of respect
+for the convention of property, had suddenly sprung into flame.  He was
+ready to fight for it, to die for it.  The curses he hurled at these
+people sounded blasphemous in Janet's ears.
+
+"Father!" she cried.  "Father!"
+
+He looked at her uncomprehendingly, seemingly failing to recognize her.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he demanded, seizing her and attempting to
+draw her to the wall beside him.  But she resisted.  There sprang from
+her lips an unpremeditated question: "Where is Mr. Ditmar?"  She was,
+indeed, amazed at having spoken it.
+
+"I don't know," Edward replied distractedly.  "We've been looking for him
+everywhere.  My God, to think that this should happen with me at the
+gates!" he lamented.  "Go home, Janet.  You can't tell what'll happen,
+what these fiends will do, you may get hurt.  You've got no business
+here."  Catching sight of a belated and breathless policeman, he turned
+from her in desperation.  "Get 'em out!  Far God's sake, can't you get
+'em out before they ruin the machines?"
+
+But Janet waited no longer.  Pushing her way frantically through the
+people filling the yard she climbed the tower stairs and made her way
+into one of the spinning rooms.  The frames were stilled, the overseer
+and second hands, thrust aside, looked on helplessly while the intruders
+harangued, cajoled or threatened the operatives, some of whom were cowed
+and already departing; others, sullen and resentful, remained standing in
+the aisles; and still others seemed to have caught the contagion of the
+strike.  Suddenly, with reverberating strokes, the mill bells rang out,
+the electric gongs chattered, the siren screeched, drowning the voices.
+Janet did not pause, but hurried from room to room until, in passing
+through an open doorway in the weaving department she ran into Mr.
+Caldwell.  He halted a moment, in surprise at finding her there, calling
+her by name.  She clung to his sleeve, and again she asked the question:--
+
+"Where's Mr. Ditmar?"
+
+Caldwell shook his head.  His answer was the same as Edward's.  "I don't
+know," he shouted excitedly above the noise.  "We've got to get this mob
+out before they do any damage."
+
+He tore himself away, she saw him expostulating with the overseer, and
+then she went on.  These tower stairs, she remembered, led to a yard
+communicating by a little gate with the office entrance.  The door of the
+vestibule was closed, but the watchman, Simmons, recognizing her,
+permitted her to enter.  The offices were deserted, silent, for the bells
+and the siren had ceased their clamour; the stenographers and clerks had
+gone.  The short day was drawing to a close, shadows were gathering in
+the corners of Ditmar's room as she reached the threshold and gazed about
+her at the objects there so poignantly familiar.  She took off her coat.
+His desk was littered with books and papers, and she started,
+mechanically, to set it in order, replacing the schedule books on the
+shelves, sorting out the letters and putting them in the basket.  She
+could not herself have told why she should take up again these trivial
+tasks as though no cataclysmic events had intervened to divide forever
+the world of yesterday from that of to-morrow.  With a movement
+suggestive of tenderness she was picking up Ditmar's pen to set it in the
+glass rack when her ear caught the sound of voices, and she stood
+transfixed, listening intently.  There were footsteps in the corridor,
+the voices came nearer; one, loud and angered, she detected above the
+others.  It was Ditmar's!  Nothing had happened to him!  Dropping the
+pen, she went over to the window, staring out over the grey waters,
+trembling so violently that she could scarcely stand.
+
+She did not look around when they entered the room Ditmar, Caldwell,
+Orcutt, and evidently a few watchmen and overseers.  Some one turned on
+the electric switch, darkening the scene without.  Ditmar continued to
+speak in vehement tones of uncontrolled rage.
+
+"Why in hell weren't those gates bolted tight?" he demanded.  "That's
+what I want to know!  There was plenty of time after they turned the
+corner of East Street.  You might have guessed what they would do.  But
+instead of that you let 'em into the mill to shut off the power and
+intimidate our own people."  He called the strikers an unprintable name,
+and though Janet stood, with her back turned, directly before him, he
+gave no sign of being aware of her presence.
+
+"It wasn't the gatekeeper's fault," she heard Orcutt reply in a tone
+quivering with excitement and apprehension.  "They really didn't give us
+a chance--that's the truth.  They were down Canal Street and over the
+bridge before we knew it."
+
+"It's just as I've said a hundred times," Ditmar retorted.  "I can't
+afford to leave this mill a minute, I can't trust anybody --" and he
+broke out in another tirade against the intruders.  "By God, I'll fix 'em
+for this--I'll crush 'em.  And if any operatives try to walkout here I'll
+see that they starve before they get back--after all I've done for 'em,
+kept the mill going in slack times just to give 'em work.  If they desert
+me now, when I've got this Bradlaugh order on my hands--" Speech became
+an inadequate expression of his feelings, and suddenly his eye fell on
+Janet.  She had turned, but her look made no impression on him.  "Call up
+the Chief of Police," he said.
+
+Automatically she obeyed, getting the connection and handing him the
+receiver, standing by while he denounced the incompetence of the
+department for permitting the mob to gather in East Street and demanded
+deputies.  The veins of his forehead were swollen as he cut short the
+explanations of the official and asked for the City Hall.  In making an
+appointment with the Mayor he reflected on the management of the city
+government.  And when Janet by his command obtained the Boston office, he
+gave the mill treasurer a heated account of the afternoon's occurrences,
+explaining circumstantially how, in his absence at a conference in the
+Patuxent Mill, the mob had gathered in East Street and attacked the
+Chippering; and he urged the treasurer to waste no time in obtaining a
+force of detectives, in securing in Boston and New York all the
+operatives that could be hired, in order to break the impending strike.
+Save for this untimely and unreasonable revolt he was bent on stamping
+out, for Ditmar the world to-day was precisely the same world it had been
+the day before.  It seemed incredible to Janet that he could so regard
+it, could still be blind to the fact that these workers whom he was
+determined to starve and crush if they dared to upset his plans and
+oppose his will were human beings with wills and passions and grievances
+of their own.  Until to-day her eyes had been sealed.  In agony they had
+been opened to the panorama of sorrow and suffering, of passion and evil;
+and what she beheld now as life was a vast and terrible cruelty.  She had
+needed only this final proof to be convinced that in his eyes she also
+was but one of those brought into the world to minister to his pleasure
+and profit.  He had taken from her, as his weed, the most precious thing
+a woman has to give, and now that she was here again at his side, by some
+impulse incomprehensible to herself--in spite of the wrong he had done
+her!--had sought him out in danger, he had no thought of her, no word for
+her, no use save a menial one: he cared nothing for any help she might be
+able to give, he had no perception of the new light which had broken
+within her soul....  The telephoning seemed interminable, yet she waited
+with a strange patience while he talked with Mr. George Chippering and
+two of the most influential directors.  These conversations had covered
+the space of an hour or more.  And perhaps as a result of self-
+suggestion, of his repeated assurances to Mr. Semple, to Mr. Chippering,
+and the directors of his ability to control the situation, Ditmar's
+habitual self-confidence was gradually restored.  And when at last he
+hung up the instrument and turned to her, though still furious against
+the strikers, his voice betrayed the joy of battle, the assurance of
+victory.
+
+"They can't bluff me, they'll have to guess again.  It's that damned
+Holster--he hasn't any guts--he'd give in to 'em right now if I'd let
+him.  It's the limit the way he turned the Clarendon over to them.  I'll
+show him how to put a crimp in 'em if they don't turn up here to-morrow
+morning."
+
+He was so magnificently sure of her sympathy!  She did, not reply, but
+picked up her coat from the chair where she had laid it.
+
+"Where are you going?"  he demanded.  And she replied laconically,
+"Home."
+
+"Wait a minute," he said, rising and taking a step toward her.
+
+"You have an appointment with the Mayor," she reminded him.
+
+"I know," he said, glancing at the clock over the door.  " Where have you
+been? --where were you this morning?  I was worried about you, I--I was
+afraid you might be sick."
+
+"Were you?" she said.  "I'm all right.  I had business in Boston."
+
+"Why didn't you telephone me?  In Boston?" he repeated.
+
+She nodded.  He started forward again, but she avoided him.
+
+"What's the matter?" he cried.  "I've been worried about you all day--
+until this damned strike broke loose.  I was afraid something had
+happened."
+
+"You might have asked my father," she said.
+
+"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!"
+
+His desire for her mounted as his conviction grew more acute that
+something had happened to disturb a relationship which, he had
+congratulated himself, after many vicissitudes and anxieties had at last
+been established.  He was conscious, however, of irritation because this
+whimsical and unanticipated grievance of hers should have developed at
+the moment when the caprice of his operatives threatened to interfere
+with his cherished plans--for Ditmar measured the inconsistencies of
+humanity by the yardstick of his desires.  Her question as to why he had
+not made inquiries of her father added a new element to his disquietude.
+As he stood thus, worried, exasperated, and perplexed, the fact that
+there was in her attitude something ominous, dangerous, was slow to dawn
+on him.  His faculties were wholly unprepared for the blow she struck
+him.
+
+"I hate you!" she said.  She did not raise her voice, but the deliberate,
+concentrated conviction she put into the sentence gave it the dynamic
+quality of a bullet.  And save for the impact of it--before which he
+physically recoiled--its import was momentarily without meaning.
+
+"What?" he exclaimed, stupidly.
+
+"I might have known you never meant to marry me," she went on.  Her hands
+were busy with the buttons of her coat.
+
+"All you want is to use me, to enjoy me and turn me out when you get
+tired of me--the way you've done with other women.  It's just the same
+with these mill hands, they're not human beings to you, they're--they're
+cattle.  If they don't do as you like, you turn them out; you say they
+can starve for all you care."
+
+"For God's sake, what do you mean?" he demanded.  "What have I done to
+you, Janet?  I love you, I need you!"
+
+"Love me!" she repeated.  "I know how men of your sort love--I've seen
+it--I know.  As long as I give you what you want and don't bother you,
+you love me.  And I know how these workers feel," she cried, with sudden,
+passionate vehemence.  "I never knew before, but I know now.  I've been
+with them, I marched up here with them from the Clarendon when they
+battered in the gates and smashed your windows--and I wanted to smash
+your windows, too, to blow up your mill."
+
+"What are you saying?  You came here with the strikers?  you were with
+that mob?" asked Ditmar, astoundedly.
+
+"Yes, I was in that mob.  I belong there, with them, I tell you--I don't
+belong here, with you.  But I was a fool even then, I was afraid they'd
+hurt you, I came into the mill to find you, and you--and you you acted as
+if you'd never seen me before.  I was a fool, but I'm glad I came--I'm
+glad I had a chance to tell you this."
+
+"My God--won't you trust me?" he begged, with a tremendous effort to
+collect himself.  "You trusted me yesterday.  What's happened to change
+you?  Won't you tell me?  It's nothing I've done--I swear.  And what do
+you mean when you say you were in that mob?  I was almost crazy when I
+came back and found they'd been here in this mill--can't you understand?
+It wasn't that I didn't think of you.  I'd been worrying about you all
+day.  Look at this thing sensibly.  I love you, I can't get along without
+you--I'll marry you.  I said I would, I meant it I'll marry you just as
+soon as I can clean up this mess of a strike.  It won't take long."
+
+"Don't touch me!" she commanded, and he recoiled again.  "I'll tell you
+where I've been, if you want to know,--I've been to see my sister in--in
+a house, in Boston.  I guess you know what kind of a house I mean, you've
+been in them, you've brought women to them,--just like the man that
+brought her there.  Would you marry me now--with my sister there?  And am
+I any different from her?  You you've made me just like her."  Her voice
+had broken, now, into furious, uncontrolled weeping--to which she paid no
+heed.
+
+Ditmar was stunned; he could only stare at her.
+
+"If I have a child," she said, "I'll--I'll kill you--I'll kill myself."
+
+And before he could reply--if indeed he had been able to reply--she had
+left the office and was running down the stairs....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+What was happening to Hampton?  Some hundreds of ignorant foreigners,
+dissatisfied with the money in their pay envelopes, had marched out of
+the Clarendon Mill and attacked the Chippering and behold, the revered
+structure of American Government had quivered and tumbled down like a
+pack of cards!  Despite the feverish assurances in the Banner "extra"
+that the disturbance was merely local and temporary, solid citizens
+became panicky, vaguely apprehending the release of elemental forces
+hitherto unrecognized and unknown.  Who was to tell these solid, educated
+business men that the crazy industrial Babel they had helped to rear, and
+in which they unconsciously dwelt, was no longer the simple edifice they
+thought it? that Authority, spelled with a capital, was a thing of the
+past? that human instincts suppressed become explosives to displace the
+strata of civilization and change the face of the world? that conventions
+and institutions, laws and decrees crumble before the whirlwind of human
+passions?  that their city was not of special, but of universal
+significance?  And how were these, who still believed themselves to be
+dwelling under the old dispensation, to comprehend that environments
+change, and changing demand new and terrible Philosophies?  When night
+fell on that fateful Tuesday the voice of Syndicalism had been raised in
+a temple dedicated to ordered, Anglo-Saxon liberty--the Hampton City
+Hall.
+
+Only for a night and a day did the rebellion lack both a leader and a
+philosophy.  Meanwhile, in obedience to the unerring instinct for drama
+peculiar to great metropolitan dailies, newspaper correspondents were
+alighting from every train, interviewing officials and members of labour
+unions and mill agents: interviewing Claude Ditmar, the strongest man in
+Hampton that day.  He at least knew what ought to be done, and even
+before his siren broke the silence of the morning hours in vigorous and
+emphatic terms he had informed the Mayor and Council of their obvious
+duty.  These strikers were helots, unorganized scum; the regular unions--
+by comparison respectable--held aloof from them.  Here, in effect, was
+his argument: a strong show of force was imperative; if the police and
+deputies were inadequate, request the Governor to call out the local
+militia; but above all, waste no time, arrest the ringleaders, the
+plotters, break up all gatherings, keep the streets clear.  He demanded
+from the law protection of his property, protection for those whose right
+to continue at work was inalienable.  He was listened to with sympathy
+and respect--but nothing was done!  The world had turned upside down
+indeed if the City Government of Hampton refused to take the advice of
+the agent of the Chippering Mill!  American institutions were a failure!
+But such was the fact.  Some unnamed fear, outweighing their dread of the
+retributions of Capital, possessed these men, made them supine, derelict
+in the face of their obvious duty.
+
+By the faint grey light of that bitter January morning Ditmar made his
+way to the mill.  In Faber Street dark figures flitted silently across
+the ghostly whiteness of the snow, and gathered in groups on the corners;
+seeking to avoid these, other figures hurried along the sidewalks close
+to the buildings, to be halted, accosted, pleaded with--threatened,
+perhaps.  Picketing had already begun!  The effect of this pantomime of
+the eternal struggle for survivals which he at first beheld from a
+distance, was to exaggerate appallingly the emptiness of the wide street,
+to emphasize the absence of shoppers and vehicles; and a bluish darkness
+lurked in the stores, whose plate glass windows were frosted in quaint
+designs.  Where were the police?  It was not fear that Ditmar felt, he
+was galvanized and dominated by anger, by an overwhelming desire for
+action; physical combat would have brought him relief, and as he
+quickened his steps he itched to seize with his own hands these
+foreigners who had dared to interfere with his cherished plans, who had
+had the audacity to challenge the principles of his government which
+welcomed them to its shores.  He would have liked to wring their necks.
+His philosophy, too, was environmental.  And beneath this wrath,
+stimulating and energizing it the more, was the ache in his soul from the
+loss for which he held these enemies responsible.  Two days ago happiness
+and achievement had both been within his grasp.  The only woman--so now
+it seemed--he had ever really wanted!  What had become of her?  What
+obscure and passionate impulse had led her suddenly to defy and desert
+him, to cast in her lot with these insensate aliens?  A hundred times
+during the restless, inactive hours of a sleepless night this question
+had intruded itself in the midst of his scheming to break the strike, as
+he reviewed, word by word, act by act, that almost incomprehensible
+revolt of hers which had followed so swiftly--a final, vindictive blow of
+fate--on that other revolt of the workers.  At moments he became
+confused, unable to separate the two.  He saw her fire in that other....
+Her sister, she had said, had been disgraced; she had defied him to marry
+her in the face of that degradation--and this suddenly had sickened him.
+He had let her go.  What a fool he had been to let her go!  Had she
+herself been--!  He did not finish this thought.  Throughout the long
+night he had known, for a certainty, that this woman was a vital part of
+him, flame of his flame.  Had he never seen her he would have fought
+these strikers to their knees, but now the force of this incentive was
+doubled.  He would never yield until he had crushed them, until he had
+reconquered her.
+
+He was approaching one of the groups of strikers, and unconsciously he
+slowed his steps.  The whites of his eyes reddened.  The great coat of
+golden fur he wore gave to his aspect an added quality of formidableness.
+There were some who scattered as he drew near, and of the less timorous
+spirits that remained only a few raised dark, sullen glances to encounter
+his, which was unflinching, passionately contemptuous.  Throughout the
+countless generations that lay behind them the instinct of submission had
+played its dominant, phylogenetic role.  He was the Master.  The journey
+across the seas had not changed that.  A few shivered--not alone because
+they were thinly clad.  He walked on, slowly, past other groups, turned
+the corner of West Street, where the groups were more numerous, while the
+number of those running the gantlet had increased.  And he heard, twice
+or thrice, the word "Scab!" cried out menacingly.  His eyes grew redder
+still as he spied a policeman standing idly in a doorway.
+
+"Why in hell don't you do your duty?" he demanded.  "What do you mean by
+letting them interfere with these workers?"
+
+The man flinched.  He was apologetic.  "So long as they're peaceable, Mr.
+Ditmar--those are my orders.  I do try to keep 'em movin'."
+
+"Your orders?  You're a lot of damned cowards," Ditmar replied, and went
+on.  There were mutterings here; herded together, these slaves were
+bolder; and hunger and cold, discouragement at not being able to stop the
+flow toward the mills were having their effect.  By the frozen canal, the
+scene of the onslaught of yesterday, the crowd had grown comparatively
+thick, and at the corner of the lodginghouse row Ditmar halted a moment,
+unnoticed save by a few who nudged one another and murmured.  He gave
+them no attention, he was trying to form an estimate of the effect of the
+picketing on his own operatives.  Some came with timid steps; others,
+mostly women, fairly ran; still others were self-possessed, almost
+defiant--and such he marked.  There were those who, when the picketers
+held them by the sleeve, broke precipitately from their annoyers, and
+those who hesitated, listening with troubled faces, with feelings torn
+between dread of hunger for themselves and their children and sympathy
+with the revolt.  A small number joined the ranks of the picketers.
+Ditmar towered above these foreigners, who were mostly undersized: a
+student of human nature and civilization, free from industrial complexes,
+would from that point of vantage have had much to gather from the
+expressions coming within his view, but to Ditmar humanity was a means to
+an end.  Suddenly, from the cupolas above the battlement of the mill, the
+bells shattered the early morning air, the remnant of the workers
+hastened across the canal and through the guarded gates, which were
+instantly closed.  Ditmar was left alone among the strikers.  As he moved
+toward the bridge they made a lane for him to pass; one or two he thrust
+out of his way.  But there were mutterings, and from the sidewalk he
+heard a man curse him.
+
+Perhaps we shall understand some day that the social body, also, is
+subject to the operation of cause and effect.  It was not what an
+ingenuous orthodoxy, keeping alive the fate of the ancient city from
+which Lot fled, would call the wrath of heaven that visited Hampton,
+although a sermon on these lines was delivered from more than one of her
+pulpits on the following Sunday.  Let us surmise, rather, that a decrepit
+social system in a moment of lowered vitality becomes an easy prey to
+certain diseases which respectable communities are not supposed to have.
+The germ of a philosophy evolved in decadent Europe flies across the sea
+to prey upon a youthful and vigorous America, lodging as host wherever
+industrial strife has made congenial soil.  In four and twenty hours
+Hampton had "caught" Syndicalism.  All day Tuesday, before the true
+nature of the affection was developed, prominent citizens were outraged
+and appalled by the supineness of their municipal phagocytes.  Property,
+that sacred fabric of government, had been attacked and destroyed, law
+had been defied, and yet the City Hall, the sanctuary of American
+tradition, was turned over to the alien mob for a continuous series of
+mass meetings.  All day long that edifice, hitherto chastely familiar
+with American doctrine alone, with patriotic oratory, with perorations
+that dwelt upon the wrongs and woes of Ireland--part of our national
+propaganda--all day long that edifice rang with strange, exotic speech,
+sometimes guttural, often musical, but always impassioned, weirdly
+cadenced and intoned.  From the raised platform, in place of the shrewd,
+matter-of-fact New England politician alive to the vote--getting powers
+of Fourth of July patriotism, in place of the vehement but fun-loving son
+of Erin, men with wild, dark faces, with burning black eyes and unkempt
+hair, unshaven, flannel skirted--made more alien, paradoxically, by their
+conventional, ready-made American clothes--gave tongue to the
+inarticulate aspirations of the peasant drudge of Europe.  From lands
+long steeped in blood they came, from low countries by misty northern
+seas, from fair and ancient plains of Lombardy, from Guelph and
+Ghibelline hamlets in the Apennines, from vine-covered slopes in Sicily
+and Greece; from the Balkans, from Caucasus and Carpathia, from the
+mountains of Lebanon, whose cedars lined the palaces of kings; and from
+villages beside swollen rivers that cross the dreary steppes.  Each
+peasant listened to a recital in his own tongue--the tongue in which the
+folklore, the cradle sayings of his race had been preserved--of the
+common wrongs of all, of misery still present, of happiness still
+unachieved in this land of liberty and opportunity they had found a
+mockery; to appeals to endure and suffer for a common cause.  But who was
+to weld together this medley of races and traditions, to give them the
+creed for which their passions were prepared, to lead into battle these
+ignorant and unskilled from whom organized labour held aloof?  Even as
+dusk was falling, even as the Mayor, the Hon. Michael McGrath, was making
+from the platform an eloquent plea for order and peace, promising a
+Committee of Arbitration and thinking about soldiers, the leader and the
+philosophy were landing in Hampton.
+
+The "five o'clock" edition of the Banner announced him, Antonio
+Antonelli, of the Industrial Workers of the World!  An ominous name, an
+ominous title,--compared by a wellknown publicist to the sound of a fire-
+bell in the night.  The Industrial Workers, not of America, but of the
+World!  No wonder it sent shivers down the spine of Hampton!  The writer
+of the article in the Banner was unfamiliar with the words "syndicalism"
+and "sabotage," or the phrase "direct action," he was too young to know
+the history of the Knights, he had never heard of a philosophy of labour,
+or of Sorel or Pouget, but the West he had heard of,--the home of
+lawlessness, of bloodshed, rape, and murder.  For obvious reasons he did
+not betray this opinion, but for him the I.W.W. was born in the West,
+where it had ravaged and wrecked communities.  His article was guardedly
+respectful, but he ventured to remind his readers that Mr. Antonelli had
+been a leader in some of these titanic struggles between crude labour and
+capital--catastrophes that hitherto had seemed to the citizens of Hampton
+as remote as Kansas cyclones....
+
+Some of the less timorous of the older inhabitants, curious to learn what
+doctrine this interloper had to proclaim, thrust their way that evening
+into the City Hall, which was crowded, as the papers said, "to
+suffocation."  Not prepossessing, this modern Robespierre; younger than
+he looked, for life had put its mark on him; once, in the days of severe
+work in the mines, his body had been hard, and now had grown stout.  In
+the eyes of a complacent, arm-chair historian he must have appeared one
+of the, strange and terrifying creatures which, in times of upheaval, are
+thrust from the depths of democracies to the surface, with gifts to voice
+the longings and passions of those below.  He did not blink in the light;
+he was sure of himself, he had a creed and believed in it; he gazed
+around him with the leonine stare of the conqueror, and a hush came over
+the hall as he arose.  His speech was taken down verbatim, to be
+submitted to the sharpest of legal eyes, when was discovered the
+possession of a power--rare among agitators--to pour forth in torrents
+apparently unpremeditated appeals, to skirt the border of sedition and
+never transgress it, to weigh his phrases before he gave them birth, and
+to remember them.  If he said an incendiary thing one moment he qualified
+it the next; he justified violence only to deprecate it; and months
+later, when on trial for his life and certain remarks were quoted against
+him, he confounded his prosecutors by demanding the contexts.  Skilfully,
+always within the limits of their intelligence, he outlined to his
+hearers his philosophy and proclaimed it as that of the world's
+oppressed.  Their cause was his--the cause of human progress; he
+universalized, it.  The world belonged to the "producer," if only he had
+the courage to take possession of his own....
+
+Suddenly the inspirer was transformed into the man of affairs who calmly
+proposed the organization of a strike committee, three members of which
+were to be chosen by each nationality.  And the resolution, translated
+into many tongues, was adopted amidst an uproar of enthusiasm.  Until
+that moment the revolt had been personal, local, founded on a particular
+grievance which had to do with wages and the material struggle for
+existence.  Now all was changed; now they were convinced that the
+deprivation and suffering to which they had pledged themselves were not
+for selfish ends alone, but also vicarious, dedicated to the liberation
+of all the downtrodden of the earth.  Antonelli became a saviour; they
+reached out to touch him as he passed; they trooped into the snowy
+street, young men and old, and girls, and women holding children in their
+arms, their faces alight with something never known or felt before.
+
+Such was Antonelli to the strikers.  But to those staid residents of
+Hampton who had thought themselves still to be living in the old New
+England tradition, he was the genius of an evil dream.  Hard on his heels
+came a nightmare troop, whose coming brought to the remembrance of the
+imaginative the old nursery rhyme:--
+
+"Hark!  Hark!  The dogs do bark, The beggars are come to town."
+
+It has, indeed, a knell-like ring.  Do philosophies tend also to cast
+those who adopt them into a mould?  These were of the self-same breed,
+indubitably the followers of Antonelli.  The men wore their hair long,
+affected, like their leader, soft felt hats and loose black ties that
+fell over the lapels of their coats.  Loose morals and loose ties!  The
+projection of these against a Puritan background ties symbolical of
+everything the Anglo-Saxon shudders at and abhors; of anarchy and mob
+rule, of bohemia and vagabondia, of sedition and murder, of Latin
+revolutions and reigns of terror; of sex irregularity--not of the
+clandestine sort to be found in decent communities--but of free love that
+flaunts itself in the face of an outraged public.  For there were women
+in the band.  All this, and more, the invaders suggested--atheism,
+unfamiliarity with soap and water, and, more vaguely, an exotic poetry
+and art that to the virile of American descent is saturated with
+something indefinable yet abhorrent.  Such things are felt.  Few of the
+older citizens of Hampton were able to explain why something rose in
+their gorges, why they experienced a new and clammy quality of fear and
+repulsion when, on the day following Antonelli's advent, these strangers
+arrived from nowhere to install themselves--with no baggage to speak of--
+in Hampton's more modest but hitherto respectable hostelries.  And no
+sooner had the city been rudely awakened to the perilous presence, in
+overwhelming numbers, of ignorant and inflammable foreigners than these
+turned up and presumed to lead the revolt, to make capital out of it, to
+interpret it in terms of an exotic and degenerate creed.  Hampton would
+take care of itself--or else the sovereign state within whose borders it
+was would take care of it.  And his Honour the Mayor, who had proclamed
+his faith in the reasonableness of the strikers, who had scorned the
+suggestions of indignant inhabitants that the Governor be asked for
+soldiers, twenty-four hours too late arranged for the assembly of three
+companies of local militia in the armory, and swore in a hundred extra
+police.
+
+The hideous stillness of Fillmore Street was driving Janet mad.  What she
+burned to do was to go to Boston and take a train for somewhere in the
+West, to lose herself, never to see Hampton again.  But--there was her
+mother.  She could not leave Hannah in these empty rooms, alone; and
+Edward was to remain at the mill, to eat and sleep there, until the
+danger of the strike had passed.  A messenger had come to fetch his
+clothes.  After leaving Ditmar in the office of the mill, Janet crept up
+the dark stairs to the flat and halted in the hallway.  Through the open
+doorway of the dining-room she saw Hannah seated on the horsehair sofa--
+for the first time within memory idle at this hour of the day.  Nothing
+else could have brought home to her like this the sheer tragedy of their
+plight.  Until then Janet had been sustained by anger and excitement, by
+physical action.  She thought Hannah was staring at her; after a moment
+it seemed that the widened pupils were fixed in fascination on something
+beyond, on the Thing that had come to dwell here with them forever.
+
+Janet entered the room.  She sat down on the sofa and took her mother's
+hand in hers.  And Hannah submitted passively.  Janet could not speak.  A
+minute might have passed, and the silence, which neither had broken,
+acquired an intensity that to Janet became unbearable.  Never had the
+room been so still!  Her glance, raised instinctively to the face of the
+picture-clock, saw the hands pointing to ten.  Every Monday morning, as
+far back as she could recall, her father had wound it before going to
+work--and to-day he had forgotten.  Getting up, she opened the glass
+door, and stood trying to estimate the hour: it must be, she thought,
+about six.  She set the hands, took the key from the nail above the
+shelf, wound up the weight, and started the pendulum.  And the sound of
+familiar ticking was a relief, releasing at last her inhibited powers of
+speech.
+
+"Mother," she said, "I'll get some supper for you."
+
+On Hannah, these simple words had a seemingly magical effect.  Habit
+reasserted itself.  She started, and rose almost briskly.
+
+"No you won't," she said, "I'll get it.  I'd ought to have thought of it
+before.  You must be tired and hungry."
+
+Her voice was odd and thin.  Janet hesitated a moment, and ceded.
+
+"Well, I'll set the dishes on the table, anyway."
+
+Janet had sought refuge, wistfully, in the commonplace.  And when the
+meal was ready she strove to eat, though food had become repulsive.
+
+"You must take something, mother," she said.
+
+"I don't feel as if I ever wanted to eat anything again," she replied.
+
+"I know," said Janet, "but you've got to."  And she put some of the cold
+meat, left over from Sunday's dinner, on Hannah's plate.  Hannah took up
+a fork, and laid it down again.  Suddenly she said:--
+
+"You saw Lise?"
+
+"Yes," said Janet.
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"In a house--in Boston."
+
+"One of--those houses?"
+
+"I--I don't know," said Janet.  "I think so."
+
+"You went there?"
+
+"Mr. Tiernan went with me."
+
+"She wouldn't come home?"
+
+"Not--not just now, mother."
+
+"You left her there, in that place?  You didn't make her come home?"
+
+The sudden vehemence of this question, the shrill note of reproach in
+Hannah's voice that revealed, even more than the terrible inertia from
+which she had emerged, the extent of her suffering, for the instant left
+Janet utterly dismayed.  "Oh mother!" she exclaimed.  "I tried--I--I
+couldn't."
+
+Hannah pushed back her chair.
+
+"I'll go to her, I'll make her come.  She's disgraced us, but I'll make
+her.  Where is she?  Where is the house?"
+
+Janet, terrified, seized her mother's arm.  Then she said:--
+
+"Lise isn't there any more--she's gone away."
+
+"Away  and you let her go away?  You let your sister go away and be a--a
+woman of the town?  You never loved her--you never had any pity for her."
+
+Tears sprang into Janet's eyes--tears of pity mingled with anger.  The
+situation had grown intolerable!  Yet how could she tell Hannah where
+Lise was!
+
+"You haven't any right to say that, mother!" she cried.  "I did my best.
+She wouldn't come.  I--I can't tell you where she's gone, but she
+promised to write, to send me her address."
+
+"Lise" Hannah's cry seemed like the uncomprehending whimper of a stricken
+child, and then a hidden cadence made itself felt, a cadence revealing to
+Janet with an eloquence never before achieved the mystery of mother love,
+and by some magic of tone was evoked a new image of Lise--of Lise as she
+must be to Hannah.  No waywardness, no degradation or disgrace could
+efface it.  The infant whom Hannah had clutched to her breast, the woman,
+her sister, whom Janet had seen that day were one--immutably one.  This,
+then, was what it meant to be a mother!  All the years of deadening hope
+had not availed to kill the craving--even in this withered body it was
+still alive and quick.  The agony of that revelation was scarcely to be
+borne.  And it seemed that Lise, even in the place where she was, must
+have heard that cry and heeded it.  And yet--the revelation of Lise's
+whereabouts, of Lise's contemplated act Janet had nearly been goaded into
+making, died on her lips.  She could not tell Hannah!  And Lise's child
+must not come into a world like this.  Even now the conviction remained,
+fierce, exultant, final.  But if Janet had spoken now Hannah would not
+have heard her.  Under the storm she had begun to rock, weeping
+convulsively....  But gradually her weeping ceased.  And to Janet,
+helplessly watching, this process of congealment was more terrible even
+than the release that only an unmitigated violence of grief had been able
+to produce.  In silence Hannah resumed her shrunken duties, and when
+these were finished sat awhile, before going to bed, her hands lying
+listless in her lap.  She seemed to have lived for centuries, to have
+exhausted the gamut of suffering which, save for that one wild outburst,
+had been the fruit of commonplace, passive, sordid tragedy that knows no
+touch of fire....
+
+The next morning Janet was awakened by the siren.  Never, even in the
+days when life had been routine and commonplace, had that sound failed to
+arouse in her a certain tremor of fear; with its first penetrating
+shriek, terror invaded her: then, by degrees, overcoming her numbness,
+came an agonizing realization of tragedy to be faced.  The siren blew and
+blew insistently, as though it never meant to stop; and now for the first
+time she seemed to detect in it a note of futility.  There were those who
+would dare to defy it.  She, for one, would defy it.  In that reflection
+she found a certain fierce joy.  And she might lie in bed if she wished--
+how often had she longed to!  But she could not.  The room was cold,
+appallingly empty and silent as she hurried into her clothes.  The
+dining-room lamp was lighted, the table set, her mother was bending over
+the stove when she reached the kitchen.  After the pretence of breakfast
+was gone through Janet sought relief in housework, making her bed,
+tidying her room.  It was odd, this morning, how her notice of little,
+familiar things had the power to add to her pain, brought to mind
+memories become excruciating as she filled the water pitcher from the
+kitchen tap she found herself staring at the nick broken out of it when
+Lise had upset it.  She recalled Lise's characteristically flippant
+remark.  And there was the streak in the wall-paper caused one night by
+the rain leaking through the roof.  After the bed was made and the room
+swept she stood a moment, motionless, and then, opening the drawer in the
+wardrobe took from it the rose which she had wrapped in tissue paper and
+hidden there, and with a perverse desire as it were to increase the
+bitterness consuming her, to steep herself in pain, she undid the parcel
+and held the withered flower to her face.  Even now a fragrance, faint
+yet poignant, clung to it....  She wrapped it up again, walked to the
+window, hesitated, and then with a sudden determination to destroy this
+sole relic of her happiness went to the kitchen and flung it into the
+stove.  Hannah, lingering over her morning task of cleaning, did not seem
+to notice the act.  Janet turned to her.
+
+"I think I'll go out for a while, mother," she said.
+
+"You'd ought to," Hannah replied.  "There's no use settin' around here."
+
+The silence of the flat was no longer to be endured.  And Janet, putting
+on her coat and hat, descended the stairs.  Not once that morning had her
+mother mentioned Lise; nor had she asked about her own plans--about
+Ditmar.  This at least was a relief; it was the question she had feared
+most.  In the street she met the postman.
+
+"I have a letter for you, Miss Janet," he said.  And on the pink envelope
+he handed her, in purple ink, she recognized the unformed, childish
+handwriting of Lise.  "There's great doings down at the City Hall," the
+postman added "the foreigners are holding mass meetings there."
+Janet scarcely heard him as she tore open the envelope.  "Dear Janet,"
+the letter ran.  "The doctor told me I had a false alarm, there was
+nothing to it.  Wouldn't that jar you?  Boston's a slow burg, and there's
+no use of my staying here now.  I'm going to New York, and maybe I'll
+come back when I've had a look at the great white way.  I've got the
+coin, and I gave him the mit to-night.  If you haven't anything better to
+do, drop in at the Bagatelle and give Walters my love, and tell them not
+to worry at home.  There's no use trying to trail me.  Your affectionate
+sister Lise."
+
+Janet thrust the letter in her pocket.  Then she walked rapidly westward
+until she came to the liver-coloured faeade of the City Hall, opposite
+the Common.  Pushing through the crowd of operatives lingering on the
+pavement in front of it, she entered the building....
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V2
+by Winston Churchill
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Dwelling Place of Light, V2, by Churchill
+#3 in our series by this Winston Churchill
+
+This author is a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill the Prime Minister 
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+Title: The Dwelling Place of Light, V2
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: January, 2003  [Etext #3647]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 07/03/01]
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+Edition: 11
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+Language: English
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext Dwelling Place of Light, V2, by Churchill
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+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+[NOTE: This author is a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill the Prime Minister
+of England during World War II.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT
+
+By WINSTON CHURCHILL
+
+
+
+VOLUME 2
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension
+her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's
+ingenuity and powers of resistance.  Yet the sense of mastery at being
+able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a young
+woman of her vitality and spirit.  There was always the excitement that
+the leash might break--and then what?  Here was a situation, she knew
+instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of
+possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that
+very reason fascinating.  When she was away from Ditmar and tried to
+think about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of
+anomalies and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond her
+knowledge and experience.  For Janet had been born in an age which is
+rapidly discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet to
+achieve the morality of scientific knowledge, of the individual instance.
+Tradition, convention, the awful examples portrayed for gain in the
+movies, even her mother's pessimistic attitude in regard to the freedom
+with which the sexes mingle to-day were powerless to influence her.  The
+thought, however, that she might fundamentally resemble her sister Lise,
+despite a fancied superiority, did occasionally shake her and bring about
+a revulsion against Ditmar.  Janet's problem was in truth, though she
+failed so to specialize it, the supreme problem of our time: what is the
+path to self-realization? how achieve emancipation from the commonplace?
+
+Was she in love with Ditmar?  The question was distasteful, she avoided
+it, for enough of the tatters of orthodox Christianity clung to her to
+cause her to feel shame when she contemplated the feelings he aroused in
+her.  It was when she asked herself what his intentions were that her
+resentment burned, pride and a sense of her own value convinced her that
+he had deeply insulted her in not offering marriage.  Plainly, he did not
+intend to offer marriage; on the other hand, if he had done so, a
+profound, self-respecting and moral instinct in her would, in her present
+mood, have led her to refuse.  She felt a fine scorn for the woman who,
+under the circumstances, would insist upon a bond and all a man's worldly
+goods in return for that which it was her privilege to give freely; while
+the notion of servility, of economic dependence--though she did not so
+phrase it--repelled her far more than the possibility of social ruin.
+
+This she did not contemplate at all; her impulse to leave Hampton and
+Ditmar had nothing to do with that....
+
+Away from Ditmar, this war of inclinations possessed her waking mind,
+invaded her dreams.  When she likened herself to the other exploited
+beings he drove to run his mills and fill his orders,--of whom Mr.
+Siddons had spoken--her resolution to leave Hampton gained such definite
+ascendancy that her departure seemed only a matter of hours.
+
+In this perspective Ditmar appeared so ruthless, his purpose to use her
+and fling her away so palpable, that she despised herself for having
+hesitated.  A longing for retaliation consumed her; she wished to hurt
+him before she left.  At such times, however, unforeseen events
+invariably intruded to complicate her feelings and alter her plans.  One
+evening at supper, for instance, when she seemed at last to have achieved
+the comparative peace of mind that follows a decision after struggle, she
+gradually became aware of an outburst from Hannah concerning the stove,
+the condition of which for many months had been a menace to the welfare
+of the family.  Edward, it appeared, had remarked mildly on the absence
+of beans.
+
+"Beans!" Hannah cried.  "You're lucky to have any supper at all.  I just
+wish I could get you to take a look at that oven--there's a hole you can
+put your hand through, if you've a mind to.  I've done my best, I've made
+out to patch it from time to time, and to-day I had Mr. Tiernan in.  He
+says it's a miracle I've been able to bake anything.  A new one'll cost
+thirty dollars, and I don't know where the money's coming from to buy it.
+And the fire-box is most worn through."
+
+
+"Well, mother, we'll see what we can do," said Edward.
+
+"You're always seeing what you can do, but I notice you never do
+anything," retorted Hannah; and Edward had the wisdom not to reply.
+Beside his place lay a lengthy, close-written letter, and from time to
+time, as he ate his canned pears, his hand turned over one of its many
+sheets.
+
+"It's from Eben Wheeler, says he's been considerably troubled with
+asthma," he observed presently.  "His mother was a Bumpus, a daughter of
+Caleb-descended from Robert, who went from Dolton to Tewksbury in 1816,
+and fought in the war of 1812.  I've told you about him.  This Caleb was
+born in '53, and he's living now with his daughter's family in
+Detroit....  Son-in-law's named Nott, doing well with a construction
+company.  Now I never could find out before what became of Robert's
+descendants.  He married Sarah Styles" (reading painfully) "`and they had
+issue, John, Robert, Anne, Susan, Eliphalet.  John went to Middlebury,
+Vermont, and married '"
+
+Hannah, gathering up the plates, clattered them together noisily.
+
+"A lot of good it does us to have all that information about Eben
+Wheeler's asthma!" she complained.  "It'll buy us a new stove, I guess.
+Him and his old Bumpus papers!  If the house burned down over our heads
+that's all he'd think of."
+
+As she passed to and fro from the dining-room to the kitchen Hannah's
+lamentations continued, grew more and more querulous.  Accustomed as
+Janet was to these frequent arraignments of her father's inefficiency, it
+was gradually borne in upon her now--despite a preoccupation with her own
+fate--that the affair thus plaintively voiced by her mother was in effect
+a family crisis of the first magnitude.  She was stirred anew to anger
+and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid as to be threatened in
+its continuity by the absurd failure of a stove, when, glancing at her
+sister, she felt a sharp pang of self-conviction, of self-disgust.  Was
+she, also, like that, indifferent and self-absorbed?  Lise, in her
+evening finery, looking occasionally at the clock, was awaiting the hour
+set for a rendezvous, whiling away the time with the Boston evening sheet
+whose glaring red headlines stretched across the page.  When the
+newspaper fell to her lap a dreamy expression clouded Lise's eyes.  She
+was thinking of some man!  Quickly Janet looked away, at her father, only
+to be repelled anew by the expression, almost of fatuity, she discovered
+on his face as he bent over the letter once more.  Suddenly she
+experienced an overwhelming realization of the desperation of Hannah's
+plight,--the destiny of spending one's days, without sympathy, toiling in
+the confinement of these rooms to supply their bodily needs.  Never had a
+destiny seemed so appalling.  And yet Janet resented that pity.  The
+effect of it was to fetter and inhibit; from the moment of its intrusion
+she was no longer a free agent, to leave Hampton and Ditmar when she
+chose.  Without her, this family was helpless.  She rose, and picked up
+some of the dishes.  Hannah snatched them from her hands.
+
+"Leave 'em alone, Janet!" she said with unaccustomed sharpness.  "I guess
+I ain't too feeble to handle 'em yet."
+
+And a flash of new understanding came to Janet.  The dishes were
+vicarious, a substitute for that greater destiny out of which Hannah had
+been cheated by fate.  A substitute, yes, and perhaps become something of
+a mania, like her father's Bumpus papers....  Janet left the room
+swiftly, entered the bedroom, put on her coat and hat, and went out.
+Across the street the light in Mr. Tiernan's shop was still burning, and
+through the window she perceived Mr. Tiernan himself tilted back in his
+chair, his feet on the table, the tip of his nose pointed straight at the
+ceiling.  When the bell betrayed the opening of the door he let down his
+chair on the floor with a bang.
+
+"Why, it's Miss Janet!" he exclaimed.  "How are you this evening, now?  I
+was just hoping some one would pay me a call."
+
+Twinkling at her, he managed, somewhat magically, to dispel her temper of
+pessimism, and she was moved to reply:--
+
+"You know you were having a beautiful time, all by yourself."
+
+"A beautiful time, is it?  Maybe it's because I was dreaming of some
+young lady a-coming to pay me a visit."
+
+"Well, dreams never come up to expectations, do they?"
+
+"Then it's dreaming I am, still," retorted Mr. Tiernan, quickly.
+
+Janet laughed.  His tone, though bantering, was respectful.  One of the
+secrets of Mr. Tiernan's very human success was due to his ability to
+estimate his fellow creatures.  His manner of treating Janet, for
+instance, was quite different from that he employed in dealing with Lise.
+In the course of one interview he had conveyed to Lise, without arousing
+her antagonism, the conviction that it was wiser to trust him than to
+attempt to pull wool over his eyes.  Janet had the intelligence to trust
+him; and to-night, as she faced him, the fact was brought home to her
+with peculiar force that this wiry-haired little man was the person above
+all others of her immediate acquaintance to seek in time of trouble.  It
+was his great quality.  Moreover, Mr. Tiernan, even in his morning
+greetings as she passed, always contrived to convey to her, in some
+unaccountable fashion, the admiration and regard in which he held her,
+and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her a
+certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and
+self-respect.  For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan's eyes
+as he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless
+family in the clay-yellow flat across the street.  And there was nothing,
+she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family.  So she
+said:--
+
+"I've come to see about the stove."
+
+"Sure," he replied, as much as to say that the visit was not unexpected.
+"Well, I've been thinking about it, Miss Janet.  I've got a stove here I
+know'll suit your mother.  It's a Reading, it's almost new.  Ye'd better
+be having a look at it yourself."
+
+He led her into a chaos of stoves, grates, and pipes at the back of the
+store.
+
+"It's in need of a little polish," he added, as he turned on a light,
+"but it's sound, and a good baker, and economical with coal."  He opened
+the oven and took off the lids.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know much about stoves," she told him.  "But I'll
+trust your judgment.  How much is it?" she inquired hesitatingly.
+
+He ran his hand through his corkscrewed hair, his familiar gesture.
+
+"Well, I'm willing to let ye have it for twenty-five dollars.  If that's
+too much--mebbe we can find another."
+
+"Can you put it in to-morrow morning?" she asked.
+
+"I can that," he said.  She drew out her purse.  "Ye needn't be paying
+for it all at once," he protested, laying a hand on her arm.  "You won't
+be running away."
+
+"Oh, I'd rather--I have the money," she declared hurriedly; and she
+turned her back that he might not perceive, when she had extracted the
+bills, how little was left in her purse.
+
+"I'll wager ye won't be wanting another soon," he said, as he escorted
+her to the door.  And he held it open, politely, looking after her, until
+she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had
+in it something of a benediction.  She avoided the dining-room and went
+straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings.  The self-sacrifice had
+brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant.  She had been
+equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,--a part
+which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become
+convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere.  Life was indeed a
+bewildering thing....
+
+The next morning, at breakfast, though her mother's complaints continued,
+Janet was silent as to her purchase, and she lingered on her return home
+in the evening because she now felt a reluctance to appear in the role of
+protector and preserver of the family.  She would have preferred, if
+possible, to give the stove anonymously.  Not that the expression of
+Hannah's gratitude was maudlin; she glared at Janet when she entered the
+dining-room and exclaimed: "You hadn't ought to have gone and done it!"
+
+And Janet retorted, with almost equal vehemence:--
+
+"Somebody had to do it--didn't they?  Who else was there?"
+
+"It's a shame for you to spend your money on such things.  You'd ought to
+save it you'll need it," Hannah continued illogically.
+
+"It's lucky I had the money," said Janet.
+
+Both Janet and Hannah knew that these recriminations, from the other,
+were the explosive expressions of deep feeling.  Janet knew that her
+mother was profoundly moved by her sacrifice.  She herself was moved by
+Hannah's plight, but tenderness and pity were complicated by a renewed
+sense of rebellion against an existence that exacted such a situation.
+
+"I hope the stove's all right, mother," she said.  "Mr. Tiernan seemed to
+think it was a good one."
+
+"It's a different thing," declared Hannah.  "I was just wondering this
+evening, before you came in, how I ever made out to cook anything on the
+other.  Come and see how nice it looks."
+
+Janet followed her into the kitchen.  As they stood close together gazing
+at the new purchase Janet was uncomfortably aware of drops that ran a
+little way in the furrows of Hannah's cheeks, stopped, and ran on again.
+She seized her apron and clapped it to her face.
+
+"You hadn't ought to be made to do it!" she sobbed.
+
+And Janet was suddenly impelled to commit an act rare in their
+intercourse.  She kissed her, swiftly, on the cheek, and fled from the
+room....
+
+Supper was an ordeal.  Janet did not relish her enthronement as a
+heroine, she deplored and even resented her mother's attitude toward her
+father, which puzzled her; for the studied cruelty of it seemed to belie
+her affection for him.  Every act and gesture and speech of Hannah's took
+on the complexion of an invidious reference to her reliability as
+compared with Edward's worthlessness as a provider; and she contrived in
+some sort to make the meal a sacrament in commemoration of her elder
+daughter's act.
+
+"I guess you notice the difference in that pork," she would exclaim, and
+when he praised it and attributed its excellence to Janet's gift Hannah
+observed: "As long as you ain't got a son, you're lucky to have a
+daughter like her!"
+
+Janet squirmed.  Her father's acceptance of his comparative worthlessness
+was so abject that her pity was transferred to him, though she scorned
+him, as on former occasions, for the self-depreciation that made him
+powerless before her mother's reproaches.  After the meal was over he sat
+listlessly on the sofa, like a visitor whose presence is endured,
+pathetically refraining from that occupation in which his soul found
+refreshment and peace, the compilation of the Bumpus genealogy.  That
+evening the papers remained under the lid of the desk in the corner,
+untouched.
+
+What troubled Janet above all, however, was the attitude of Lise, who
+also came in for her share of implied reproach.  Of late Lise had become
+an increased source of anxiety to Hannah, who was unwisely resolved to
+make this occasion an object lesson.  And though parental tenderness had
+often moved her to excuse and defend Lise for an increasing remissness in
+failing to contribute to the household expenses, she was now quite
+relentless in her efforts to wring from Lise an acknowledgment of the
+nobility of her sister's act, of qualities in Janet that she, Lise, might
+do well to cultivate.  Lise was equally determined to withhold any such
+acknowledgment; in her face grew that familiar mutinous look that Hannah
+invariably failed to recognize as a danger signal; and with it another--
+the sophisticated expression of one who knows life and ridicules the lack
+of such knowledge in others.  Its implication was made certain when the
+two girls were alone in their bedroom after supper.  Lise, feverishly
+occupied with her toilet, on her departure broke the silence there by
+inquiring:--
+
+"Say, if I had your easy money, I might buy a stove, too.  How much does
+Ditmar give you, sweetheart?"
+
+Janet, infuriated, flew at her sister.  Lise struggled to escape.
+
+"Leave me go" she whimpered in genuine alarm, and when at length she was
+released she went to the mirror and began straightening her hat, which
+had flopped to one side of her head.  "I didn't mean nothin', I was only
+kiddie' you--what's the use of gettin' nutty over a jest?"
+
+"I'm not like-you," said Janet.
+
+"I was only kiddin', I tell you," insisted Lise, with a hat pin in her
+mouth.  "Forget it."
+
+When Lise had gone out Janet sat down in the rocking-chair and began to
+rock agitatedly.  What had really made her angry, she began to perceive,
+was the realization of a certain amount of truth in her sister's
+intimation concerning Ditmar.  Why should she have, in Lise, continually
+before her eyes a degraded caricature of her own aspirations and ideals?
+or was Lise a mirror--somewhat tarnished, indeed--in which she read the
+truth about herself?  For some time Janet had more than suspected that
+her sister possessed a new lover--a lover whom she refrained from
+discussing; an ominous sign, since it had been her habit to dangle her
+conquests before Janet's eyes, to discuss their merits and demerits with
+an engaging though cynical freedom.  Although the existence of this
+gentleman was based on evidence purely circumstantial, Janet was inclined
+to believe him of a type wholly different from his predecessors; and the
+fact that his attentions were curiously intermittent and irregular
+inclined her to the theory that he was not a resident of Hampton.  What
+was he like?  It revolted her to reflect that he might in some ways
+possibly resemble Ditmar.  Thus he became the object of a morbid
+speculation, especially at such times as this, when Lise attired herself
+in her new winter finery and went forth to meet him.  Janet, also, had
+recently been self-convicted of sharing with Lise the same questionable
+tendency toward self-adornment to please the eye of man.  The very next
+Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad extravagance of the
+blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window of The Paris in Faber
+Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and admiration of Miss Schuler
+and herself, and in front of which they had stood languishing on three
+successive evenings.  In its acquisition Lise had expended almost the
+whole of a week's salary.  Its colour was purple, on three sides were
+massed drooping lilac feathers, but over the left ear the wide brim was
+caught up and held by a crescent of brilliant paste stones.  Shortly
+after this purchase--the next week, in fact,--The Paris had alluringly
+and craftily displayed, for the tempting sum of $6.29, the very cloak
+ordained by providence to "go" with the hat.  Miss Schuler declared it
+would be a crime to fail to take advantage of such an opportunity but the
+trouble was that Lise had had to wait for two more pay-days and endure
+the suspense arising from the possibility that some young lady of taste
+and means might meanwhile become its happy proprietor.  Had not the
+saleslady been obdurate, Lise would have had it on credit; but she did
+succeed, by an initial payment the ensuing Saturday, in having it
+withdrawn from public gaze.  The second Saturday Lise triumphantly
+brought the cloak home; a velvet cloak,--if the eyes could be believed,--
+velvet bordering on plush, with a dark purple ground delicately and
+artistically spotted with a lilac to match the hat feathers, and edged
+with a material which--if not too impudently examined and no questions
+asked--might be mistaken, by the uninitiated male, for the fur of a white
+fox.  Both investments had been made, needless to say, on the strength of
+Janet's increased salary; and Lise, when Janet had surprised her before
+the bureau rapturously surveying the combination, justified herself with
+a defiant apology.
+
+"I just had to have something--what with winter coming on," she declared,
+seizing the hand mirror in order to view the back.  "You might as well
+get your clothes chick, while you're about it--and I didn't have to dig
+up twenty bones, neither--nor anything like it--" a reflection on Janet's
+moest blue suit and her abnormal extravagance.  For it was Lise's habit
+to carry the war into the enemy's country.  "Sadie's dippy about it--says
+it puts her in mind of one of the swells snapshotted in last Sunday's
+supplement.  Well, dearie, how does the effect get you?" and she wheeled
+around for her sister's inspection.
+
+"If you take my advice, you'll be careful not to be caught out in the
+rain."
+
+"What's chewin' you now?" demanded Lise.  She was not lacking in
+imagination of a certain sort, and Janet's remark did not fail in its
+purpose of summoning up a somwhat abject image of herself in wet velvet
+and bedraggled feathers--an image suggestive of a certain hunted type of
+woman Lise and her kind held in peculiar horror.  And she was the more
+resentful because she felt, instinctively, that the memory of this
+suggestion would never be completely eradicated: it would persist, like a
+canker, to mar the completeness of her enjoyment of these clothes.  She
+swung on Janet furiously.
+
+"I get you, all right!"  she cried.  "I guess I know what's eatin' you!
+You've got money to burn and you're sore because I spend mine to buy what
+I need.  You don't know how to dress yourself any more than one of them
+Polak girls in the mills, and you don't want anybody else to look nice."
+
+And Janet was impelled to make a retort of almost equal crudity:--
+
+"If I were a man and saw you in those clothes I wouldn't wait for an
+introduction.  You asked me what I thought.  I don't care about the
+money!" she exclaimed passionately.  "I've often told you you were pretty
+enough without having to wear that kind of thing--to make men stare at
+you."
+
+"I want to know if I don't always look like a lady!  And there's no man
+living would try to pick me up more than once."  The nasal note in Lise's
+voice had grown higher and shriller, she was almost weeping with anger.
+"You want me to go 'round lookin' like a floorwasher."
+
+"I'd rather look like a floorwasher than--than another kind of woman,"
+Janet declared.
+
+"Well, you've got your wish, sweetheart," said Lise.  "You needn't be
+scared anybody will pick you up."
+
+"I'm not," said Janet....
+
+This quarrel had taken place a week or so before Janet's purchase of the
+stove.  Hannah, too, was outraged by Lise's costume, and had also been
+moved to protest; futile protest.  Its only effect on Lise was to
+convince her of the existence of a prearranged plan of persecution, to
+make her more secretive and sullen than ever before.
+
+"Sometimes I just can't believe she's my daughter," Hannah said
+dejectedly to Janet when they were alone together in the kitchen after
+Lise had gone out.  "I'm fond of her because she's my own flesh and
+blood--I'm ashamed of it, but I can't help it.  I guess it's what the
+minister in Dolton used to call a visitation.  I suppose I deserve it,
+but sometimes I think maybe if your father had been different he might
+have been able to put a stop to the way she's going on.  She ain't like
+any of the Wenches, nor any of the Bumpuses, so far's I'm able to find
+out.  She just don't seem to have any notion about right and wrong.
+Well, the world has got all jumbled up--it beats me."
+
+Hannah wrung out the mop viciously and hung it over the sink.
+
+"I used to hope some respectable man would come along, but I've quit
+hopin'.  I don't know as any respectable man would want Lise, or that I
+could honestly wish him to have her."
+
+"Mother!" protested Janet.  Sometimes, in those conversations, she was
+somewhat paradoxically impelled to defend her sister.
+
+"Well, I don't," insisted Hannah, "that's a fact.  I'll tell you what she
+looks like in that hat and cloak--a bad woman.  I don't say she is--I
+don't know what I'd do if I thought she was, but I never expected my
+daughter to look like one."
+
+"Oh, Lise can take care of herself," Janet said, in spite of certain
+recent misgivings.
+
+"This town's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one," declared Hannah who,
+from early habit, was occasionally prone to use scriptural parallels.
+And after a moment's silence she inquired: "Who's this man that's payin'
+her attention now?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Janet, "I don't know that there's anybody."
+
+"I guess there is," said Hannah.  "I used to think that that Wiley was
+low enough, but I could see him.  It was some satisfaction.  I could know
+the worst, anyhow....  I guess it's about time for another flood."
+
+This talk had left Janet in one of these introspective states so frequent
+in her recent experience.  Her mother had used the words "right" and
+"wrong."  But what was "right," or "wrong?"  There was no use asking
+Hannah, who--she perceived--was as confused and bewildered as herself.
+Did she refuse to encourage Mr. Ditmar because it was wrong?  because, if
+she acceded to his desires, and what were often her own, she would be
+punished in an after life?  She was not at all sure whether she believed
+in an after life,--a lack of faith that had, of late, sorely troubled her
+friend Eda Rawle, who had "got religion" from an itinerant evangelist and
+was now working off, in a "live" church, some of the emotional idealism
+which is the result of a balked sex instinct in young unmarried women of
+a certain mentality and unendowed with good looks.  This was not, of
+course, Janet's explanation of the change in her friend, of whom she now
+saw less and less.  They had had arguments, in which neither gained any
+ground.  For the first time in their intercourse, ideas had come between
+them, Eda having developed a surprising self-assertion when her new
+convictions were attacked, a dogged loyalty to a scheme of salvation that
+Janet found neither inspiring nor convincing.  She resented being prayed
+for, and an Eda fervent in good works bored her more than ever.  Eda was
+deeply pained by Janet's increasing avoidance of her company, yet her
+heroine-worship persisted.  Her continued regard for her friend might
+possibly be compared to the attitude of an orthodox Baptist who has
+developed a hobby, let us say, for Napoleon Bonaparte.
+
+Janet was not wholly without remorse.  She valued Eda's devotion, she
+sincerely regretted the fact, on Eda's account as well as her own, that
+it was a devotion of no use to her in the present crisis nor indeed in
+any crisis likely to confront her in life: she had felt instinctively
+from the first that the friendship was not founded on, mental harmony,
+and now it was brought home to her that Eda's solution could never be
+hers.  Eda would have been thrilled on learning of Ditmar's attentions,
+would have advocated the adoption of a campaign leading up to matrimony.
+In matrimony, for Eda, the soul was safe.  Eda would have been horrified
+that Janet should have dallied with any other relationship; God would
+punish her.  Janet, in her conflict between alternate longing and
+repugnance, was not concerned with the laws and retributions of God.  She
+felt, indeed, the need of counsel, and knew not where to turn for it,--
+the modern need for other than supernatural sanctions.  She did not
+resist her desire for Ditmar because she believed, in the orthodox sense,
+that it was wrong, but because it involved a loss of self-respect, a
+surrender of the personality from the very contemplation of which she
+shrank.  She was a true daughter of her time.
+
+On Friday afternoon, shortly after Ditmar had begun to dictate his
+correspondence, Mr. Holster, the agent of the Clarendon Mill, arrived and
+interrupted him.  Janet had taken advantage of the opportunity to file
+away some answered letters when her attention was distracted from her
+work by the conversation, which had gradually grown louder.  The two men
+were standing by the window, facing one another, in an attitude that
+struck her as dramatic.  Both were vital figures, dominant types which
+had survived and prevailed in that upper world of unrelenting struggle
+for supremacy into which, through her relation to Ditmar, she had been
+projected, and the significance of which she had now begun to realize.
+She surveyed Holster critically.  He was short, heavily built, with an
+almost grotesque width of shoulder, a muddy complexion, thick lips, and
+kinky, greasy black hair that glistened in the sun.  His nasal voice was
+complaining, yet distinctly aggressive, and he emphasized his words by
+gestures.  The veins stood out on his forehead.  She wondered what his
+history had been.  She compared him to Ditmar, on whose dust-grey face
+she was quick to detect a look she had seen before--a contraction of the
+eyes, a tightening of the muscles of the jaw.  That look, and the
+peculiarly set attitude of the body accompanying it, aroused in her a
+responsive sense of championship.
+
+"All right, Ditmar," she heard the other exclaim.  "I tell you again
+you'll never be able to pull it off."
+
+Ditmar's laugh was short, defiant.
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Why not!  Because the fifty-four hour law goes into effect in January."
+
+"What's that got to do with it?" Ditmar demanded.
+
+"You'll see--you'll remember what I told you fellows at the conference
+after that bill went through and that damned demagogue of a governor
+insisted on signing it.  I said, if we tried to cut wages down to a
+fifty-four hour basis we'd have a strike on our hands in every mill in
+Hampton,--didn't I?  I said it would cost us millions of dollars, and
+make all the other strikes we've had here look like fifty cents.  Didn't
+I say that?  Hammond, our president, backed me up, and Rogers of the wool
+people.  You remember?  You were the man who stood out against it, and
+they listened to you, they voted to cut down the pay and say nothing
+about it.  Wait until those first pay envelopes are opened after that law
+goes into effect.  You'll see what'll happen!  You'll never be able to
+fill that Bradlaugh order in God's world."
+
+"Oh hell," retorted Ditmar, contemptuously.  "You're always for lying
+down, Holster.  Why don't you hand over your mill to the unions and go to
+work on a farm?  You might as well, if you're going to let the unions run
+the state.  Why not have socialism right now, and cut out the agony?
+When they got the politicians to make the last cut from fifty-six to
+fifty-four and we kept on payin' 'em for fifty-six, against my advice,
+what happened?  Did they thank us?  I guess not.  Were they contented?
+Not on your life.  They went right on agitating, throwing scares into the
+party conventions and into the House and Senate Committees,--and now it's
+fifty-four hours.  It'll be fifty in a couple of years, and then we'll
+have to scrap our machinery and turn over the trade to the South and
+donate our mills to the state for insane asylums."
+
+"No, if we handle this thing right, we'll have the public on our side.
+They're getting sick of the unions now."
+
+Ditmar went to the desk for a cigar, bit it off, and lighted it.
+
+"The public!" he exclaimed contemptuously.  "A whole lot of good they'll
+do us."
+
+Holster approached him, menacingly, until the two men stood almost
+touching, and for a moment it seemed to Janet as if the agent of the
+Clarendon were ready to strike Ditmar.  She held her breath, her blood
+ran faster,--the conflict between these two made an elemental appeal.
+
+"All right--remember what I say--wait and see where you come out with
+that order."  Holster's voice trembled with anger.  He hesitated, and
+left the office abruptly.  Ditmar stood gazing after him for a moment and
+then, taking his cigar from his mouth, turned and smiled at Janet and
+seated himself in his chair.  His eyes, still narrowed, had in them a
+gleam of triumph that thrilled her.  Combat seemed to stimulate and
+energize him.
+
+"He thought he could bluff me into splitting that Bradlaugh order with
+the Clarendon," Ditmar exclaimed.  "Well, he'll have to guess again.
+I've got his number."  He began to turn over his letters.  "Let's see,
+where were we?  Tell Caldwell not to let in any more idiots, and shut the
+door."
+
+Janet obeyed, and when she returned Ditmar was making notes with a pencil
+on a pad.  The conversation with Holter had given her a new idea of
+Ditmar's daring in attempting to fill the Bradlaugh order with the
+Chippering Mills alone, had aroused in her more strongly than ever that
+hot loyalty to the mills with which he had inspired her; and that strange
+surge of sympathy, of fellow-feeling for the operatives she had
+experienced after the interview with Mr. Siddons, of rebellion against
+him, the conviction that she also was one of the slaves he exploited, had
+wholly disappeared.  Ditmar was the Chippering Mills, and she, somehow,
+enlisted once again on his side.
+
+"By the way," he said abruptly, "you won't mention this--I know."
+
+"Won't mention what?" she asked.
+
+"This matter about the pay envelopes--that we don't intend to continue
+giving the operatives fifty-six hours' pay for fifty-four when this law
+goes into effect.  They're like animals, most of 'em, they don't reason,
+and it might make trouble if it got out now.  You understand.  They'd
+have time to brood over it, to get the agitators started.  When the time
+comes they may kick a little, but they'll quiet down.  And it'll teach
+'em a lesson."
+
+"I never mention anything I hear in this office," she told him.
+
+"I know you don't," he assured her, apologetically.  "I oughtn't to have
+said that--it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it
+spoken of.  You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator
+might make by getting them stirred up?  You can see what it means to me,
+with this order on my hands.  I've staked everything on it."
+
+"But--when the law goes into effect? when the operatives find out that
+they are not receiving their full wages--as Mr. Holster said?" Janet
+inquired.
+
+"Why, they may grumble a little--but I'll be on the lookout for any move.
+I'll see to that.  I'll teach 'em a lesson as to how far they can push
+this business of shorter hours and equal pay.  It's the unskilled workers
+who are mostly affected, you understand, and they're not organized.  If
+we can keep out the agitators, we're all right.  Even then, I'll show 'em
+they can't come in here and exploit my operatives."
+
+In the mood in which she found herself his self-confidence, his
+aggressiveness continued to inspire and even to agitate her, to compel
+her to accept his point of view.
+
+"Why," he continued, "I trust you as I never trusted anybody else.  I've
+told you that before.  Ever since you've been here you've made life a
+different thing for me--just by your being here.  I don't know what I'd
+do without you.  You've got so much sense about things--about people,--
+and I sometimes think you've got almost the same feeling about these
+mills that I have.  You didn't tell me you went through the mills with
+Caldwell the other day," he added, accusingly.
+
+"I--I forgot," said Janet.  "Why should I tell--you?"  She knew that all
+thought of Holster had already slipped from his mind.  She did not look
+up.  "If you're not going to finish your letters," she said, a little
+faintly, "I've got some copying to do."
+
+"You're a deep one," he said.  And as he turned to the pile of
+correspondence she heard him sigh.  He began to dictate.  She took down
+his sentences automatically, scarcely knowing what she was writing; he
+was making love to her as intensely as though his words had been the
+absolute expression of his desire instead of the commonplace mediums of
+commercial intercourse.  Presently he stopped and began fumbling in one
+of the drawers of his desk.
+
+"Where is the memorandum I made last week for Percy and Company?"
+
+"Isn't it there?" she asked.
+
+But he continued to fumble, running through the papers and disarranging
+them until she could stand it no longer.
+
+"You never know where to find anything," she declared, rising and darting
+around the desk and bending over the drawer, her deft fingers rapidly
+separating the papers.  She drew forth the memorandum triumphantly.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed.  "It was right before your eyes."
+
+As she thrust it at him his hand closed over hers.  She felt him drawing
+her, irresistibly.
+
+"Janet!" he said.  "For God's sake--you're killing me--don't you know it?
+I can't stand it any longer!"
+
+"Don't!" she whispered, terror-stricken, straining away from him.  "Mr.
+Ditmar--let me go!"
+
+A silent struggle ensued, she resisting him with all the aroused strength
+and fierceness of her nature.  He kissed her hair, her neck,--she had
+never imagined such a force as this, she felt herself weakening,
+welcoming the annihilation of his embrace.
+
+"Mr. Ditmar!" she cried.  "Somebody will come in."
+
+Her fingers sank into his neck, she tried to hurt him and by a final
+effort flung herself free and fled to the other side of the room.
+
+"You little--wildcat!" she heard him exclaim, saw him put his
+handkerchief to his neck where her fingers had been, saw a red stain on
+it.  "I'll have you yet!"
+
+But even then, as she stood leaning against the wall, motionless save for
+the surging of her breast, there was about her the same strange, feral
+inscrutableness.  He was baffled, he could not tell what she was
+thinking.  She seemed, unconquered, to triumph over her disarray and the
+agitation of her body.  Then, with an involuntary gesture she raised her
+hands to her hair, smoothing it, and without seeming haste left the room,
+not so much as glancing at him, closing the door behind her.
+
+She reached her table in the outer office and sat down, gazing out of the
+window.  The face of the world--the river, the mills, and the bridge--was
+changed, tinged with a new and unreal quality.  She, too, must be
+changed.  She wasn't, couldn't be the same person who had entered that
+room of Ditmar's earlier in the afternoon!  Mr. Caldwell made a
+commonplace remark, she heard herself answer him.  Her mind was numb,
+only her body seemed swept by fire, by emotions--emotions of fear, of
+anger, of desire so intense as to make her helpless.  And when at length
+she reached out for a sheet of carbon paper her hand trembled so she
+could scarcely hold it.  Only by degrees was she able to get sufficient
+control of herself to begin her copying, when she found a certain relief
+in action--her hands flying over the keys, tearing off the finished
+sheets, and replacing them with others.  She did not want to think, to
+decide, and yet she knew--something was trying to tell her that the
+moment for decision had come.  She must leave, now.  If she stayed on,
+this tremendous adventure she longed for and dreaded was inevitable.
+Fear and fascination battled within her.  To run away was to deny life;
+to remain, to taste and savour it.  She had tasted it--was it sweet?--
+that sense of being swept away, engulfed by an elemental power beyond
+them both, yet in them both?  She felt him drawing her to him, and she
+struggling yet inwardly longing to yield.  And the scarlet stain on his
+handkerchief--when she thought of that her blood throbbed, her face
+burned.
+
+At last the door of the inner office opened, and Ditmar came out and
+stood by the rail.  His voice was queer, scarcely recognizable.
+
+"Miss Bumpus--would you mind coming into my room a moment, before you
+leave?" he said.
+
+She rose instantly and followed him, closing the door behind her, but
+standing at bay against it, her hand on the knob.
+
+"I'm not going to touch you--you needn't be afraid," he said.  Reassured
+by the unsteadiness of his voice she raised her eyes to perceive that his
+face was ashy, his manner nervous, apprehensive, conciliatory,--a Ditmar
+she had difficulty in recognizing.  "I didn't mean to frighten, to offend
+you," he went on.  "Something got hold of me.  I was crazy, I couldn't
+help it--I won't do it again, if you'll stay.  I give you my word."
+
+She did not reply.  After a pause he began again, repeating himself.
+
+"I didn't mean to do it.  I was carried away--it all happened before I
+knew.  I--I wouldn't frighten you that way for anything in the world."
+
+Still she was silent.
+
+"For God's sake, speak to me!" he cried.  "Say you forgive me--give me
+another chance!"
+
+But she continued to gaze at him with widened, enigmatic eyes--whether of
+reproach or contempt or anger he could not say.  The situation
+transcended his experience.  He took an uncertain step toward her, as
+though half expecting her to flee, and stopped.
+
+"Listen!" he pleaded.  "I can't talk to you here.  Won't you give me a
+chance to explain--to put myself right?  You know what I think of you,
+how I respect and--admire you.  If you'll only let me see you somewhere--
+anywhere, outside of the office, for a little while, I can't tell you how
+much I'd appreciate it.  I'm sure you don't understand how I feel--I
+couldn't bear to lose you.  I'll be down by the canal--near the bridge--
+at eight o'clock to-night.  I'll wait for you.  You'll come?  Say you'll
+come, and give me another chance!"
+
+"Aren't you going to finish your letters?" she asked.
+
+He stared at her in sheer perplexity.  "Letters!" he exclaimed.  "Damn
+the letters!  Do you think I could write any letters now?"
+
+As a faint ray in dark waters, a gleam seemed to dance in the shadows of
+her eyes, yet was gone so swiftly that he could not be sure of having
+seen it.  Had she smiled?
+
+"I'll be there," he cried.  "I'll wait for you."
+
+She turned from him, opened the door, and went out.
+
+That evening, as Janet was wiping the dishes handed her by her mother,
+she was repeating to herself "Shall I go--or shan't I?"--just as if the
+matter were in doubt.  But in her heart she was convinced of its
+predetermination by some power other than her own volition.  With this
+feeling, that she really had no choice, that she was being guided and
+impelled, she went to her bedroom after finishing her task.  The hands of
+the old dining-room clock pointed to quarter of eight, and Lise had
+already made her toilet and departed.  Janet opened the wardrobe, looked
+at the new blue suit hanging so neatly on its wire holder, hesitated, and
+closed the door again.  Here, at any rate, seemed a choice.  She would
+not wear that, to-night.  She tidied her hair, put on her hat and coat,
+and went out; but once in the street she did not hurry, though she knew
+the calmness she apparently experienced to be false: the calmness of
+fatality, because she was obeying a complicated impulse stronger than
+herself--an impulse that at times seemed mere curiosity.  Somewhere,
+removed from her immediate consciousness, a storm was raging; she was
+aware of a disturbance that reached her faintly, like the distant
+throbbing of the looms she heard when she turned from Faber into West
+Street She had not been able to eat any supper.  That throbbing of the
+looms in the night!  As it grew louder and louder the tension within her
+increased, broke its bounds, set her heart to throbbing too--throbbing
+wildly.  She halted, and went on again, precipitately, but once more
+slowed her steps as she came to West Street and the glare of light at the
+end of the bridge; at a little distance, under the chequered shadows of
+the bare branches, she saw something move--a man, Ditmar.  She stood
+motionless as he hurried toward her.
+
+"You've come!  You've forgiven me?" he asked.
+
+"Why were you--down there?" she asked.
+
+"Why?  Because I thought--I thought you wouldn't want anybody to know--"
+
+It was quite natural that he should not wish to be seen; although she had
+no feeling of guilt, she herself did not wish their meeting known.  She
+resented the subterfuge in him, but she made no comment because his
+perplexity, his embarrassment were gratifying to her resentment, were
+restoring her self-possession, giving her a sense of power.
+
+"We can't stay here," he went on, after a moment.  "Let's take a little
+walk--I've got a lot to say to you.  I want to put myself right."  He
+tried to take her arm, but she avoided him.  They started along the canal
+in the direction of the Stanley Street bridge.  "Don't you care for me a
+little?" he demanded.
+
+"Why should I?"  she parried.
+
+"Then--why did you come?"
+
+"To hear what you had to say."
+
+"You mean--about this afternoon?"
+
+"Partly," said Janet.
+
+"Well--we'll talk it all over.  I wanted to explain about this afternoon,
+especially.  I'm sorry--"
+
+"Sorry!" she exclaimed.
+
+The vehemence of her rebuke--for he recognized it as such--took him
+completely aback.  Thus she was wont, at the most unexpected moments, to
+betray the passion within her, the passion that made him sick with
+desire.  How was he to conquer a woman of this type, who never took
+refuge in the conventional tactics of her sex, as he had known them?
+
+"I didn't mean that," he explained desperately.  "My God--to feel you, to
+have you in my arms--!  I was sorry because I frightened you.  But when
+you came near me that way I just couldn't help it.  You drove me to it."
+
+"Drove you to it!"
+
+"You don't understand, you don't know how--how wonderful you are.  You
+make me crazy.  I love you, I want you as I've never wanted any woman
+before--in a different way.  I can't explain it.  I've got so that I
+can't live without you."  He flung his arm toward the lights of the
+mills.  "That--that used to be everything to me, I lived for it.  I don't
+say I've been a saint--but I never really cared anything about any woman
+until I knew you, until that day I went through the office and saw you
+what you were.  You don't understand, I tell you.  I'm sorry for what I
+did to-day because it offended you--but you drove me to it.  Most of the
+time you seem cold, you're like an iceberg, you make me think you hate
+me, and then all of a sudden you'll be kind, as you were the other night,
+as you seemed this afternoon--you make me think I've got a chance, and
+then, when you came near me, when you touched my hand--why, I didn't know
+what I was doing.  I just had to have you.  A man like me can't stand
+it."
+
+"Then I'd better go away," she said.  "I ought to have gone long ago."
+
+"Why?" he cried.  "Why?  What's your reason?  Why do you want to ruin my
+life?  You've--you've woven yourself into it--you're a part of it.  I
+never knew what it was to care for a woman before, I tell you.  There's
+that mill," he repeated, naively.  "I've made it the best mill in the
+country, I've got the biggest order that ever came to any mill--if you
+went away I wouldn't care a continental about it.  If you went away I
+wouldn't have any ambition left.  Because you're a part of it, don't you
+see?  You--you sort of stand for it now, in my mind.  I'm not literary, I
+can't express what I'd like to say, but sometimes I used to think of that
+mill as a woman--and now you've come along--" Ditmar stopped, for lack of
+adequate eloquence.
+
+She smiled in the darkness at his boyish fervour,--one of the aspects of
+the successful Ditmar, the Ditmar of great affairs, that appealed to her
+most strongly.  She was softened, touched; she felt, too, a responsive
+thrill to such a desire as his.  Yet she did not reply.  She could not.
+She was learning that emotion is never simple.  And some inhibition, the
+identity of which was temporarily obscured still persisted, pervading her
+consciousness....
+
+They were crossing the bridge at Stanley Street, now deserted, and by
+common consent they paused in the middle of it, leaning on the rail.  The
+hideous chocolate factory on the point was concealed by the night,--only
+the lights were there, trembling on the surface of the river.  Against
+the flushed sky above the city were silhouetted the high chimneys of the
+power plant.  Ditmar's shoulder touched hers.  He was still pleading, but
+she seemed rather to be listening to the symphony of the unseen waters
+falling over the dam.  His words were like that, suggestive of a torrent
+into which she longed to fling herself, yet refrained, without knowing
+why.  Her hands tightened on the rail; suddenly she let it go, and led
+the way toward the unfrequented district of the south side.  It was the
+road to Silliston, but she had forgotten that.  Ditmar, regaining her
+side, continued his pleading.  He spoke of his loneliness, which he had
+never realized.  He needed her.  And she experienced an answering pang.
+It still seemed incredible that he, too, who had so much, should feel
+that gnawing need for human sympathy and understanding that had so often
+made her unhappy.  And because of the response his need aroused in her
+she did not reflect whether he could fulfil her own need, whether he
+could ever understand her; whether, at any time, she could unreservedly
+pour herself out to him.
+
+"I don't see why you want me," she interrupted him at last.  "I've never
+had any advantages, I don't know anything.  I've never had a chance to
+learn.  I've told you that before."
+
+"What difference does that make?  You've got more sense than any woman I
+ever saw," he declared.
+
+"It makes a great deal of difference to me," she insisted--and the sound
+of these words on her own lips was like a summons arousing her from a
+dream.  The sordidness of her life, its cruel lack of opportunity in
+contrast with the gifts she felt to be hers, and on which he had dwelt,
+was swept back into her mind.  Self-pity, dignity, and inherent self-
+respect struggled against her woman's desire to give; an inherited racial
+pride whispered that she was worthy of the best, but because she had
+lacked the chance, he refrained from offering her what he would have laid
+at the feet of another woman.
+
+"I'll give you advantages--there's nothing I wouldn't give you.  Why
+won't you come to me?  I'll take care of you."
+
+"Do you think I want to be taken care of?"  She wheeled on him so swiftly
+that he started back.  "Is that what you think I want?"
+
+"No, no," he protested, when he recovered his speech.
+
+"Do you think I'm after--what you can give me?" she shot at him.  "What
+you can buy for me?"
+
+To tell the truth, he had not thought anything about it, that was the
+trouble.  And her question, instead of enlightening him, only added to
+his confusion and bewilderment.
+
+"I'm always getting in wrong with you," he told her, pathetically.
+"There isn't anything I'd stop at to make you happy, Janet, that's what
+I'm trying to say.  I'd go the limit."
+
+"Your limit!" she exclaimed.
+
+"What do you mean?" he demanded.  But she had become inarticulate--
+cryptic, to him.  He could get nothing more out of her.
+
+"You don't understand me--you never will!" she cried, and burst into
+tears--tears of rage she tried in vain to control.  The world was black
+with his ignorance.  She hated herself, she hated him.  Her sobs shook
+her convulsively, and she scarcely heard him as he walked beside her
+along the empty road, pleading and clumsily seeking to comfort her.  Once
+or twice she felt his hand on her shoulders....  And then, unlooked for
+and unbidden, pity began to invade her.  Absurd to pity him!  She fought
+against it, but the thought of Ditmar reduced to abjectness gained
+ground.  After all, he had tried to be generous, he had done his best, he
+loved her, he needed her--the words rang in her heart.  After all, he did
+not realize how could she expect him to realize? and her imagination
+conjured up the situation in a new perspective.  Her sobs gradually
+ceased, and presently she stopped in the middle of the road and regarded
+him.  He seemed utterly miserable, like a hurt child whom she longed to
+comfort.  But what she said was:--
+
+"I ought to be going home."
+
+"Not yet!" he begged.  "It's early.  You say I don't understand you,
+Janet--my God, I wish I did!  It breaks me all up to see you cry like
+that."
+
+"I'm sorry," she said, after a moment.  "I--I can'tmmake you understand.
+I guess I'm not like anybody else I'm queer--I can't help it.  You must
+let me go, I only make you unhappy."
+
+"Let you go!" he cried--and then in utter self-forgetfulness she yielded
+her lips to his.  A sound penetrated the night, she drew back from his
+arms and stood silhouetted against the glare of the approaching headlight
+of a trolley car, and as it came roaring down on them she hailed it.
+Ditmar seized her arm.
+
+"You're not going--now?" he said hoarsely.
+
+"I must," she whispered.  "I want to be alone--I want to think.  You must
+let me."
+
+"I'll see you to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't know--I want to think.  I'm--I'm tired."
+
+The brakes screamed as the car came joltingly to a stop.  She flew up the
+steps, glancing around to see whether Ditmar had followed her, and saw
+him still standing in the road.  The car was empty of passengers, but the
+conductor must have seen her leaving a man in this lonely spot.  She
+glanced at his face, white and pinched and apathetic--he must have seen
+hundreds of similar episodes in the course of his nightly duties.  He was
+unmoved as he took her fare.  Nevertheless, at the thought that these
+other episodes might resemble hers, her face flamed--she grew hot all
+over.  What should she do now?  She could not think.  Confused with her
+shame was the memory of a delirious joy, yet no sooner would she give
+herself up, trembling, to this memory when in turn it was penetrated by
+qualms of resentment, defiling its purity.  Was Ditmar ashamed of her?...
+When she reached home and had got into bed she wept a little, but her
+tears were neither of joy nor sorrow.  Her capacity for both was
+exhausted.  In this strange mood she fell asleep nor did she waken when,
+at midnight, Lise stealthily crept in beside her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Ditmar stood staring after the trolley car that bore Janet away until it
+became a tiny speck of light in the distance.  Then he started to walk
+toward Hampton; in the unwonted exercise was an outlet for the pent-up
+energy her departure had thwarted; and presently his body was warm with a
+physical heat that found its counterpart in a delicious, emotional glow
+of anticipation, of exultant satisfaction.  After all, he could not
+expect to travel too fast with her.  Had he not at least gained a signal
+victory?  When he remembered her lips--which she had indubitably given
+him!--he increased his stride, and in what seemed an incredibly brief
+time he had recrossed the bridge, covered the long residential blocks of
+Warren Street, and gained his own door.
+
+The house was quiet, the children having gone to bed, and he groped his
+way through the dark parlour to his den, turning on the electric switch,
+sinking into an armchair, and lighting a cigar.  He liked this room of
+his, which still retained something of that flavour of a refuge and
+sanctuary it had so eminently possessed in the now forgotten days of
+matrimonial conflict.  One of the few elements of agreement he had held
+in common with the late Mrs. Ditmar was a similarity of taste in
+household decoration, and they had gone together to a great emporium in
+Boston to choose the furniture and fittings.  The lamp in the centre of
+the table was a bronze column supporting a hemisphere of heavy red and
+emerald glass, the colours woven into an intricate and bizarre design,
+after the manner of the art nouveau--so the zealous salesman had informed
+them.  Cora Ditmar, when exhibiting this lamp to admiring visitors, had
+remembered the phrase, though her pronunciation of it, according to the
+standard of the Sorbonne, left something to be desired.  The table and
+chairs, of heavy, shiny oak marvellously and precisely carved by
+machines, matched the big panels of the wainscot.  The windows were high
+in the wall, thus preventing any intrusion from the clothes-yard on which
+they looked.  The bookcases, protected by leaded panes, held countless
+volumes of the fiction from which Cora Ditmar had derived her knowledge
+of the great world outside of Hampton, together with certain sets she had
+bought, not only as ornaments, but with a praiseworthy view to future
+culture,--such as Whitmarsh's Library of the Best Literature.  These
+volumes, alas, were still uncut; but some of the pages of the novels--if
+one cared to open them--were stained with chocolate.  The steam radiator
+was a decoration in itself, the fireplace set in the red and yellow tiles
+that made the hearth.  Above the oak mantel, in a gold frame, was a large
+coloured print of a Magdalen, doubled up in grief, with a glory of loose,
+Titian hair, chosen by Ditmar himself as expressing the nearest possible
+artistic representation of his ideal of the female form.  Cora Ditmar's
+objections on the score of voluptuousness and of insufficient clothing
+had been vain.  She had recognized no immorality of sentimentality in the
+art itself; what she felt, and with some justice, was that this
+particular Magdalen was unrepentant, and that Ditmar knew it.  And the
+picture remained an offence to her as long as she lived.  Formerly he had
+enjoyed the contemplation of this figure, reminding him, as it did, of
+mellowed moments in conquests of the past; suggesting also possibilities
+of the future.  For he had been quick to discount the attitude of bowed
+despair, the sop flung by a sensuous artist to Christian orthodoxy.  He
+had been sceptical about despair--feminine despair, which could always be
+cured by gifts and baubles.  But to-night, as he raised his eyes, he felt
+a queer sensation marring the ecstatic perfection of his mood.  That
+quality in the picture which so long had satisfied and entranced him had
+now become repellent, an ugly significant reflection of something--
+something in himself he was suddenly eager to repudiate and deny.
+It was with a certain amazement that he found himself on his feet with
+the picture in his hand, gazing at the empty space where it had hung.
+For he had had no apparent intention of obeying that impulse.  What
+should he do with it?  Light the fire and burn it--frame and all?  The
+frame was an integral part of it.  What would his housekeeper say?  But
+now that he had actually removed it from the wall he could not replace
+it, so he opened the closet door and thrust it into a corner among relics
+which had found refuge there.  He had put his past in the closet; yet the
+relief he felt was mingled with the peculiar qualm that follows the
+discovery of symptoms never before remarked.  Why should this woman have
+this extraordinary effect of making him dissatisfied with himself?  He
+sat down again and tried to review the affair from that first day when he
+had surprised in her eyes the flame dwelling in her.  She had completely
+upset his life, increasingly distracted his mind until now he could
+imagine no peace unless he possessed her.  Hitherto he had recognized in
+his feeling for her nothing but that same desire he had had for other
+women, intensified to a degree never before experienced.  But this sudden
+access of morality--he did not actually define it as such--was
+disquieting.  And in the feverish, semi-objective survey he was now
+making of his emotional tract he was discovering the presence of other
+disturbing symptoms such as an unwonted tenderness, a consideration
+almost amounting to pity which at times he had vaguely sensed yet never
+sought imaginatively to grasp.  It bewildered him by hampering a
+ruthlessness hitherto absolute.  The fierceness of her inflamed his
+passion, yet he recognized dimly behind this fierceness an instinct of
+selfprotection--and he thought of her in this moment as a struggling bird
+that fluttered out of his hands when they were ready to close over her.
+So it had been to-night.  He might have kept her, prevented her from
+taking the car.  Yet he had let her go!  There came again, utterly to
+blot this out, the memory of her lips.
+
+Even then, there had been something sorrowful in that kiss, a quality he
+resented as troubling, a flavour that came to him after the wildness was
+spent.  What was she struggling against?  What was behind her resistance?
+She loved him!  It had never before occurred to him to enter into the
+nature of her feelings, having been so preoccupied with and tortured by
+his own.  This realization, that she loved him, as it persisted, began to
+make him uneasy, though it should, according to all experience, have been
+a reason for sheer exultation.  He began to see that with her it involved
+complications, responsibilities, disclosures, perhaps all of those things
+he had formerly avoided and resented in woman.  He thought of certain
+friends of his who had become tangled up--of one in particular whose bank
+account had been powerless to extricate him....  And he was ashamed of
+himself.
+
+In view of the nature of his sex experience, of his habit of applying his
+imagination solely to matters of business rather than to affairs of the
+heart,--if his previous episodes may be so designated,--his failure to
+surmise that a wish for marriage might be at the back of her resistance
+is not so surprising as it may seem; he laid down, half smoked, his third
+cigar.  The suspicion followed swiftly on his recalling to mind her
+vehement repudiation of his proffered gifts did he think she wanted what
+he could buy for her!  She was not purchasable--that way.  He ought to
+have known it, he hadn't realized what he was saying.  But marriage!
+Literally it had never occurred to him to image her in a relation he
+himself associated with shackles.  One of the unconscious causes of his
+fascination was just her emancipation from and innocence of that herd-
+convention to which most women--even those who lack wedding rings--are
+slaves.  The force of such an appeal to a man of Ditmar's type must not
+be underestimated.  And the idea that she, too, might prefer the sanction
+of the law, the gilded cage as a popular song which once had taken his
+fancy illuminatingly expressed it--seemed utterly incongruous with the
+freedom and daring of her spirit, was a sobering shock.  Was he prepared
+to marry her, if he could obtain her in no other way?  The question
+demanded a survey of his actual position of which he was at the moment
+incapable.  There were his children!  He had never sought to arrive at
+even an approximate estimate of the boy and girl as factors in his life,
+to consider his feelings toward them; but now, though he believed himself
+a man who gave no weight to social considerations--he had scorned this
+tendency in his wife--he was to realize the presence of ambitions for
+them.  He was young, he was astonishingly successful; he had reason to
+think, with his opportunities and the investments he already had made,
+that he might some day be moderately rich; and he had at times even
+imagined himself in later life as the possessor of one of those elaborate
+country places to be glimpsed from the high roads in certain localities,
+which the sophisticated are able to recognize as the seats of the
+socially ineligible, but which to Ditmar were outward and visible emblems
+of success.  He liked to think of George as the inheritor of such a
+place, as the son of a millionaire, as a "college graduate," as an
+influential man of affairs; he liked to imagine Amy as the wife of such
+another.  In short, Ditmar's wife had left him, as an unconscious legacy,
+her aspirations for their children's social prestige....
+
+The polished oak grandfather's clock in the hall had struck one before he
+went to bed, mentally wearied by an unwonted problem involving, in
+addition to self-interest, an element of ethics, of affection not wholly
+compounded of desire.
+
+He slept soundly, however.  He was one of those fortunate beings who come
+into the world with digestive organs and thyroid glands in that condition
+which--so physiologists tell us--makes for a sanguine temperament.  And
+his course of action, though not decided upon, no longer appeared as a
+problem; it differed from a business matter in that it could wait.  As
+sufficient proof of his liver having rescued him from doubts and qualms
+he was able to whistle, as he dressed, and without a tremor of agitation,
+the forgotten tune suggested to his consciousness during the unpleasant
+reverie of the night before,--"Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage!"  It was
+Saturday.  He ate a hearty breakfast, joked with George and Amy, and
+refreshed, glowing with an expectation mingled with just the right amount
+of delightful uncertainty that made the great affairs of life a gamble,
+yet with the confidence of the conqueror, he walked in sunlight to the
+mill.  In view of this firm and hopeful tone of his being he found it all
+the more surprising, as he reached the canal, to be seized by a
+trepidation strong enough to bring perspiration to his forehead.  What if
+she had gone!  He had never thought of that, and he had to admit it would
+be just like her.  You never could tell what she would do.
+
+Nodding at Simmons, the watchman, he hurried up the iron-shod stairs,
+gained the outer once, and instantly perceived that her chair beside the
+window was empty!  Caldwell and Mr. Price stood with their heads together
+bending over a sheet on which Mr. Price was making calculations.
+
+"Hasn't Miss Bumpus come yet?" Ditmar demanded.  He tried to speak
+naturally, casually, but his own voice sounded strange, seemed to strike
+the exact note of sickening apprehension that suddenly possessed him.
+Both men turned and looked at him in some surprise.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Ditmar," Caldwell said.  "Why, yes, she's in your
+room."
+
+"Oh!" said Ditmar.
+
+"The Boston office has just been calling you--they want to know if you
+can't take the nine twenty-two," Caldwell went on.  "It's about that
+lawsuit.  It comes into court Monday morning, and Mr. Sprole is there,
+and they say they have to see you.  Miss Bumpus has the memorandum."
+
+Ditmar looked at his watch.
+
+"Damn it, why didn't they let me know yesterday?" he exclaimed.  "I won't
+see anybody, Caldwell--not even Orcutt--just now.  You understand.  I've
+got to have a little time to do some letters.  I won't be disturbed--by
+any one--for half an hour."
+
+Caldwell nodded.
+
+"All right, Mr. Ditmar."
+
+Ditmar went into his office, closing the door behind him.  She was
+occupied as usual, cutting open the letters and laying them in a pile
+with the deftness and rapidity that characterized all she did.
+
+"Janet!" he exclaimed.
+
+"There's a message for you from Boston.  I've made a note of it," she
+replied.
+
+"I know--Caldwell told me.  But I wanted to see you before I went--I had
+to see you.  I sat up half the night thinking of you, I woke up thinking
+of you.  Aren't you glad to see me?"
+
+She dropped the letter opener and stood silent, motionless, awaiting his
+approach--a pose so eloquent of the sense of fatality strong in her as to
+strike him with apprehension, unused though he was to the appraisal of
+inner values.  He read, darkly, something of this mystery in her eyes as
+they were slowly raised to his, he felt afraid; he was swept again by
+those unwonted emotions of pity and tenderness--but when she turned away
+her head and he saw the bright spot of colour growing in her cheek,
+spreading to her temple, suffusing her throat, when he touched the soft
+contour of her arm, his passion conquered....  Still he was acutely
+conscious of a resistance within her--not as before, physically directed
+against him, but repudiating her own desire.  She became limp in his
+arms, though making no attempt to escape, and he knew that the essential
+self of her he craved still evaded and defied him.  And he clung to her
+the more desperately--as though by crushing her peradventure he might
+capture it.
+
+"You're hurting me," she said at last, and he let her go, standing by
+helplessly while she went through the movements of readjustment
+instinctive to women.  Even in these he read the existence of the
+reservation he was loth to acknowledge.
+
+"Don't you love me?" he said.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You do!" he said.  "You--you proved it--I know it."
+
+She went a little away from him, picking up the paper cutter, but it lay
+idle in her hand.
+
+"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!" he exclaimed.  "I can't
+stand this.  Janet, aren't you happy?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Why not?  I love you.  I--I've never been so happy in my life as I was
+this morning.  Why aren't you happy--when we love each other?"
+
+"Because I'm not."
+
+"Why not?  There's nothing I wouldn't do to make you happy--you know
+that.  Tell me!"
+
+"You wouldn't understand.  I couldn't make you understand."
+
+"Is it something I've done?"
+
+"You don't love me," she said.  "You only want me.  I'm not made that
+way, I'm not generous enough, I guess.  I've got to have work to do."
+
+"Work to do!  But you'll share my work--it's nothing without you."
+
+She shook her head.  "I knew you couldn't understand.  You don't realize
+how impossible it is.  I don't blame you--I suppose a man can't."
+
+She was not upbraiding him, she spoke quietly, in a tone almost lifeless,
+yet the emotional effect of it was tremendous.
+
+"But," he began, and stopped, and was swept on again by an impulse that
+drowned all caution, all reason.  "But you can help me--when we are
+married."
+
+"Married!" she repeated.  "You want to marry me?"
+
+"Yes, yes--I need you."  He took her hands, he felt them tremble in his,
+her breath came quickly, but her gaze was so intent as seemingly to
+penetrate to the depths of him.  And despite his man's amazement at her
+hesitation now that he had offered her his all, he was moved, disturbed,
+ashamed as he had never been in his life.  At length, when he could stand
+no longer the suspense of this inquisition, he stammered out: "I want you
+to be my wife."
+
+"You've wanted to marry me all along?" she asked.
+
+"I didn't think, Janet.  I was mad about you.  I didn't know you."
+
+"Do you know me now?"
+
+"That's just it," he cried, with a flash of clairvoyance, "I never will
+know you--it's what makes you different from any woman I've ever seen.
+You'll marry me?"
+
+"I'm afraid," she said.  "Oh, I've thought over it, and you haven't.  A
+woman has to think, a man doesn't, so much.  And now you're willing to
+marry me, if you can't get me any other way."  Her hand touched his coat,
+checking his protest.  "It isn't that I want marriage--what you can give
+me--I'm not like that, I've told you so before.  But I couldn't live as
+your--mistress."
+
+The word on her lips shocked him a little--but her courage and candour
+thrilled him.
+
+"If I stayed here, it would be found out.  I wouldn't let you keep me.
+I'd have to have work, you see, or I'd lose my self-respect--it's all
+I've got--I'd kill myself."  She spoke as calmly as though she were
+reviewing the situation objectively.  "And then, I've thought that you
+might come to believe you really wanted to marry me--you wouldn't realize
+what you were doing, or what might happen if we were married.  I've tried
+to tell you that, too, only you didn't seem to understand what I was
+saying.  My father's only a gatekeeper, we're poor--poorer than some of
+the operatives in the mill, and the people you know here in Hampton
+wouldn't understand.  Perhaps you think you wouldn't care, but--" she
+spoke with more effort, "there are your children.  When I've thought of
+them, it all seems impossible.  I'd make you unhappy--I couldn't bear it,
+I wouldn't stay with you.  You see, I ought to have gone away long ago."
+
+Believing, as he did, that marriage was the goal of all women, even of
+the best, the immediate capitulation he had expected would have made
+matters far less difficult.  But these scruples of hers, so startlingly
+his own, her disquieting insight into his entire mental process had a
+momentary checking effect, summoned up the vague presage of a future that
+might become extremely troublesome and complicated.  His very reluctance
+to discuss with her the problem she had raised warned him that he had
+been swept into deep waters.  On the other hand, her splendid resistance
+appealed to him, enhanced her value.  And accustomed as he had been to a
+lifelong self-gratification, the thought of being balked in this supreme
+desire was not to be borne.  Such were the shades of his feeling as he
+listened to her.
+
+"That's nonsense!" he exclaimed, when she had finished.  "You're a lady--
+I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when your
+father came here--it's as good as any in New England.  What do you
+suppose I care, Janet?  We love each other--I've got to have you.  We'll
+be married in the spring, when the rush is over."
+
+He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that
+embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax--as though, against her
+will--and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own.  Her
+lithe body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him
+and hid her face in his shoulder.  His sensations in the presence of this
+thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing any he
+had ever known.  It was no longer a woman he held in his arms, the woman
+he craved, but something greater, more fearful, the mystery of sorrow and
+suffering, of creation and life--of the universe itself.
+
+"Janet--aren't you happy?" he said again.
+
+She released herself and smiled at him wistfully through her tears.
+
+"I don't know.  What I feel doesn't seem like happiness.  I can't believe
+in it, somehow."
+
+"You must believe in it," he said.
+
+"I can't,--perhaps I may, later.  You'd better go now," she begged.
+"You'll miss your train."
+
+He glanced at the office clock.  "Confound it, I have to.  Listen!  I'll
+be back this evening, and I'll get that little car of mine--"
+
+"No, not to-night--I don't want to go--to-night."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Not to-night," she repeated.
+
+"Well then, to-morrow.  To-morrow's Sunday.  Do you know where the Boat
+Club is on the River Boulevard?  I'll be there, to-morrow morning at ten.
+I'd come for you, to your house," he added quickly, "but we don't want
+any one to know, yet--do we?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"We must keep it secret for a while," he said.  "Wear your new dress--the
+blue one.  Good-bye--sweetheart."
+
+He kissed her again and hurried out of the office....  Boarding the train
+just as it was about to start, he settled himself in the back seat of the
+smoker, lit a cigar, inhaling deep breaths of the smoke and scarcely
+noticing an acquaintance who greeted him from the aisle.  Well, he had
+done it!  He was amazed.  He had not intended to propose marriage, and
+when he tried to review the circumstances that had led to this he became
+confused.  But when he asked himself whether indeed he were willing to
+pay such a price, to face the revolution marriage--and this marriage in
+particular--would mean in his life, the tumult in his blood beat down his
+incipient anxieties.  Besides, he possessed the kind of mind able to
+throw off the consideration of possible consequences, and by the time the
+train had slowed down in the darkness of the North Station in Boston all
+traces of worry had disappeared.  The future would take care of itself.
+
+For the Bumpus family, supper that evening was an unusually harmonious
+meal.  Hannah's satisfaction over the new stove had by no means subsided,
+and Edward ventured, without reproof, to praise the restored quality of
+the pie crust.  And in contrast to her usual moroseness and self-
+absorption, even Lise was gay--largely because her pet aversion, the
+dignified and allegedly amorous Mr. Waiters, floor-walker at the
+Bagatelle, had fallen down the length of the narrow stairway leading from
+the cashier's cage.  She became almost hysterical with glee as she
+pictured him lying prone beneath the counter dedicated to lingerie,
+draped with various garments from the pile that toppled over on him.
+"Ruby Nash picked a brassiere off his whiskers!" Lise shrieked.  "She
+gave the pile a shove when he landed.  He's got her number all right.
+But say, it was worth the price of admission to see that old mutt when he
+got up, he looked like Santa Claus.  All the girls in the floor were
+there we nearly split trying to keep from giving him the ha-ha.  And Ruby
+says, sympathetic, as she brushed him off, `I hope you ain't hurt, Mr.
+Waiters.' He was sore!  He went around all afternoon with a bunch on his
+coco as big as a potato."  So vivid was Lise's account of this affair
+which apparently she regarded as compensation for many days of drudgery-
+that even Hannah laughed, though deploring a choice of language symbolic
+of a world she feared and detested.
+
+"If I talked like you," said Lise, "they wouldn't understand me."
+
+Janet, too, was momentarily amused, drawn out of that reverie in which
+she had dwelt all day, ever since Ditmar had left for Boston.  Now she
+began to wonder what would happen if she were suddenly to announce "I'm
+going to marry Mr. Ditmar."  After the first shock of amazement, she
+could imagine her father's complete and complacent acceptance of the news
+as a vindication of an inherent quality in the Bumpus blood.  He would
+begin to talk about the family.  For, despite what might have been deemed
+a somewhat disillusionizing experience, in the depths of his being he
+still believed in the Providence who had presided over the perilous
+voyage of the Mayflower and the birth of Peregrine White, whose
+omniscient mind was peculiarly concerned with the family trees of
+Puritans.  And what could be a more striking proof of the existence of
+this Providence, or a more fitting acknowledgment on his part of the
+Bumpus virtues, than that Janet should become the wife of the agent of
+the Chippering Mills?  Janet smiled.  She was amused, too, by the thought
+that Lise's envy would be modified by the prospect of a heightened social
+status; since Lise, it will be remembered, had her Providence likewise.
+Hannah's god was not a Providence, but one deeply skilled in persecution,
+in ingenious methods of torture; one who would not hesitate to dangle
+baubles before the eyes of his children--only to snatch them away again.
+Hannah's pessimism would persist as far as the altar, and beyond!
+
+On the whole, such was Janet's notion of the Deity, though deep within
+her there may have existed a hope that he might be outwitted; that, by
+dint of energy and brains, the fair things of life might be obtained
+despite a malicious opposition.  And she loved Ditmar.  This must be love
+she felt, this impatience to see him again, this desire to be with him,
+this agitation possessing her so utterly that all day long she had dwelt
+in an unwonted state like a somnambulism: it must be love, though not
+resembling in the least the generally accepted, virginal ideal.  She saw
+him as he was, crude, powerful, relentless in his desire; his very faults
+appealed.  His passion had overcome his prudence, he had not intended to
+propose, but any shame she felt on this score was put to flight by a
+fierce exultation over the fact that she had brought him to her feet,
+that he wanted her enough to marry her.  It was wonderful to be wanted
+like that!  But she could not achieve the mental picture of herself as
+Ditmar's wife--especially when, later in the evening, she walked up
+Warren Street and stood gazing at his house from the opposite pavement.
+She simply could not imagine herself living in that house as its
+mistress.  Notwithstanding the testimony of the movies, such a
+Cinderella-like transition was not within the realm of probable facts;
+things just didn't happen that way.
+
+She recalled the awed exclamation of Eda when they had walked together
+along Warren Street on that evening in summer: "How would you like to
+live there!"--and hot with sudden embarrassment and resentment she had
+dragged her friend onward, to the corner.  In spite of its size, of the
+spaciousness of existence it suggested, the house had not appealed to her
+then.  Janet did not herself realize or estimate the innate if
+undeveloped sense of form she possessed, the artist-instinct that made
+her breathless on first beholding Silliston Common.  And then the vision
+of Silliston had still been bright; but now the light of a slender moon
+was as a gossamer silver veil through which she beheld the house, as in a
+stage setting, softening and obscuring its lines, lending it qualities of
+dignity and glamour that made it seem remote, unreal, unattainable.  And
+she felt a sudden, overwhelming longing, as though her breast would
+burst....
+
+Through the drawn blinds the lights in the second storey gleamed yellow.
+A dim lamp burned in the deep vestibule, as in a sanctuary.  And then, as
+though some supernaturally penetrating ray had pierced a square hole in
+the lower walls, a glimpse of the interior was revealed to her, of the
+living room at the north end of the house.  Two figures chased one
+another around the centre table--Ditmar's children!  Was Ditmar there?
+Impelled irresistibly by a curiosity overcoming repugnance and fear, she
+went forward slowly across the street, gained the farther pavement,
+stepped over the concrete coping, and stood, shivering violently, on the
+lawn, feeling like an interloper and a thief, yet held by morbid
+fascination.  The children continued to romp.  The boy was strong and
+swift, the girl stout and ungainly in her movements, not mistress of her
+body; he caught her and twisted her arm, roughly--Janet could hear her
+cries through the window-=when an elderly woman entered, seized him,
+struggling with him.  He put out his tongue at her, but presently
+released his sister, who stood rubbing her arm, her lips moving in
+evident recrimination and complaint.  The faces of the two were plain
+now; the boy resembled Ditmar, but the features of the girl, heavy and
+stamped with self-indulgence, were evidently reminiscent of the woman who
+had been his wife.  Then the shade was pulled down, abruptly; and Janet,
+overcome by a sense of horror at her position, took to flight....
+
+When, after covering the space of a block she slowed down and tried to
+imagine herself as established in that house, the stepmother of those
+children, she found it impossible.  Despite the fact that her attention
+had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had
+included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the
+farther wall, the music rack.  Evidently the girl was learning to play.
+She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot: she was
+aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the
+woman who had been her mother had possessed--that in her, Janet, had
+lacked the advantages of development.  Could it--could it ever be
+developed now?  Had this love which had come to her brought her any
+nearer to the unknown realm of light she craved?...
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Though December had come, Sunday was like an April day before whose
+sunlight the night-mists of scruples and morbid fears were scattered and
+dispersed.  And Janet, as she fared forth from the Fillmore Street flat,
+felt resurging in her the divine recklessness that is the very sap of
+life.  The future, save of the immediate hours to come, lost its power
+over her.  The blue and white beauty of the sky proclaimed all things
+possible for the strong; and the air was vibrant with the sweet music of
+bells, calling her to happiness.  She was going to meet happiness, to
+meet love--to meet Ditmar!  The trolley which she took in Faber Street,
+though lagging in its mission, seemed an agent of that happiness as it
+left the city behind it and wound along the heights beside the tarvia
+roadway above the river, bright glimpses of which she caught through the
+openings in the woods.  And when she looked out of the window on her
+right she beheld on a little forested rise a succession of tiny "camps"
+built by residents of Hampton whose modest incomes could not afford more
+elaborate summer places; camps of all descriptions and colours, with
+queer names that made her smile: "The Cranny," "The Nook," "Snug
+Harbour," "Buena Vista,"--of course,--which she thought pretty, though
+she did not know its meaning; and another, in German, equally perplexing,
+"Klein aber Mein."  Though the windows of these places were now boarded
+up, though the mosquito netting still clung rather dismally to the
+porches, they were mutely suggestive of contentment and domestic joy.
+
+Scarcely had she alighted from the car at the rendezvous he had
+mentioned, beside the now deserted boathouse where in the warm weather
+the members of the Hampton Rowing Club disported themselves, when she saw
+an automobile approaching--and recognized it as the gay "roadster" Ditmar
+had exhibited to her that summer afternoon by the canal; and immediately
+Ditmar himself, bringing it to a stop and leaping from it, stood before
+her in the sunlight, radiating, as it seemed, more sunlight still.  With
+his clipped, blond moustache and his straw-coloured hair--as yet but
+slightly grey at the temples--he looked a veritable conquering berserker
+in his huge coat of golden fur.  Never had he appeared to better
+advantage.
+
+"I was waiting for you," he said, "I saw you in the car."  Turning to the
+automobile, he stripped the tissue paper from a cluster of dark red roses
+with the priceless long stems of which Lise used to rave when she worked
+in the flower store.  And he held the flowers against her suit her new
+suit she had worn for this meeting.
+
+"Oh," she cried, taking a deep, intoxicating breath of their fragrance.
+"You brought these--for me?"
+
+"From Boston--my beauty!"
+
+"But I can't wear all of them!"
+
+"Why not?" he demanded.  "Haven't you a pin?"
+
+She produced one, attaching them with a gesture that seemed habitual,
+though the thought of their valuerevealing in some degree her own worth
+in his eyes-unnerved her.  She was warmly conscious of his gaze.  Then he
+turned, and opening a compartment at the back of the car drew from it a
+bright tweed motor coat warmly lined.
+
+"Oh, no!" she protested, drawing back.  "I'll--I'll be warm enough."  But
+laughingly, triumphantly, he seized her and thrust her arms in the
+sleeves, his fingers pressing against her.  Overcome by shyness, she drew
+away from him.
+
+"I made a pretty good guess at the size--didn't I, Janet?" he cried,
+delightedly surveying her.  "I couldn't forget it!"  His glance grew more
+concentrated, warmer, penetrating.
+
+"You mustn't look at me like that!" she pleaded with lowered eyes.
+
+"Why not--you're mine--aren't you?  You're mine, now."
+
+"I don't know.  There are lots of things I want to talk about," she
+replied, but her protest sounded feeble, unconvincing, even to herself.
+He fairly lifted her into the automobile--it was a caress, only tempered
+by the semipublicity of the place.  He was giving her no time to think--
+but she did not want to, think.  Starting the engine, he got in and
+leaned toward her.
+
+"Not here!" she exclaimed.
+
+"All right--I'll wait," he agreed, tucking the robe about her deftly,
+solicitously, and she sank back against the seat, surrendering herself to
+the luxury, the wonder of being cherished, the caressing and sheltering
+warmth she felt of security and love, the sense of emancipation from
+discontent and sordidness and struggle.  For a moment she closed her
+eyes, but opened them again to behold the transformed image of herself
+reflected in the windshield to confirm the illusion--if indeed it were
+one!  The tweed coat seemed startlingly white in the sunlight, and the
+woman she saw, yet recognized as herself, was one of the fortunately
+placed of the earth with power and beauty at her command!  And she could
+no longer imagine herself as the same person who the night before had
+stood in front of the house in Warren Street.  The car was speeding over
+the smooth surface of the boulevard; the swift motion, which seemed to
+her like that of flying, the sparkling air, the brightness of the day,
+the pressure of Ditmar's shoulder against hers, thrilled her.  She
+marvelled at his sure command over the machine, that responded like a
+live thing to his touch.  On the wide, straight stretches it went at a
+mad pace that took her breath, and again, in turning a corner or passing
+another car, it slowed down, purring in meek obedience.  Once she gasped:
+"Not so fast!  I can't stand it."
+
+He laughed and obeyed her.  They glided between river and sky across the
+delicate fabric of a bridge which but a moment before she had seen in the
+distance.  Running through the little village on the farther bank, they
+left the river.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, for a little spin," he answered indulgently, turning into a side
+road that wound through the woods and suddenly stopping.  "Janet, we've
+got this day--this whole day to ourselves."  He seized and drew her to
+him, and she yielded dizzily, repaying the passion of his kiss, forgetful
+of past and future while he held her, whispering brokenly endearing
+phrases.
+
+"You'll ruin my roses," she protested breathlessly, at last, when it
+seemed that she could no longer bear this embrace, nor the pressure of
+his lips.  "There! you see you're crushing them!"  She undid them, and
+buttoning the coat, held them to her face.  Their odour made her faint:
+her eyes were clouded.
+
+"Listen, Claude!" she said at last,--it was the first time she had called
+him so--getting free.  "You must be sensible! some one might come along."
+
+"I'll never get enough of you!" he said.  "I can't believe it yet."  And
+added irrelevantly: "Pin the roses outside."
+
+She shook her head.  Something in her protested against this too public
+advertisement of their love.
+
+"I'd rather hold them," she answered.  "Let's go on."  He started the car
+again.  "Listen, I want to talk to you, seriously.  I've been thinking."
+
+"Don't I know you've been thinking!" he told her exuberantly.  "If I
+could only find out what's always going on in that little head of yours!
+If you keep on thinking you'll dry up, like a New England school-marm.
+And now do you know what you are?  One of those dusky red roses just
+ready to bloom.  Some day I'll buy enough to smother you in 'em."
+
+"Listen!" she repeated, making a great effort to calm herself, to regain
+something of that frame of mind in which their love had assumed the
+proportions of folly and madness, to summon up the scruples which, before
+she had left home that morning, she had resolved to lay before him, which
+she knew would return when she could be alone again.  "I have to think--
+you won't," she exclaimed, with a fleeting smile.
+
+"Well, what is it?" he assented.  "You might as well get it off now."
+
+And it took all her strength to say: "I don't see how I can marry you.
+I've told you the reasons.  You're rich, and you have friends who
+wouldn't understand--and your children--they wouldn't understand.  I--I'm
+nothing, I know it isn't right, I know you wouldn't be happy.  I've never
+lived--in the kind of house you live in and known the kind of people you
+know, I shouldn't know what to do."
+
+He took his eyes off the road and glanced down at her curiously.  His
+smile was self-confident, exultant.
+
+"Now do you feel better--you little Puritan?" he said.
+
+And perforce she smiled in return, a pucker appearing between her
+eyebrows.
+
+"I mean it," she said.  "I came out to tell you so.  I know--it just
+isn't possible."
+
+"I'd marry you to-day if I could get a license," he declared.  "Why,
+you're worth any woman in America, I don't care who she is, or how much
+money she has."
+
+In spite of herself she was absurdly pleased.
+
+"Now that is over, we won't discuss it again, do you understand?  I've
+got you," he said, "and I mean to hold on to you."
+
+She sighed.  He was driving slowly now along the sandy road, and with his
+hand on hers she simply could not think.  The spell of his nearness, of
+his touch, which all nature that morning conspired to deepen, was too
+powerful to be broken, and something was calling to her, "Take this day,
+take this day," drowning out the other voice demanding an accounting.
+She was living--what did it all matter?  She yielded herself to the
+witchery of the hour, the sheer delight of forthfaring into the unknown.
+
+They turned away from the river, crossing the hills of a rolling country
+now open, now wooded, passing white farmhouses and red barns, and
+ancient, weather-beaten dwellings with hipped roofs and "lean-tos" which
+had been there in colonial days when the road was a bridle-path.  Cows
+and horses stood gazing at them from warm paddocks, where the rich, black
+mud glistened, melted by the sun; chickens scratched and clucked in the
+barnyards or flew frantically across the road, sometimes within an ace of
+destruction.  Janet flinched, but Ditmar would laugh, gleefully,
+boyishly.
+
+"We nearly got that one!" he would exclaim.  And then he had to assure
+her that he wouldn't run over them.
+
+"I haven't run over one yet,--have I?" he would demand.
+
+"No, but you will, it's only luck."
+
+"Luck!" he cried derisively.  "Skill!  I wish I had a dollar for every
+one I got when I was learning to drive.  There was a farmer over here in
+Chester--" and he proceeded to relate how he had had to pay for two
+turkeys.  "He got my number, the old hayseed, he was laying for me, and
+the next time I went back that way he held me up for five dollars.  I can
+remember the time when a man in a motor was an easy mark for every reuben
+in the county.  They got rich on us."
+
+She responded to his mood, which was wholly irresponsible, exuberant, and
+they laughed together like children, every little incident assuming an
+aspect irresistibly humorous.  Once he stopped to ask an old man standing
+in his dooryard how far it was to Kingsbury.
+
+"Wal, mebbe it's two mile, they mostly call it two," said the patriarch,
+after due reflection, gathering his beard in his band.  "Mebbe it's
+more."  His upper lip was blue, shaven, prehensile.
+
+"What did you ask him for, when you know?" said Janet, mirthfully, when
+they had gone on, and Ditmar was imitating him.  Ditmar's reply was to
+wink at her.  Presently they saw another figure on the road.
+
+"Let's see what he'll say," Ditmar proposed.  This man was young, the
+colour of mahogany, with glistening black hair and glistening black eyes
+that regarded the too palpable joyousness of their holiday humour in mute
+surprise.
+
+"I no know--stranger," he said.
+
+"No speaka Portugueso?" inquired Ditmar, gravely.
+
+"The country is getting filthy with foreigners," he observed, when he had
+started the car.  "I went down to Plymouth last summer to see the old
+rock, and by George, it seemed as if there wasn't anybody could speak
+American on the whole cape.  All the Portuguese islands are dumped there-
+-cranberry pickers, you know."
+
+"I didn't know that," said Janet.
+
+"Sure thing!" he exclaimed.  "And when I got there, what do you think?
+there was hardly enough of the old stone left to stand on, and that had a
+fence around it like an exhibit in an exposition.  It had all been
+chipped away by souvenir hunters."
+
+She gazed at him incredulously.
+
+"You don't believe me!  I'll take you down there sometime.  And another
+thing, the rock's high and dry--up on the land.  I said to Charlie Crane,
+who was with me, that it must have been a peach of a jump for old Miles
+Standish and Priscilla what's her name."
+
+"How I'd love to see the ocean again!"  Janet exclaimed.
+
+"Why, I'll take you--as often as you like," he promised.  "We'll go out
+on it in summer, up to Maine, or down to the Cape."
+
+Her enchantment was now so great that nothing seemed impossible.
+
+"And we'll go down to Plymouth, too, some Sunday soon, if this weather
+keeps up.  If we start early enough we can get there for lunch, easy.
+We'll see the rock.  I guess some of your ancestors must have come over
+with that Mayflower outfit--first cabin, eh?  You look like it."
+
+Janet laughed.  "It's a joke on them, if they did.  I wonder what they'd
+think of Hampton, if they could see it now.  I counted up once, just to
+tease father--he's the seventh generation from Ebenezer Bumpus, who came
+to Dolton.  Well, I proved to him he might have one hundred and twenty-
+six other ancestors besides Ebenezer and his wife."
+
+"That must have jarred him some," was Ditmar's comment.  "Great old man,
+your father.  I've talked to him--he's a regular historical society all
+by himself.  Well, there must be something in it, this family business.
+Now, you can tell he comes from fine old American stock-he looks it."
+
+Janet flushed.  "A lot of good it does!" she exclaimed.
+
+"I don't know," said Ditmar.  "It's something to fall back on--a good
+deal.  And he hasn't got any of that nonsense in his head about labour
+unions--he's a straight American.  And you look the part," he added.
+"You remind me--I never thought of it until now--you remind me of a
+picture of Priscilla I saw once in a book of poems Longfellow's, you
+know.  I'm not much on literature, but I remember that, and I remember
+thinking she could have me.  Funny isn't it, that you should have come
+along?  But you've got more ginger than the woman in that picture.  I'm
+the only man that ever guessed it isn't that so?" he asked jealously.
+
+"You're wonderful!" retorted Janet, daringly.
+
+"You just bet I am, or I couldn't have landed you," he asserted.  "You're
+chock full of ginger, but it's been all corked up.  You're so prim-so
+Priscilla."  He was immensely pleased with the adjective he had coined,
+repeating it.  "It's a great combination.  When I think of it, I want to
+shake you, to squeeze you until you scream."
+
+"Then please don't think of it," she said.
+
+"That's easy!" he exclaimed, mockingly.
+
+At a quarter to one they entered a sleepy village reminiscent of a New
+England of other days.  The long street, deeply shaded in summer, was
+bordered by decorous homes, some of which had stood there for a century
+and a half; others were of the Mansard period.  The high school, of
+strawberry-coloured brick, had been the pride and glory of the Kingsbury
+of the '70s: there were many churches, some graceful and some hideous.
+At the end of the street they came upon a common, surrounded by stone
+posts and a railing, with a monument in the middle of it, and facing the
+common on the north side was a rambling edifice with many white gables,
+in front of which, from an iron arm on a post, swung a quaint sign,
+"Kingsbury Tavern."  In revolutionary and coaching days the place bad
+been a famous inn; and now, thanks to the enterprise of a man who had
+foreseen the possibilities of an era of automobiles, it had become even
+more famous.  A score of these modern vehicles were drawn up before it
+under the bare, ancient elms; there was a scene of animation on the long
+porch, where guests strolled up and down or sat in groups in the rocking-
+chairs which the mild weather had brought forth again.  Ditmar drew up in
+line with the other motors, and stopped.
+
+"Well, here we are!" he exclaimed, as he pulled off his gauntlets.  "I
+guess I could get along with something to eat.  How about you?  They
+treat you as well here as any place I know of in New England."
+
+He assumed their lunching together at a public place as a matter of
+course to which there could not possibly be an objection, springing out
+of the car, removing the laprobe from her knees, and helping her to
+alight.  She laid the roses on the seat.
+
+"Aren't you going to bring them along?" he demanded.
+
+"I'd rather not," she said.  "Don't you think they'll be safe here?"
+
+"Oh, I guess so," he replied.  She was always surprising him; but her
+solicitation concerning them was a balm, and he found all such
+instinctive acts refreshing.
+
+"Afraid of putting up too much of a front, are you?" he asked smilingly.
+
+"I'd rather leave them here," she replied.  As she walked beside Ditmar
+to the door she was excited, unwontedly self-conscious, painfully aware
+of inspection by the groups on the porch.  She had seen such people as
+these hurrying in automobiles through the ugliness of Faber Street in
+Hampton toward just such delectable spots as this village of Kingsbury--
+people of that world of freedom and privilege from which she was
+excluded; Ditmar's world.  He was at home here.  But she?  The delusion
+that she somehow had been miraculously snatched up into it was marred by
+their glances.  What were they thinking of her?  Her face was hot as she
+passed them and entered the hall, where more people were gathered.  But
+Ditmar's complacency, his ease and self-confidence, his manner of owning
+the place, as it were, somewhat reassured her.  He went up to the desk,
+behind which, stood a burly, red-complexioned man who greeted him
+effusively, yet with the air of respect accorded the powerful.
+
+"Hullo, Eddie," said Ditmar.  "You've got a good crowd here to-day.  Any
+room for me?"
+
+"Sure, Mr. Ditmar, we can always make room for you.  Well, I haven't laid
+eyes on you for a dog's age.  Only last Sunday Mr. Crane was here, and I
+was asking him where you'd been keeping yourself."
+
+"Why, I've been busy, Eddie.  I've landed the biggest order ever heard of
+in Hampton.  Some of us have to work, you know; all you've got to do is
+to loaf around this place and smoke cigars and rake in the money."
+
+The proprietor of the Kingsbury Tavern smiled indulgently at this
+persiflage.
+
+"Let me present you to Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar.  "This is my friend,
+Eddie Hale," he added, for Janet's benefit.  "And when you've eaten his
+dinner you'll believe me when I say he's got all the other hotel men
+beaten a mile."
+
+Janet smiled and flushed.  She had been aware of Mr. Hale's discreet
+glance.
+
+"Pleased to meet you, Miss Bumpus," he said, with a somewhat elaborate
+bow.
+
+"Eddie," said Ditmar, "have you got a nice little table for us?"
+
+"It's a pity I didn't know you was coming, but I'll do my best," declared
+Mr. Hale, opening the door in the counter.
+
+"Oh, I guess you can fix us all right, if you want to, Eddie."
+
+"Mr. Ditmar's a great josher," Mr. Hale told Janet confidentially as he
+escorted them into the dining-room.  And Ditmar, gazing around over the
+heads of the diners, spied in an alcove by a window a little table with
+tilted chairs.
+
+"That one'll do," he said.
+
+"I'm sorry, but it's engaged," apologized Mr. Hale.
+
+"Forget it, Eddie--tell 'em they're late," said Ditmar, making his way
+toward it.
+
+The proprietor pulled out Janet's chair.
+
+"Say," he remarked, "it's no wonder you get along in business."
+
+"Well, this is cosy, isn't it?" said Ditmar to Janet when they were
+alone.  He handed her the menu, and snapped his fingers for a waitress.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me you were coming to this place?" she asked.
+
+"I wanted to surprise you.  Don't you like it?"
+
+"Yes," she replied.  "Only--"
+
+"Only, what?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't look at me like that--here."
+
+"All right.  I'll try to be good until we get into the car again.  You
+watch me!  I'll behave as if we'd been married ten years."
+
+He snapped his fingers again, and the waitress hurried up to take their
+orders.
+
+"Kingsbury's still dry, I guess," he said to the girl, who smiled
+sympathetically, somewhat ruefully.  When she had gone he began to talk
+to Janet about the folly, in general, of prohibition, the fusel oil
+distributed on the sly.  "I'll bet I could go out and find half a dozen
+rum shops within a mile of here!" he declared.
+
+Janet did not doubt it.  Ditmar's aplomb, his faculty of getting what he
+wanted, had amused and distracted her.  She was growing calmer, able to
+scrutinize, at first covertly and then more boldly the people at the
+other tables, only to discover that she and Ditmar were not the objects
+of the universal curiosity she had feared.  Once in a while, indeed, she
+encountered and then avoided the glance of some man, felt the admiration
+in it, was thrilled a little, and her sense of exhilaration returned as
+she regained her poise.  She must be nice looking--more than that--in her
+new suit.  On entering the tavern she had taken off the tweed coat, which
+Ditmar had carried and laid on a chair.  This new and amazing adventure
+began to go to her head like wine....
+
+When luncheon was over they sat in a sunny corner of the porch while
+Ditmar smoked his cigar.  His digestion was good, his spirits high, his
+love-making--on account of the public nature of the place--surreptitious
+yet fervent.  The glamour to which Janet had yielded herself was on
+occasions slightly troubled by some new and enigmatic element to be
+detected in his voice and glances suggestive of intentions vaguely
+disquieting.  At last she said:
+
+"Oughtn't we to be going home?"
+
+"Home!" he ridiculed the notion.  "I'm going to take you to the prettiest
+road you ever saw--around by French's Lower Falls.  I only wish it was
+summer."
+
+"I must be home before dark," she told him.  "You see, the family don't
+know where I am.  I haven't said anything to them about--about this."
+
+"That's right," he said, after a moment's hesitation:
+
+"I didn't think you would.  There's plenty of time for that--after things
+get settled a little--isn't there?"
+
+She thought his look a little odd, but the impression passed as they
+walked to the motor.  He insisted now on her pinning the roses on the
+tweed coat, and she humoured him.  The winter sun had already begun to
+drop, and with the levelling rays the bare hillsides, yellow and brown in
+the higher light, were suffused with pink; little by little, as the sun
+fell lower, imperceptible clouds whitened the blue cambric of the sky,
+distant copses were stained lilac.  And Janet, as she gazed, wondered at
+a world that held at once so much beauty, so much joy and sorrow,--such
+strange sorrow as began to invade her now, not personal, but cosmic.  At
+times it seemed almost to suffocate her; she drew in deep breaths of air:
+it was the essence of all things--of the man by her side, of herself, of
+the beauty so poignantly revealed to her.
+
+Gradually Ditmar became conscious of this detachment, this new evidence
+of an extraordinary faculty of escaping him that seemed unimpaired.
+Constantly he tried by leaning closer to her, by reaching out his hand,
+to reassure himself that she was at least physically present.  And though
+she did not resent these tokens, submitting passively, he grew perplexed
+and troubled; his optimistic atheism concerning things unseen was
+actually shaken by the impression she conveyed of beholding realities
+hidden from him.  Shadows had begun to gather in the forest, filmy mists
+to creep over the waters.  He asked if she were cold, and she shook her
+head and sighed as one coming out of a trance, smiling at him.
+
+"It's been a wonderful day!" she said.
+
+"The greatest ever!" he agreed.  And his ardour, mounting again, swept
+away the unwonted mood of tenderness and awe she had inspired in him,
+made him bold to suggest the plan which had been the subject of an
+ecstatic contemplation.
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said, "we'll take a little run down to
+Boston and have dinner together.  We'll be there in an hour, and back by
+ten o'clock."
+
+"To Boston!" she repeated.  "Now?"
+
+"Why not?" he said, stopping the car.  "Here's the road--it's a boulevard
+all the way."
+
+It was not so much the proposal as the passion in his voice, in his
+touch, the passion to which she felt herself responding that filled her
+with apprehension and dismay, and yet aroused her pride and anger.
+
+"I told you I had to be home," she said.
+
+"I'll have you home by ten o'clock; I promise.  We're going to be
+married, Janet," he whispered.
+
+"Oh, if you meant to marry me you wouldn't ask me to do this!" she cried.
+"I want to go back to Hampton.  If you won't take me, I'll walk."
+
+She had drawn away from him, and her hand was on the door.  He seized her
+arm.
+
+"For God's sake, don't take it that way!" he cried, in genuine alarm.
+"All I meant was--that we'd have a nice little dinner.  I couldn't bear
+to leave you, it'll be a whole week before we get another day.  Do you
+suppose I'd--I'd do anything to insult you, Janet?"
+
+With her fingers still tightened over the door-catch she turned and
+looked at him.
+
+"I don't know," she said slowly.  "Sometimes I think you would.  Why
+shouldn't you?  Why should you marry me?  Why shouldn't you try to do
+with me what you've done with other women?  I don't know anything about
+the world, about life.  I'm nobody.  Why shouldn't you?"
+
+"Because you're not like the other women--that's why.  I love you--won't
+you believe it?" He was beside himself with anxiety.  "Listen--I'll take
+you home if you want to go.  You don't know how it hurts me to have you
+think such things!"
+
+"Well, then, take me home," she said.  It was but gradually that she
+became pacified.  A struggle was going on within her between these doubts
+of him he had stirred up again and other feelings aroused by his
+pleadings.  Night fell, and when they reached the Silliston road the
+lights of Hampton shone below them in the darkness.
+
+"You'd better let me out here," she said.  "You can't drive me home."
+
+He brought the car to a halt beside one of the small wooden shelters
+built for the convenience of passengers.
+
+"You forgive me--you understand, Janet?" he asked.
+
+"Sometimes I don't know what to think," she said, and suddenly clung to
+him.  "I--I forgive you.  I oughtn't to suspect such things, but I'm like
+that.  I'm horrid and I can't help it."  She began to unbutton the coat
+he had bought for her.
+
+"Aren't you going to take it?" he said.  "It's yours."
+
+"And what do you suppose my family would say if I told them Mr. Ditmar
+had given it to me?"
+
+"Come on, I'll drive you home, I'll tell them I gave it to you, that
+we're going to be married," he announced recklessly.
+
+"Oh, no!" she exclaimed in consternation.  "You couldn't.  You said so
+yourself--that you didn't want, any one to know, now.  I'll get on the
+trolley."
+
+"And the roses?" he asked.
+
+She pressed them to her face, and chose one.  "I'll take this," she said,
+laying the rest on the seat....
+
+He waited until he saw her safely on the trolley car, and then drove
+slowly homeward in a state of amazement.  He had been on the verge of
+announcing himself to the family in Fillmore Street as her prospective
+husband!  He tried to imagine what that household was like; and again he
+found himself wondering why she had not consented to his proposal.  And
+the ever-recurring question presented itselfwas he prepared to go that
+length?  He didn't know.  She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she
+was to him as mysterious as a symphony.  Certain strains of her moved him
+intensely--the rest was beyond his grasp....  At supper, while his
+children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, and in
+spite of their presence the house seemed appallingly empty.
+
+When Janet returned home she ran to her bedroom, and taking from the
+wardrobe the tissue paper that had come with her new dress, and which she
+had carefully folded, she wrapped the rose in it, and put it away in the
+back of a drawer.  Thus smothered, its fragrance stifled, it seemed
+emblematic, somehow, of the clandestine nature of her love....
+
+The weeks that immediately followed were strange ones.  All the elements
+of life that previously had been realities, trivial yet fundamental, her
+work, her home, her intercourse with the family, became fantastic.  There
+was the mill to which she went every day: she recognized it, yet it was
+not the same mill, nor was Fillmore Street the Fillmore Street of old.
+Nor did the new and feverish existence over whose borderland she had been
+transported seem real, save in certain hours she spent in Ditmar's
+company, when he made her forget--hers being a temperament to feel the
+weight of an unnatural secrecy.  She was aware, for instance, that her
+mother and even her father thought her conduct odd, were anxious as to
+her absences on certain nights and on Sundays.  She offered no
+explanation.  It was impossible.  She understood that the reason why they
+refrained from questioning her was due to a faith in her integrity as
+well as to a respect for her as a breadwinner who lead earned a right to
+independence.  And while her suspicion of Hannah's anxiety troubled her,
+on the occasions when she thought of it, Lise's attitude disturbed her
+even more.  From Lise she had been prepared for suspicion, arraignment,
+ridicule.  What a vindication if it were disclosed that she, Janet, had a
+lover--and that lover Ditmar!  But Lise said nothing.  She was remote,
+self-absorbed.  Hannah spoke about it on the evenings Janet stayed at
+home.
+
+She would not consent to meet Ditmar every evening.  Yet, as the days
+succeeded one another, Janet was often astonished by the fact that their
+love remained apparently unsuspected by Mr. Price and Caldwell and others
+in the office.  They must have noticed, on some occasions, the manner in
+which Ditmar looked at her; and in business hours she had continually to
+caution him, to keep him in check.  Again, on the evening excursions to
+which she consented, though they were careful to meet in unfrequented
+spots, someone might easily have recognized him; and she did not like to
+ponder over the number of young women in the other offices who knew her
+by sight.  These reflections weighed upon her, particularly when she
+seemed conscious of curious glances.  But what caused her the most
+concern was the constantly recurring pressure to which Ditmar himself
+subjected her, and which, as time went on, she found increasingly
+difficult to resist.  He tried to take her by storm, and when this method
+failed, resorted to pleadings and supplications even harder to deny
+because of the innate feminine pity she felt for him.  To recount these
+affairs would be a mere repetition of identical occurrences.  On their
+second Sunday excursion he had actually driven her, despite her
+opposition, several miles on the Boston road; and her resistance only
+served to inflame him the more.  It seemed, afterwards, as she sat
+unnerved, a miracle that she had stopped him.  Then came reproaches: she
+would not trust him; they could not be married at once; she must
+understand that!--an argument so repugnant as to cause her to shake with
+sobs of inarticulate anger.  After this he would grow bewildered, then
+repentant, then contrite.  In contrition--had he known it--he was nearest
+to victory.
+
+As has been said, she did not intellectualize her reasons, but the core
+of her resistance was the very essence of an individuality having its
+roots in a self-respecting and self-controlling inheritance--an element
+wanting in her sister Lise.  It must have been largely the thought of
+Lise, the spectacle of Lise--often perhaps unconsciously present that
+dominated her conduct; yet reinforcing such an ancestral sentiment was
+another, environmental and more complicated, the result in our modern
+atmosphere of an undefined feminism apt to reveal itself in many
+undesirable ways, but which in reality is a logical projection of the
+American tradition of liberty.  To submit was not only to lose her
+liberty, to become a dependent, but also and inevitably, she thought, to
+lose Ditmar's love....
+
+No experience, however, is emotionally continuous, nor was their intimacy
+by any means wholly on this plane of conflict.  There were hours when,
+Ditmar's passion leaving spent itself, they achieved comradeship, in the
+office and out of it; revelations for Janet when he talked of himself,
+relating the little incidents she found most illuminating.  And thus by
+degrees she was able to build up a new and truer estimate of him.  For
+example, she began to perceive that his life outside of his interest in
+the mills, instead of being the romance of privileged joys she had once
+imagined, had been almost as empty as her own, without either unity or
+direction.  Her perception was none the less keen because definite terms
+were wanting for its expression.  The idea of him that first had
+captivated her was that of an energized and focussed character
+controlling with a sure hand the fortunes of a great organization; of a
+power in the city and state, of a being who, in his leisure moments,
+dwelt in a delectable realm from which she was excluded.  She was still
+acutely conscious of his force, but what she now felt was its lack of
+direction--save for the portion that drove the Chippering Mills.  The
+rest of it, like the river, flowed away on the line of least resistance
+to the sea.
+
+As was quite natural, this gradual discovery of what he was--or of what
+he wasn't--this truer estimate, this partial disillusionment, merely
+served to deepen and intensify the feeling he had aroused in her; to
+heighten, likewise, the sense of her own value by confirming a belief in
+her possession of certain qualities, of a kind of fibre he needed in a
+helpmate.  She dwelt with a woman's fascination upon the prospect of
+exercising a creative influence--even while she acknowledged the fearful
+possibility of his power in unguarded moments to overwhelm and destroy
+her.  Here was another incentive to resist the gusts of his passion.  She
+could guide and develop him by helping and improving herself.  Hope and
+ambition throbbed within her, she felt a contempt for his wife, for the
+women who had been her predecessors.  He had not spoken of these, save
+once or twice by implication, but with what may seem a surprising
+leniency she regarded them as consequences of a life lacking in content.
+If only she could keep her head, she might supply that content, and bring
+him happiness!  The thought of his children troubled her most, but she
+was quick to perceive that he got nothing from them; and even though it
+were partly his own fault, she was inclined to lay the heavier blame on
+the woman who had been their mother.  The triviality, the emptiness of
+his existence outside of the walls of the mill made her heart beat with
+pure pity.  For she could understand it.
+
+One of the many, and often humorous, incidents that served to bring about
+this realization of a former aimlessness happened on their second Sunday
+excursion.  This time he had not chosen the Kingsbury Tavern, but another
+automobilists' haunt, an enlightening indication of established habits
+involving a wide choice of resorts.  While he was paying for luncheon and
+chatting with the proprietor, Ditmar snatched from the change he had
+flung down on the counter a five dollar gold coin.
+
+"Now how in thunder did that get into my right-hand pocket?  I always
+keep it in my vest," he exclaimed; and the matter continued to disturb
+him after they were in the automobile.  "It's my lucky piece.  I guess I
+was so excited at the prospect of seeing you when I dressed this morning
+I put it into my change.  Just see what you do to me!"
+
+"Does it bring you luck?" she inquired smilingly.
+
+"How about you!  I call you the biggest piece of luck I ever had."
+
+"You'd better not be too sure," she warned him.
+
+"Oh, I'm not worrying.  I has that piece in my pocket the day I went down
+to see old Stephen Chippering, when he made me agent, and I've kept it
+ever since.  And I'll tell you a funny thing--it's enough to make any man
+believe in luck.  Do you remember that day last summer I was tinkering
+with the car by the canal and you came along?"
+
+"The day you pretended to be tinkering," she corrected him.
+
+He laughed.  "So you were on to me?" he said.  "You're a foxy one!"
+
+"Anyone could see you were only pretending.  It made me angry, when I
+thought of it afterwards."
+
+"I just had to do it--I wanted to talk to you.  But listen to what I'm
+going to tell you!  It's a miracle, all right,--happening just at that
+time--that very morning.  I was coming back to Boston from New York on
+the midnight, and when the train ran into Back Bay and I was putting on
+my trousers the piece rolled out among the bed clothes.  I didn't know
+I'd lost it until I sat down in the Parker House to eat my breakfast, and
+I suddenly felt in my pocket.  It made me sick to think it was gone.
+Well, I started to telephone the Pullman office, and then I made up my
+mind I'd take a taxi and go down to the South Station myself, and just as
+I got out of the cab there was the nigger porter, all dressed up in his
+glad rags, coming out of the station!  I knew him, I'd been on his car
+lots of times.  `Say, George,' I said, `I didn't forget you this morning,
+did I?'
+
+"`No, suh,' said George, 'you done give me a quarter.'
+
+"`I guess you're mistaken, George,' says I, and I fished out a ten dollar
+bill.  You ought to have seen that nigger's eyes."
+
+"`What's this for, Mister Ditmar?' says he.
+
+"`For that lucky gold piece you found in lower seven,' I told him.
+`We'll trade.'
+
+"'Was you in lower seven?--so you was!' says George.  Well, he had it
+all right--you bet he had it.  Now wasn't that queer?  The very day you
+and I began to know each other!"
+
+"Wonderful!" Janet agreed.  "Why don't you put it on your watch chain?"
+
+"Well, I've thought of that," he replied, with the air of having
+considered all sides of the matter.  "But I've got that charm of the
+secret order I belong to--that's on my chain.  I guess I'll keep it in my
+vest pocket."
+
+"I didn't know you were so superstitious," she mocked.
+
+"Pretty nearly everybody's superstitious," he declared.  And she thought
+of Lise.
+
+"I'm not.  I believe if things are going to happen well, they're going to
+happen.  Nothing can prevent it."
+
+"By thunder" he exclaimed, struck by her remark.  "You are like that
+You're different from any person I ever knew...."
+
+From such anecdotes she pieced together her new Ditmar.  He spoke of a
+large world she had never seen, of New York and Washington and Chicago,
+where he intended to take her.  In the future he would never travel
+alone.  And he told her of his having been a delegate to the last
+National Republican Convention, explaining what a delegate was.  He
+gloried in her innocence, and it was pleasant to dazzle her with
+impressions of his cosmopolitanism.  In this, perhaps, he was not quite
+so successful as he imagined, but her eyes shone.  She had never even
+been in a sleeping car!  For her delectation he launched into an
+enthusiastic description of these vehicles, of palatial compartment cars,
+of limited, transcontinental trains, where one had a stenographer and a
+barber at one's disposal.
+
+"Neither of them would do me any good," she complained.
+
+"You could go to the manicure," he said.
+
+There had been in Ditmar's life certain events which, in his anecdotal
+moods, were magnified into matters of climacteric importance; high,
+festal occasions on which it was sweet to reminisce, such as his visit as
+Delegate at Large to that Chicago Convention.  He had travelled on a
+special train stocked with cigars and White Seal champagne, in the
+company of senators and congressmen and ex-governors, state treasurers,
+collectors of the port, mill owners, and bankers to whom he referred, as
+the French say, in terms of their "little" names.  He dwelt on the
+magnificence of the huge hotel set on the borders of a lake like an
+inland sea, and related such portions of the festivities incidental to
+"the seeing of Chicago" as would bear repetition.  No women belonged to
+this realm; no women, at least, who were to be regarded as persons.
+Ditmar did not mention them, but no doubt they existed, along with the
+cigars and the White Seal champagne, contributing to the amenities.  And
+the excursion, to Janet, took on the complexion of a sort of glorified
+picnic in the course of which, incidentally, a President of the United
+States had been chosen.  In her innocence she had believed the voters to
+perform this function.  Ditmar laughed.
+
+"Do you suppose we're going to let the mob run this country?" he
+inquired.  "Once in a while we can't get away with it as we'd like, we
+have to take the best we can."
+
+Thus was brought home to her more and more clearly that what men strove
+and fought for were the joys of prominence, privilege, and power.
+Everywhere, in the great world, they demanded and received consideration.
+It was Ditmar's boast that if nobody else could get a room in a crowded
+New York hotel, he could always obtain one.  And she was fain to concede
+--she who had never known privilege--a certain intoxicating quality to
+this eminence.  If you could get the power, and refused to take it, the
+more fool you!  A topsy-turvy world, in which the stupid toiled day by
+day, week by week, exhausting their energies and craving joy, while
+others adroitly carried off the prize; and virtue had apparently as
+little to do with the matter as fair hair or a club foot.  If Janet had
+ever read Darwin, she would have recognized in her lover a creature
+rather wonderfully adapted to his environment; and what puzzled her,
+perhaps, was the riddle that presents itself to many better informed than
+herself--the utter absence in this environment of the sign of any being
+who might be called God.  Her perplexities--for she did have them--took
+the form of an instinctive sense of inadequacy, of persistently recurring
+though inarticulate convictions of the existence of elements not included
+in Ditmar's categories--of things that money could not buy; of things,
+too, alas! that poverty was as powerless to grasp.  Stored within her,
+sometimes rising to the level of consciousness, was that experience at
+Silliston in the May weather when she had had a glimpse--just a glimpse!
+of a garden where strange and precious flowers were in bloom.  On the
+other hand, this mysterious perception by her of things unseen and
+hitherto unguessed, of rays of delight in the spectrum of values to which
+his senses were unattuned, was for Ditmar the supreme essence of her
+fascination.  At moments he was at once bewildered and inebriated by the
+rare delicacy of fabric of the woman whom he had somehow stumbled upon
+and possessed.
+
+Then there were the hours when they worked together in the office.  Here
+she beheld Ditmar at his best.  It cannot be said that his infatuation
+for her was ever absent from his consciousness: he knew she was there
+beside him, he betrayed it continually.  But here she was in the presence
+of what had been and what remained his ideal, the Chippering Mill; here
+he acquired unity.  All his energies were bent toward the successful
+execution of the Bradlaugh order, which had to be completed on the first
+of February.  And as day after day went by her realization of the
+magnitude of the task he had undertaken became keener.  Excitement was in
+the air.  Ditmar seemed somehow to have managed to infuse not only
+Orcutt, the superintendent, but the foremen and second hands and even the
+workers with a common spirit of pride and loyalty, of interest, of
+determination to carry off this matter triumphantly.  The mill seemed
+fairly to hum with effort.  Janet's increasing knowledge of its
+organization and processes only served to heighten her admiration for the
+confidence Ditmar had shown from the beginning.  It was superb.  And now,
+as the probability of the successful execution of the task tended more
+and more toward certainty, he sometimes gave vent to his boyish,
+exuberant spirits.
+
+"I told Holster, I told all those croakers I'd do it, and by thunder I
+will do it, with three days' margin, too!  I'll get the last shipment off
+on the twenty-eighth of January.  Why, even George Chippering was afraid
+I couldn't handle it.  If the old man was alive he wouldn't have had cold
+feet."  Then Ditmar added, half jocularly, half seriously, looking down
+on her as she sat with her note-book, waiting for him to go on with his
+dictation: "I guess you've had your share in it, too.  You've been a
+wonder, the way you've caught on and taken things off my shoulders.  If
+Orcutt died I believe you could step right into his shoes."
+
+"I'm sure I could step into his shoes," she replied.  "Only I hope he
+won't die."
+
+"I hope he won't, either," said Ditmar.  "And as for you--"
+
+"Never mind me, now," she said.
+
+He bent over her.
+
+"Janet, you're the greatest girl in the world."
+
+Yes, she was happiest when she felt she was helping him, it gave her
+confidence that she could do more, lead him into paths beyond which they
+might explore together.  She was useful.  Sometimes, however, he seemed
+to her oversanguine; though he had worked hard, his success had come too
+easily, had been too uniform.  His temper was quick, the prospect of
+opposition often made him overbearing, yet on occasions he listened with
+surprising patience to his subordinates when they ventured to differ from
+his opinions.  At other times Janet had seen him overrule them
+ruthlessly; humiliate them.  There were days when things went wrong, when
+there were delays, complications, more matters to attend to than usual.
+On one such day, after the dinner hour, Mr. Orcutt entered the office.
+His long, lean face wore a certain expression Janet had come to know, an
+expression that always irritated Ditmar--the conscientious superintendent
+having the unfortunate faculty of exaggerating annoyances by his very
+bearing.  Ditmar stopped in the midst of dictating a peculiarly difficult
+letter, and looked up sharply.
+
+"Well," he asked, "what's the trouble now?"
+
+Orcutt seemed incapable of reading storm signals.  When anything
+happened, he had the air of declaring, "I told you so."
+
+"You may remember I spoke to you once or twice, Mr. Ditmar, of the talk
+over the fifty-four hour law that goes into effect in January."
+
+"Yes, what of it?" Ditmar cut in.  "The notices have been posted, as the
+law requires."
+
+"The hands have been grumbling, there are trouble makers among them.  A
+delegation came to me this noon and wanted to know whether we intended to
+cut the pay to correspond to the shorter working hours."
+
+"Of course it's going to be cut," said Ditmar.  "What do they suppose?
+That we're going to pay 'em for work they don't do?  The hands not paid
+by the piece are paid practically by the hour, not by the day.  And
+there's got to be some limit to this thing.  If these damned demagogues
+in the legislature keep on cutting down the hours of women and children
+every three years or so--and we can't run the mill without the women and
+children--we might as well shut down right now.  Three years ago,  when
+they made it fifty-six hours, we were fools to keep up the pay.  I said
+so then, at the conference, but they wouldn't listen to me.  They
+listened this time.  Holster and one or two others croaked, but we shut
+'em up.  No, they won't get any more pay, not a damned cent."
+
+Orcutt had listened patiently, lugubriously.
+
+"I told them that."
+
+"What did they say?"
+
+"They said they thought there'd be a strike."
+
+"Pooh!  Strike!" exclaimed Ditmar with contemptuous violence.  "Do you
+believe that?  You're always borrowing trouble, you are.  They may have a
+strike at one mill, the Clarendon.  I hope they do, I hope Holster gets
+it in the neck--he don't know how to run a mill anyway.  We won't have
+any strike, our people understand when they're well off, they've got all
+the work they can do, they're sending fortunes back to the old country or
+piling them up in the banks.  It's all bluff."
+
+"There was a meeting of the English branch of the I. W. W.  last night.
+A committee was appointed," said Orcutt, who as usual took a gloomy
+satisfaction in the prospect of disaster.
+
+"The I. W. W.!  My God, Orcutt, don't you know enough not to come in here
+wasting my time talking about the I. W. W.?  Those anarchists haven't got
+any organization.  Can't you get that through your head?"
+
+"All right," replied Orcutt, and marched off.  Janet felt rather sorry
+for him, though she had to admit that his manner was exasperating.  But
+Ditmar's anger, instead of cooling, increased: it all seemed directed
+against the unfortunate superintendent.
+
+"Would you believe that a man who's been in this mill twenty-five years
+could be such a fool?" he demanded.  "The I. W. W.!  Why not the Ku Klux?
+He must think I haven't anything to do but chin.  I don't know why I keep
+him here, sometimes I think he'll drive me crazy."
+
+His eyes seemed to have grown small and red, as was always the case when
+his temper got the better of him.  Janet did not reply, but sat with her
+pencil poised over her book.
+
+"Let's see, where was I?" he asked.  "I can't finish that letter now.  Go
+out and do the others."
+
+Mundane experience, like a badly mixed cake, has a tendency to run in
+streaks, and on the day following the incident related above Janet's
+heart was heavy.  Ditmar betrayed an increased shortness of temper and
+preoccupation; and the consciousness that her love had lent her a
+clairvoyant power to trace the source of his humours though these were
+often hidden from or unacknowledged by himself--was in this instance
+small consolation.  She saw clearly enough that the apprehensions
+expressed by Mr. Orcutt, whom he had since denounced as an idiotic old
+woman, had made an impression, aroused in him the ever-abiding concern
+for the mill which was his life's passion and which had been but
+temporarily displaced by his infatuation with her.  That other passion
+was paramount.  What was she beside it?  Would he hesitate for a moment
+to sacrifice her if it came to a choice between them?  The
+tempestuousness of these thoughts, when they took possession of her,
+hinting as they did of possibilities in her nature hitherto unguessed and
+unrevealed, astonished and frightened her; she sought to thrust them
+away, to reassure herself that his concern for the successful delivery of
+the Bradlaugh order was natural.  During the morning, in the intervals
+between interviews with the superintendents, he was self-absorbed, and
+she found herself inconsistently resenting the absence of those
+expressions of endearment--the glances and stolen caresses--for
+indulgence in which she had hitherto rebuked him: and though pride came
+to her rescue, fuel was added to her feeling by the fact that he did not
+seem to notice her coolness.  Since he failed to appear after lunch, she
+knew he must be investigating the suspicions Orcutt had voiced; but at
+six o'clock, when he had not returned, she closed up her desk and left
+the office.  An odour of cheap perfume pervading the corridor made her
+aware of the presence of Miss Lottie Myers.
+
+"Oh, it's you!" said that young woman, looking up from the landing of the
+stairs.  "I might have known it you never make a get-away until after
+six, do you?"
+
+"Oh, sometimes," said Janet.
+
+"I stayed as a special favour to-night," Miss Myers declared.  "But I'm
+not so stuck on my job that I can't tear myself away from it."
+
+"I don't suppose you are," said Janet.
+
+For a moment Miss Myers looked as if she was about to be still more
+impudent, but her eye met Janet's, and wavered.  They crossed the bridge
+in silence.  "Well, ta-ta," she said.  "If you like it, it's up to you.
+Five o'clock for mine,"--and walked away, up the canal, swinging her hips
+defiantly.  And Janet, gazing after her, grew hot with indignation and
+apprehension.  Her relations with Ditmar were suspected, after all, made
+the subject of the kind of comment indulged in, sotto voce, by Lottie
+Myers and her friends at the luncheon hour.  She felt a mad, primitive
+desire to run after the girl, to spring upon and strangle her and compel
+her to speak what was in her mind and then retract it; and the motor
+impulse, inhibited, caused a sensation of sickness, of unhappiness and
+degradation as she turned her steps slowly homeward.  Was it a
+misinterpretation, after all--what Lottie Myers had implied and feared to
+say?...
+
+In Fillnore Street supper was over, and Lise, her face contorted, her
+body strained, was standing in front of the bureau "doing" her hair, her
+glance now seeking the mirror, now falling again to consult a model in
+one of those periodicals of froth and fashion that cause such numberless
+heart burnings in every quarter of our democracy, and which are filled
+with photographs of "prominent" persons at race meetings, horse shows,
+and resorts, and with actresses, dancers,--and mannequins.  Janet's eyes
+fell on the open page to perceive that the coiffure her sister so
+painfully imitated was worn by a young woman with an insolent, vapid face
+and hard eyes, whose knees were crossed, revealing considerably more than
+an ankle.  The picture was labelled, "A dance at Palm Beach--A flashlight
+of Mrs. 'Trudy' Gascoigne-Schell,"--one of those mysterious, hybrid names
+which, in connection with the thoughts of New York and the visible rakish
+image of the lady herself, cause involuntary shudders down the spine of
+the reflecting American provincial.  Some such responsive quiver, akin to
+disgust, Janet herself experienced.
+
+"It's the very last scream," Lise was saying.  "And say, if I owned a
+ball dress like that I'd be somebody's Lulu all right!  Can I have the
+pleasure of the next maxixe, Miss Bumpus?"  With deft and rapid fingers
+she lead parted her hair far on the right side and pulled it down over
+the left eyebrow, twisted it over her ear and tightly around her head,
+inserting here and there a hairpin, seizing the hand mirror with the
+cracked back, and holding it up behind her.  Finally, when the operation
+was finished to her satisfaction she exclaimed, evidently to the paragon
+in the picture, "I get you!"  Whereupon, from the wardrobe, she produced
+a hat.  "You sure had my number when you guessed the feathers on that
+other would get draggled," she observed in high good humour, generously
+ignoring their former unpleasantness on the subject.  When she had pinned
+it on she bent mockingly over her sister, who sat on the bed.  "How d'you
+like my new toque?  Peekaboo!  That's the way the guys rubberneck to see
+if you're good lookin'."
+
+Lise was exalted, feverish, apparently possessed by some high secret; her
+eyes shone, and when she crossed the room she whistled bars of ragtime
+and executed mincing steps of the maxixe.  Fumbling in the upper drawer
+for a pair of white gloves (also new), she knocked off the corner of the
+bureau her velvet bag; it opened as it struck the floor, and out of it
+rolled a lilac vanity case and a yellow coin.  Casting a suspicious,
+lightning glance at Janet, she snatched up the vanity case and covered
+the coin with her foot.
+
+"Lock the doors!" she cried, with an hysteric giggle.  Then removing her
+foot she picked up the coin surreptitiously.  To her amazement her sister
+made no comment, did not seem to have taken in the significance of the
+episode.  Lise had expected a tempest of indignant, searching questions,
+a "third degree," as she would have put it.  She snapped the bag
+together, drew on her gloves, and, when she was ready to leave, with
+characteristic audacity crossed the room, taking her sister's face
+between her hands and kissing her.
+
+"Tell me your troubles, sweetheart!" she said--and did not wait to hear
+them.
+
+Janet was incapable of speech--nor could she have brought herself to ask
+Lise whether or not the money had been earned at the Bagatelle, and
+remained miraculously unspent.  It was possible, but highly incredible.
+And then, the vanity case and the new hat were to be accounted for!  The
+sight of the gold piece, indeed, had suddenly revived in Janet the queer
+feeling of faintness, almost of nausea she had experienced after parting
+with Lottie Myers.  And by some untoward association she was reminded of
+a conversation she had had with Ditmar on the Saturday afternoon
+following their first Sunday excursion, when, on opening her pay
+envelope, she had found twenty dollars.
+
+"Are you sure I'm worth it?" she had demanded--and he had been quite
+sure.  He had added that she was worth more, much more, but that he could
+not give her as yet, without the risk of comment, a sum commensurate with
+the value of her services....  But now she asked herself again, was she
+worth it? or was it merely--part of her price?  Going to the wardrobe and
+opening a drawer at the bottom she searched among her clothes until she
+discovered the piece of tissue paper in which she had wrapped the rose
+rescued from the cluster he had given her.  The petals were dry, yet they
+gave forth, still, a faint, reminiscent fragrance as she pressed them to
+her face.  Janet wept....
+
+The following morning as she was kneeling in a corner of the room by the
+letter files, one of which she had placed on the floor, she recognized
+his step in the outer office, heard him pause to joke with young
+Caldwell, and needed not the visual proof--when after a moment he halted
+on the threshold--of the fact that his usual, buoyant spirits were
+restored.  He held a cigar in his hand, and in his eyes was the eager
+look with which she had become familiar, which indeed she had learned to
+anticipate as they swept the room in search of her.  And when they fell
+on her he closed the door and came forward impetuously.  But her
+exclamation caused him to halt in bewilderment.
+
+"Don't touch me!" she said.
+
+And he stammered out, as he stood over her:--
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Everything.  You don't love me--I was a fool to believe you did."
+
+"Don't love you!" he repeated.  "My God, what's the trouble now?  What
+have I done?"
+
+"Oh, it's nothing you've done, it's what you haven't done, it's what you
+can't do.  You don't really care for me--all you care for is this mill--
+when anything happens here you don't know I'm alive."
+
+He stared at her, and then an expression of comprehension, of intense
+desire grew in his eyes; and his laugh, as he flung his cigar out of the
+open window and bent down to seize her, was almost brutal.  She fought
+him, she tried to hurt him, and suddenly, convulsively pressed herself to
+him.
+
+"You little tigress!" he said, as he held her.  "You were jealous--were
+you--jealous of the mill?"  And he laughed again.  "I'd like to see you
+with something really to be jealous about.  So you love me like that, do
+you?"
+
+She could feel his heart beating against her.
+
+"I won't be neglected," she told him tensely.  "I want all of you--if I
+can't have all of you, I don't want any.  Do you understand?"
+
+"Do I understand?  Well, I guess I do."
+
+"You didn't yesterday," she reproached him, somewhat dazed by the
+swiftness of her submission, and feeling still the traces of a lingering
+resentment.  She had not intended to surrender.  "You forgot all about
+me, you didn't know I was here, much less that I was hurt.  Oh, I was
+hurt!  And you--I can tell at once when anything's wrong with you--I know
+without your saying it."
+
+He was amazed, he might indeed have been troubled and even alarmed by
+this passion he had aroused had his own passion not been at the flood.
+And as he wiped away her tears with his handkerchief he could scarcely
+believe his senses that this was the woman whose resistance had demanded
+all his force to overcome.  Indeed, although he recognized the symptoms
+she betrayed as feminine, as having been registered--though feebly
+compared to this! by incidents in his past, precisely his difficulty
+seemed to be in identifying this complex and galvanic being as a woman,
+not as something almost fearful in her significance, outside the bounds
+of experience....
+
+Presently she ceased to tremble, and he drew her to the window.  The day
+was as mild as autumn, the winter sun like honey in its mellowness; a
+soft haze blurred the outline of the upper bridge.
+
+"Only two more days until Sunday," he whispered, caressingly,
+exultantly....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+It had been a strange year in Hampton, unfortunate for coal merchants,
+welcome to the poor.  But Sunday lacked the transforming touch of
+sunshine.  The weather was damp and cold as Janet set out from Fillmore
+Street.  Ditmar, she knew, would be waiting for her, he counted on her,
+and she could not bear to disappoint him, to disappoint herself.  And all
+the doubts and fears that from time to time had assailed her were
+banished by this impulse to go to him, to be with him.  He loved her!
+The words, as she sat in the trolley car, ran in her head like the lilt
+of a song.  What did the weather matter?
+
+When she alighted at the lonely cross-roads snow had already begun to
+fall.  But she spied the automobile, with its top raised, some distance
+down the lane, and in a moment she was in it, beside him, wrapped in the
+coat she had now come to regard as her own.  He buttoned down the
+curtains and took her in his arms.
+
+"What shall we do to-day," she asked, "if it snows?"
+
+"Don't let that worry you, sweetheart," he said.  "I have the chains on,
+I can get through anything in this car."
+
+He was in high, almost turbulent spirits as he turned the car and drove
+it out of the rutty lane into the state road.  The snow grew thicker and
+thicker still, the world was blotted out by swiftly whirling, feathery
+flakes that melted on the windshield, and through the wet glass Janet
+caught distorted glimpses of black pines and cedars beside the highway.
+
+The ground was spread with fleece.  Occasionally, and with startling
+suddenness, other automobiles shot like dark phantoms out of the
+whiteness, and like phantoms disappeared.  Presently, through the veil,
+she recognized Silliston--a very different Silliston from that she had
+visited on the fragrant day in springtime, when the green on the common
+had been embroidered with dandelions, and the great elms whose bare
+branches were now fantastically traced against the flowing veil of white-
+-heavy with leaf.  Vignettes emerged--only to fade!--of the old-world
+houses whose quaint beauty had fascinated and moved her.  And she found
+herself wondering what had become of the strange man she had mistaken for
+a carpenter.  All that seemed to have taken place in a past life.  She
+asked Ditmar where he was going.
+
+"Boston," he told her.  "There's no other place to go."
+
+"But you'll never get back if it goes on snowing like this."
+
+"Well, the trains are still running," he assured her, with a quizzical
+smile.  "How about it, little girl?"  It was a term of endearment
+derived, undoubtedly, from a theatrical source, in which he sometimes
+indulged.
+
+She did not answer.  Surprisingly, to-day, she did not care.  All she
+could think of, all she wanted was to go on and on beside him with the
+world shut out--on and on forever.  She was his--what did it matter?
+They were on their way to Boston!  She began, dreamily, to think about
+Boston, to try to restore it in her imagination to the exalted place it
+had held before she met Ditmar; to reconstruct it from vague memories of
+childhood when, in two of the family peregrinations, she had crossed it.
+Traces remained of emotionally-toned impressions acquired when she had
+walked about the city holding Edward's hand--of a long row of stately
+houses with forbidding fronts, set on a hillside, of a wide, tree-covered
+space where children were playing.  And her childish verdict, persisting
+to-day, was one of inaccessibility, impenetrability, of jealously guarded
+wealth and beauty.  Those houses, and the treasures she was convinced
+they must contain, were not for her!  Some of the panes of glass in their
+windows were purple--she remembered a little thing like that, and asking
+her father the reason!  He hadn't known.  This purple quality had somehow
+steeped itself into her memory of Boston, and even now the colour stood
+for the word, impenetrable.  That was extraordinary.  Even now!  Well,
+they were going to Boston; if Ditmar had said they were going to Bagdad
+it would have been quite as credible--and incredible.  Wherever they were
+going, it was into the larger, larger life, and walls were to crumble
+before them, walls through which they would pass, even as they rent the
+white veil of the storm, into regions of beauty....
+
+And now the world seemed abandoned to them alone, so empty, so still were
+the white villages flitting by; so empty, so still the great parkway of
+the Fells stretching away and away like an enchanted forest under the
+snow, like the domain of some sleeping king.  And the flakes melted
+silently into the black waters.  And the wide avenue to which they came
+led to a sleeping palace!  No, it was a city, Somerville, Ditmar told
+her, as they twisted in and out of streets, past stores, churches and
+fire-engine houses, breasted the heights, descended steeply on the far
+side into Cambridge, and crossed the long bridge over the Charles.  And
+here at last was Boston--Beacon Street, the heart or funnel of it, as one
+chose.  Ditmar, removing one of the side curtains that she might see,
+with just a hint in his voice of a reverence she was too excited to
+notice, pointed out the stern and respectable facades of the twin
+Chippering mansions standing side by side.  Save for these shrines--for
+such in some sort they were to him--the Back Bay in his eyes was nothing
+more than a collection of houses inhabited by people whom money and
+social position made unassailable.  But to-day he, too, was excited.
+Never had he been more keenly aware of her sensitiveness to experience;
+and he to whom it had not occurred to wonder at Boston wondered at her,
+who seemed able to summon forth a presiding, brooding spirit of the place
+from out of the snow.  Deep in her eyes, though they sparkled, was the
+reflection of some mystic vision; her cheeks were flushed.  And in her
+delight, vicariously his own, he rejoiced; in his trembling hope of more
+delight to come, which this mentorship would enhance,--despite the fast
+deepening snow he drove her up one side of Commonwealth Avenue and down
+the other, encircling the Common and the Public Garden; stopping at the
+top of Park Street that she might gaze up at the State House, whose
+golden dome, seen through the veil, was tinged with blue.  Boston!  Why
+not Russia?  Janet was speechless for sheer lack of words to describe
+what she felt....
+
+At length he brought the car to a halt opposite an imposing doorway in
+front of which a glass roof extended over the pavement, and Janet
+demanded where they were.
+
+"Well, we've got to eat, haven't we?" Ditmar replied.  She noticed that
+he was shivering.
+
+"Are you cold?" she inquired with concern.
+
+"I guess I am, a little," he replied.  "I don't know why I should be, in
+a fur coat.  But I'll be warm soon enough, now."
+
+A man in blue livery hurried toward them across the sidewalk, helping
+them to alight.  And Ditmar, after driving the car a few paces beyond the
+entrance, led her through the revolving doors into a long corridor, paved
+with marble and lighted by bulbs glowing from the ceiling, where benches
+were set against the wall, overspread by the leaves of potted plants set
+in the intervals between them.
+
+"Sit down a moment," he said to her.  "I must telephone to have somebody
+take that car, or it'll stay there the rest of the winter."
+
+She sat down on one of the benches.  The soft light, the warmth, the
+exotic odour of the plants, the well-dressed people who trod softly the
+strip of carpet set on the marble with the air of being at home--all
+contributed to an excitement, intense yet benumbing.  She could not
+think.  She didn't want to think--only to feel, to enjoy, to wring the
+utmost flavour of enchantment from these new surroundings; and her face
+wore the expression of one in a dream.  Presently she saw Ditmar
+returning followed by a boy in a blue uniform.
+
+"All right," he said.  At the end of the corridor was an elevator in
+which they were shot to one of the upper floors; and the boy, inserting a
+key in a heavy mahogany door, revealed a sitting-room.  Between its
+windows was a table covered with a long, white cloth reaching to the
+floor, on which, amidst the silverware and glass, was set a tall vase
+filled with dusky roses.  Janet, drawing in a deep breath of their
+fragrance, glanced around the room.  The hangings, the wall-paper, the
+carpet, the velvet upholstery of the mahogany chairs, of the wide lounge
+in the corner were of a deep and restful green; the marble mantelpiece,
+with its English coal grate, was copied--had she known it--from a mansion
+of the Georgian period.  The hands of a delicate Georgian clock pointed
+to one.  And in the large mirror behind the clock she beheld an image she
+supposed, dreamily, to be herself.  The bell boy was taking off her coat,
+which he hung, with Ditmar's, on a rack in a corner.
+
+"Shall I light the fire, sir?" he asked.
+
+"Sure," said Ditmar.  "And tell them to hurry up with lunch."
+
+The boy withdrew, closing the door silently behind him.
+
+"We're going to have lunch here!" Janet exclaimed.
+
+"Why not?  I thought it would be nicer than a public dining-room, and
+when I got up this morning and saw what the weather was I telephoned."
+He placed two chairs before the fire, which had begun to blaze.  "Isn't
+it cosy?" he said, taking her hands and pulling her toward him.  His own
+hands trembled, the tips of his fingers were cold.
+
+"You are cold!" she said.
+
+"Not now--not now," he replied.  The queer vibrations were in his voice
+that she had heard before.  "Sweetheart!  This is the best yet, isn't it?
+And after that trip in the storm!"
+
+"It's beautiful!" she murmured, gently drawing away from him and looking
+around her once more.  "I never was in a room like this."
+
+"Well, you'll be in plenty more of them," he exulted.  "Sit down beside
+the fire, and get warm yourself."
+
+She obeyed, and he took the chair at her side, his eyes on her face.  As
+usual, she was beyond him; and despite her exclamations of surprise, of
+appreciation and pleasure she maintained the outward poise, the
+inscrutability that summed up for him her uniqueness in the world of
+woman.  She sat as easily upright in the delicate Chippendale chair as
+though she had been born to it.  He made wild surmises as to what she
+might be thinking.  Was she, as she seemed, taking all this as a matter
+of course?  She imposed on him an impelling necessity to speak, to say
+anything--it did not matter what--and he began to dwell on the
+excellences of the hotel.  She did not appear to hear him, her eyes
+lingering on the room, until presently she asked:--
+
+"What's the name of this hotel?"
+
+He told her.
+
+"I thought they only allowed married people to come, like this, in a
+private room."
+
+"Oh!" he began--and the sudden perception that she had made this
+statement impartially added to his perplexity.  "Well," he was able to
+answer, "we're as good as married, aren't we, Janet?"  He leaned toward
+her, he put his hand on hers.  "The manager here is an old friend of
+mine.  He knows we're as good as married."
+
+"Another old friend!" she queried.  And the touch of humour, in spite of
+his taut nerves, delighted him.
+
+"Yes, yes," he laughed, rather uproariously.  "I've got 'em everywhere,
+as thick as landmarks."
+
+"You seem to," she said.
+
+"I hope you're hungry," he said.
+
+"Not very," she replied.  "It's all so strange--this day, Claude.  It's
+like a fairy story, coming here to Boston in the snow, and this place,
+and--and being with you."
+
+"You still love me?" he cried, getting up.
+
+"You must know that I do," she answered simply, raising her face to his.
+And he stood gazing down into it, with an odd expression she had never
+seen before...."What's the matter?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing--nothing," he assured her, but continued to look at her.
+"You're so--so wonderful," he whispered, "I just can't believe it."
+
+"And if it's hard for you," she answered, "think what it must be for me!"
+And she smiled up at him.
+
+Ditmar had known a moment of awe....  Suddenly he took her face between
+his hands and pressed his rough cheek against it, blindly.  His hands
+trembled, his body was shaken, as by a spasm.
+
+"Why, you're still cold, Claude!" she cried anxiously.
+
+And he stammered out: "I'm not--it's you--it's having you!"
+
+Before she could reply to this strange exclamation, to which,
+nevertheless, some fire in her leaped in response, there came a knock at
+the door, and he drew away from her as he answered it.  Two waiters
+entered obsequiously, one bearing a serving table, the other holding
+above his head a large tray containing covered dishes and glasses.
+
+"I could do with a cocktail!" Ditmar exclaimed, and the waiter smiled as
+he served them.  "Here's how!" he said, giving her a glass containing a
+yellow liquid.
+
+She tasted it, made a grimace, and set it down hastily.
+
+"What's the trouble?" he asked, laughing, as she hurried to the table and
+took a drink of water.
+
+"It's horrid!" she cried.
+
+"Oh, you'll get over that idea," he told her.  "You'll be crazy about
+'em."
+
+"I never want to taste another," she declared.
+
+He laughed again.  He had taken his at a swallow, but almost nullifying
+its effect was this confirmation--if indeed he had needed it--of the
+extent of her inexperience.  She was, in truth, untouched by the world--
+the world in which he had lived.  He pulled out her chair for her and she
+sat down, confronted by a series of knives, forks, and spoons on either
+side of a plate of oysters.  Oysters served in this fashion, needless to
+say, had never formed part of the menu in Fillmore Street, or in any
+Hampton restaurant where she had lunched.  But she saw that Ditmar had
+chosen a little fork with three prongs, and she followed his example.
+
+"You mustn't tell me you don't like Cotuits!" he exclaimed.
+
+She touched one, delicately, with her fork.
+
+"They're alive!" she exclaimed, though the custom of consuming them thus
+was by no means unknown to her.  Lise had often boasted of a taste for
+oysters on the shell, though really preferring them smothered with red
+catsup in a "cocktail."
+
+"They're alive, but they don't know it.  They won't eat you," Ditmar
+replied gleefully.  "Squeeze a little lemon on one."  Another sort of
+woman, he reflected, would have feigned a familiarity with the dish.
+
+She obeyed him, put one in her mouth, gave a little shiver, and swallowed
+it quickly.
+
+"Well?" he said.  "It isn't bad, is it?"
+
+"It seems so queer to eat anything alive, and enjoy it," she said, as she
+ate the rest of them.
+
+"If you think they're good here you ought to taste them on the Cape,
+right out of the water," he declared, and went on to relate how he had
+once eaten a fabulous number in a contest with a friend of his, and won a
+bet.  He was fond of talking about wagers he had won.  Betting had lent a
+zest to his life.  "We'll roll down there together some day next summer,
+little girl.  It's a great place.  You can go in swimming three times a
+day and never feel it.  And talk about eating oysters, you can't swallow
+'em as fast as a fellow I know down there, Joe Pusey, can open 'em.  It's
+some trick to open 'em."
+
+He described the process, but she--scarcely listened.  She was striving
+to adjust herself to the elements of a new and revolutionary experience;
+to the waiters who came and went, softly, deferentially putting hot
+plates before her, helping her to strange and delicious things; a creamy
+soup, a fish with a yellow sauce whose ingredients were artfully
+disguised, a breast of guinea fowl, a salad, an ice, and a small cup of
+coffee.  Instincts and tastes hitherto unsuspected and ungratified were
+aroused in her.  What would it be like always to be daintily served, to
+eat one's meals in this leisurely and luxurious manner?  As her physical
+hunger was satisfied by the dainty food, even as her starved senses drank
+in the caressing warmth and harmony of the room, the gleaming fire, the
+heavy scent of the flowers, the rose glow of the lights in contrast to
+the storm without,--so the storm flinging itself against the windows,
+powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence of cold,
+black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil and
+limitations.  Had her existence been like that?  or was it a dream, a
+nightmare from which she had awakened at last?  From time to time, deep
+within her, she felt persisting a conviction that that was reality, this
+illusion, but she fought it down.  She wanted--oh, how she wanted to
+believe in the illusion!
+
+Facing her was the agent, the genius, the Man who had snatched her from
+that existence, who had at his command these delights to bestow.  She
+loved him, she belonged to him, he was to be her husband--yet there were
+moments when the glamour of this oddly tended to dissolve, when an
+objective vision intruded and she beheld herself, as though removed from
+the body, lunching with a strange man in a strange place.  And once it
+crossed her mind--what would she think of another woman who did this?
+What would she think if it were Lise?  She could not then achieve a sense
+of identity; it was as though she had partaken of some philtre lulling
+her, inhibiting her power to grasp the fact in its enormity.  And little
+by little grew on her the realization of what all along she had known,
+that the spell of these surroundings to which she had surrendered was an
+expression of the man himself.  He was the source of it.  More and more,
+as he talked, his eyes troubled and stirred her; the touch of his hand,
+as he reached across the table and laid it on hers, burned her.  When the
+waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer, and she
+rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the curtains,
+the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused the light;
+and she paused before the grand piano in the corner.
+
+"I'd like to be able to play!" she said.
+
+"You can learn," he told her.
+
+"I'm too old!"
+
+He laughed.  And as he sat smoking his eyes followed her ceaselessly.
+
+Above the sofa hung a large print of the Circus Maximus, with crowded
+tiers mounting toward the sky, and awninged boxes where sat the Vestal
+Virgins and the Emperor high above a motley, serried group on the sand.
+At the mouth of a tunnel a lion stood motionless, menacing, regarding
+them.  The picture fascinated Janet.
+
+"It's meant to be Rome, isn't it?"  she asked.
+
+"What?  That?  I guess so."  He got up and came over to her.  "Sure," he
+said.  "I'm not very strong on history, but I read a book once, a novel,
+which told how those old fellows used to like to see Christians thrown to
+the lions just as we like to see football games.  I'll get the book
+again--we'll read it together."
+
+Janet shivered....  "Here's another picture," he said, turning to the
+other side of the room.  It was, apparently, an engraved copy of a modern
+portrait, of a woman in evening dress with shapely arms and throat and a
+small, aristocratic head.  Around her neck was hung a heavy rope of
+pearls.
+
+"Isn't she beautiful!" Janet sighed.
+
+"Beautiful!"  He led her to the mirror.  "Look!" he said.  "I'll buy you
+pearls, Janet, I want to see them gleaming against your skin.  She can't
+compare to you.  I'll--I'll drape you with pearls."
+
+"No, no," she cried.  "I don't want them, Claude.  I don't want them.
+Please!"  She scarcely knew what she was saying.  And as she drew away
+from him her hands went out, were pressed together with an imploring,
+supplicating gesture.  He seized them.  His nearness was suffocating her,
+she flung herself into his arms, and their lips met in a long, swooning
+kiss.  She began instinctively but vainly to struggle, not against him--
+but against a primal thing stronger than herself, stronger than he,
+stronger than codes and conventions and institutions, which yet she
+craved fiercely as her being's fulfilment.  It was sweeping them dizzily
+--whither?  The sheer sweetness and terror of it!
+
+"Don't, don't!" she murmured desperately.  "You mustn't!"
+
+"Janet--we're going to be married, sweetheart,--just as soon as we can.
+Won't you trust me?  For God's sake, don't be cruel.  You're my wife,
+now--"
+
+His voice seemed to come from a great distance.  And from a great
+distance, too, her own in reply, drowned as by falling waters.
+
+"Do you love me?--will you love me always--always?"
+
+And he answered hoarsely, "Yes--always--I swear it, Janet."  He had found
+her lips again, he was pulling her toward a door on the far side of the
+room, and suddenly, as he opened it, her resistance ceased....
+
+The snow made automobiling impossible, and at half past nine that evening
+Ditmar had escorted Janet to the station in a cab, and she had taken the
+train for Hampton.  For a while she sat as in a trance.  She knew that
+something had happened, something portentous, cataclysmic, which had
+irrevocably changed her from the Janet Bumpus who had left Hampton that
+same morning--an age ago.  But she was unable to realize the
+metamorphosis.  In the course of a single day she had lived a lifetime,
+exhausted the range of human experience, until now she was powerless to
+feel any more.  The car was filled with all sorts and conditions of
+people returning to homes scattered through the suburbs and smaller
+cities north of Boston--a mixed, Sunday-night crowd; and presently she
+began, in a detached way, to observe them.  Their aspects, their speech
+and manners had the queer effect of penetrating her consciousness without
+arousing the emotional judgments of approval or disapproval which
+normally should have followed.  Ordinarily she might have felt a certain
+sympathy for the fragile young man on the seat beside her who sat moodily
+staring through his glasses at the floor: and the group across the aisle
+would surely have moved her to disgust.  Two couples were seated vis-a-
+vis, the men apparently making fun of a "pony" coat one of the girls was
+wearing.  In spite of her shrieks, which drew general attention, they
+pulled it from her back--an operation regarded by the conductor himself
+with tolerant amusement.  Whereupon her companion, a big, blond Teuton
+with an inane guffaw, boldly thrust an arm about her waist and held her
+while he presented the tickets.  Janet beheld all this as one sees
+dancers through a glass, without hearing the music.
+
+Behind her two men fell into conversation.
+
+"I guess there's well over a foot of snow.  I thought we'd have an open
+winter, too."
+
+"Look out for them when they start in mild!"
+
+"I was afraid this darned road would be tied up if I waited until
+morning.  I'm in real estate, and there's a deal on in my town I've got
+to watch every minute...."
+
+Even the talk between two slouch-hatted millhands, foreigners, failed at
+the time to strike Janet as having any significance.  They were
+discussing with some heat the prospect of having their pay reduced by the
+fifty-four hour law which was to come into effect on Monday.  They
+denounced the mill owners.
+
+"They speed up the machine and make work harder," said one.  "I think we
+goin' to have a strike sure."
+
+"Bad sisson too to have strike," replied the second pessimistically.  "It
+will be cold winter, now."
+
+Across the black square of the window drifted the stray lights of the
+countryside, and from time to time, when the train stopped, she gazed
+out, unheeding, at the figures moving along the dim station platforms.
+Suddenly, without premeditation or effort, she began to live over again
+the day, beginning with the wonders, half revealed, half hidden, of that
+journey through the whiteness to Boston....  Awakened, listening, she
+heard beating louder and louder on the shores of consciousness the waves
+of the storm which had swept her away--waves like crashing chords of
+music.  She breathed deeply, she turned her face to the window, seeming
+to behold reflected there, as in a crystal, all her experiences, little
+and great, great and little.  She was seated once more leaning back in
+the corner of the carriage on her way to the station, she felt Ditmar's
+hand working in her own, and she heard his voice pleading forgiveness--
+for her silence alarmed him.  And she heard herself saying:--
+
+"It was my fault as much as yours."
+
+And his vehement reply:--
+
+"It wasn't anybody's fault--it was natural, it was wonderful, Janet.  I
+can't bear to see you sad."
+
+To see her sad!  Twice, during the afternoon and evening, he had spoken
+those words--or was it three times?  Was there a time she had forgotten?
+And each time she had answered: "I'm not sad."  What she had felt indeed
+was not sadness,--but how could she describe it to him when she herself
+was amazed and dwarfed by it?  Could he not feel it, too?  Were men so
+different?...  In the cab his solicitation, his tenderness were only to
+be compared with his bewilderment, his apparent awe of the feeling he
+himself had raised up in her, and which awed her, likewise.  She had
+actually felt that bewilderment of his when, just before they had reached
+the station, she had responded passionately to his last embrace.  Even as
+he returned her caresses, it had been conveyed to her amazingly by the
+quality of his touch.  Was it a lack all women felt in men? and were
+these, even in supreme moments, merely the perplexed transmitters of
+life?--not life itself?  Her thoughts did not gain this clarity, though
+she divined the secret.  And yet she loved him--loved him with a
+fierceness that frightened her, with a tenderness that unnerved her....
+
+At the Hampton station she took the trolley, alighting at the Common,
+following the narrow path made by pedestrians in the heavy snow to
+Fillmore Street.  She climbed the dark stairs, opened the dining-room
+door, and paused on the threshold.  Hannah and Edward sat there under the
+lamp, Hannah scanning through her spectacles the pages of a Sunday
+newspaper.  On perceiving Janet she dropped it hastily in her lap.
+
+"Well, I was concerned about you, in all this storm!" she exclaimed.
+"Thank goodness you're home, anyway.  You haven't seen Lise, have you?"
+
+"Lise?" Janet repeated.  "Hasn't she been home?"
+
+"Your father and I have been alone all day long.  Not that it is so
+uncommon for Lise to be gone.  I wish it wasn't!  But you!  When you
+didn't come home for supper I was considerably worried."
+
+Janet sat down between her mother and father and began to draw off her
+gloves.
+
+"I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar," she announced.
+
+For a few moments the silence was broken only by the ticking of the old-
+fashioned clock.
+
+"Mr. Ditmar!" said Hannah, at length.  "You're going to marry Mr.
+Ditmar!"
+
+Edward was still inarticulate.  His face twitched, his eyes watered as he
+stared at her.
+
+"Not right away," said Janet.
+
+"Well, I must say you take it rather cool," declared Hannah, almost
+resentfully.  "You come in and tell us you're going to marry Mr. Ditmar
+just like you were talking about the weather."
+
+Hannah's eyes filled with tears.  There had been indeed an unconscious
+lack of consideration in Janet's abrupt announcement, which had fallen
+like a spark on the dry tinder of Hannah's hope.  The result was a
+suffocating flame.  Janet, whom love had quickened, had a swift
+perception of this.  She rose quickly and took Hannah in her arms and
+kissed her.  It was as though the relation between them were reversed,
+and the daughter had now become the mother and the comforter.
+
+"I always knew something like this would happen!" said Edward.  His words
+incited Hannah to protest.
+
+"You didn't anything of the kind, Edward Bumpus," she exclaimed.
+
+"Just to think of Janet livin' in that big house up in Warren Street!"
+he went on, unheeding, jubilant.  "You'll drop in and see the old people
+once in a while, Janet, you won't forget us?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, father," said Janet.
+
+"Well, he's a fine man, Claude Ditmar, I always said that.  The way he
+stops and talks to me when he passes the gate--"
+
+"That doesn't make him a good man," Hannah declared, and added: "If he
+wasn't a good man, Janet wouldn't be marrying him."
+
+"I don't know whether he's good or not," said Janet.
+
+"That's so, too," observed Hannah, approvingly.  "We can't any of us tell
+till we've tried 'em, and then it's too late to change.  I'd like to see
+him, but I guess he wouldn't care to come down here to Fillmore Street."
+The difference between Ditmar's social and economic standing and their
+own suggested appalling complications to her mind.  "I suppose I won't
+get a sight of him till after you're married, and not much then."
+
+"There's plenty of time to think about that, mother," answered Janet.
+
+"I'd want to have everything decent and regular," Hannah insisted.  "We
+may be poor, but we come of good stock, as your father says."
+
+"It'll be all right--Mr. Ditmar will behave like a gentleman," Edward
+assured her.
+
+"I thought I ought to tell you about it," Janet said, "but you mustn't
+mention it, yet, not even to Lise.  Lise will talk.  Mr. Ditmar's very
+busy now,--he hasn't made any plans."
+
+"I wish Lise could get married!" exclaimed Hannah, irrelevantly.  "She's
+been acting so queer lately, she's not been herself at all."
+
+"Now there you go, borrowing trouble, mother," Edward exclaimed.  He
+could not take his eyes from Janet, but continued to regard her with
+benevolence.  "Lise'll get married some day.  I don't suppose we can
+expect another Mr. Ditmar...."
+
+"Well," said Hannah, presently, "there's no use sitting up all night."
+She rose and kissed Janet again.  "I just can't believe it," she
+declared, "but I guess it's so if you say it is."
+
+"Of course it's so," said Edward.
+
+"I so want you should be happy, Janet," said Hannah....
+
+Was it so?  Her mother and father, the dwarfed and ugly surroundings of
+Fillmore Street made it seem incredible once more.  And--what would they
+say if they knew what had happened to her this day?  When she had reached
+her room, Janet began to wonder why she had told her parents.  Had it not
+been in order to relieve their anxiety--especially her mother's--on the
+score of her recent absences from home?  Yes, that was it, and because
+the news would make them happy.  And then the mere assertion to them that
+she was to marry Ditmar helped to make it more real to herself.  But, now
+that reality was fading again, she was unable to bring it within the
+scope of her imagination, her mind refused to hold one remembered
+circumstance long enough to coordinate it with another: she realized that
+she was tired--too tired to think any more.  But despite her exhaustion
+there remained within her, possessing her, as it were overshadowing her,
+unrelated to future or past, the presence of the man who had awakened her
+to an intensity of life hitherto unconceived.  When her head touched the
+pillow she fell asleep....
+
+When the bells and the undulating scream of the siren awoke her, she lay
+awhile groping in the darkness.  Where was she?  Who was she?  The
+discovery of the fact that the nail of the middle finger on her right
+hand was broken, gave her a clew.  She had broken that nail in reaching
+out to save something--a vase of roses--that was it!--a vase of roses on
+a table with a white cloth.  Ditmar had tipped it over.  The sudden
+flaring up of this trivial incident served to re-establish her identity,
+to light a fuse along which her mind began to run like fire, illuminating
+redly all the events of the day before.  It was sweet to lie thus, to
+possess, as her very own, these precious, passionate memories of life
+lived at last to fulness, to feel that she had irrevocably given herself
+and taken--all.  A longing to see Ditmar again invaded her: he would take
+an early train, he would be at the office by nine.  How could she wait
+until then?
+
+With a movement that had become habitual, subconscious, she reached out
+her hand to arouse her sister.  The coldness of the sheets on the right
+side of the bed sent a shiver through her--a shiver of fear.
+
+"Lise!" she called.  But there was no answer from the darkness.  And
+Janet, trembling, her heart beating wildly, sprang from the bed, searched
+for the matches, and lit the gas.  There was no sign of Lise; her
+clothes, which she had the habit of flinging across the chairs, were
+nowhere to be seen.  Janet's eyes fell on the bureau, marked the absence
+of several knick-knacks, including a comb and brush, and with a sudden
+sickness of apprehension she darted to the wardrobe and flung open the
+doors.  In the bottom were a few odd garments, above was the hat with the
+purple feather, now shabby and discarded, on the hooks a skirt and jacket
+Lise wore to work at the Bagatelle in bad weather.  That was all....
+Janet sank down in the rocking-chair, her hands clasped together,
+overwhelmed by the sudden apprehension of the tragedy that had lurked,
+all unsuspected, in the darkness: a tragedy, not of Lise alone, but in
+which she herself was somehow involved.  Just why this was so, she could
+not for the moment declare.  The room was cold, she was clad only in a
+nightdress, but surges of heat ran through her body.  What should she do?
+She must think.  But thought was impossible.  She got up and closed the
+window and began to dress with feverish rapidity, pausing now and again
+to stand motionless.  In one such moment there entered her mind an
+incident that oddly had made little impression at the time of its
+occurrence because she, Janet, had been blinded by the prospect of her
+own happiness--that happiness which, a few minutes ago, had seemed so
+real and vital a thing!  And it was the memory of this incident that
+suddenly threw a glaring, evil light on all of Lise's conduct during the
+past months--her accidental dropping of the vanity case and the gold
+coin!  Now she knew'for a certainty what had happened to her sister.
+
+Having dressed herself, she entered the kitchen, which was warm, filled
+with the smell of frying meat.  Streaks of grease smoke floated
+fantastically beneath the low ceiling, and Hannah, with the fryingpan in
+one hand and a fork in the other, was bending over the stove.  Wisps of
+her scant, whitening hair escaped from the ridiculous, tightly drawn knot
+at the back of her head; in the light of the flickering gas-jet she
+looked so old and worn that a sudden pity smote Janet and made her dumb--
+pity for her mother, pity for herself, pity for Lise; pity that lent a
+staggering insight into life itself.  Hannah had once been young,
+desirable, perhaps, swayed by those forces which had swayed her.  Janet
+wondered why she had never guessed this before, and why she had guessed
+it now.  But it was Hannah who, looking up and catching sight of Janet's
+face, was quick to divine the presage in it and gave voice to the
+foreboding that had weighed on her for many weeks.
+
+"Where's Lise?"
+
+And Janet could not answer.  She shook her head.  Hannah dropped the
+fork, the handle of the frying pan and crossed the room swiftly, seizing
+Janet by the shoulders.
+
+"Is she gone?  I knew it, I felt it all along.  I thought she'd done
+something she was afraid to tell about--I tried to ask her, but I
+couldn't--I couldn't!  And now she's gone.  Oh, my God, I'll never
+forgive myself!"
+
+The unaccustomed sight of her mother's grief was terrible.  For an
+instant only she clung to Janet, then becoming mute, she sat down in the
+kitchen chair and stared with dry, unseeing eyes at the wall.  Her face
+twitched.  Janet could not bear to look at it, to see the torture in her
+mother's eyes.  She, Janet, seemed suddenly to have grown old herself, to
+have lived through ages of misery and tragedy....  She was aware of a
+pungent odour, went to the stove, picked up the fork, and turned the
+steak.  Now and then she glanced at Hannah.  Grief seemed to have frozen
+her.  Then, from the dining-room she heard footsteps, and Edward stood in
+the doorway.
+
+"Well, what's the matter with breakfast?" he asked.  From where he stood
+he could not see Hannah's face, but gradually his eyes were drawn to her
+figure.  His intuition was not quick, and some moments passed before the
+rigidity of the pose impressed itself upon him.
+
+"Is mother sick?" he asked falteringly.
+
+Janet went to him.  But it was Hannah who spoke.
+
+"Lise has gone," she said.
+
+"Lise--gone," Edward repeated.  "Gone where?"
+
+"She's run away--she's disgraced us," Hannah replied, in a monotonous,
+dulled voice.
+
+Edward did not seem to understand, and presently Janet felt impelled to
+break the silence.
+
+"She didn't come home last night, father."
+
+"Didn't come home?  Mebbe she spent the night with a friend," he said.
+
+It seemed incredible, at such a moment, that he could still be hopeful.
+
+"No, she's gone, I tell you, she's lost, we'll never lay eyes on her
+again.  My God, I never thought she'd come to this, but I might have
+guessed it.  Lise! Lise! To think it's my Lise!"
+
+Hannah's voice echoed pitifully through the silence of the flat.  So
+appealing, so heartbroken was the cry one might have thought that Lise,
+wherever she was, would have heard it.  Edward was dazed by the shock,
+his lower lip quivered and fell.  He walked over to Hannah's chair and
+put his hand on her shoulder.
+
+"There, there, mother," he pleaded.  "If she's gone, we'll find her,
+we'll bring her back to you."
+
+Hannah shook her head.  She pushed back her chair abruptly and going over
+to the stove took the fork from Janet's hand and put the steak on the
+dish.
+
+"Go in there and set down, Edward," she said.  "I guess we've got to have
+breakfast just the same, whether she's gone or not."
+
+It was terrible to see Hannah, with that look on her face, going about
+her tasks automatically.  And Edward, too, seemed suddenly to have become
+aged and broken; his trust in the world, so amazingly preserved through
+many vicissitudes, shattered at last.  He spilled his coffee when he
+tried to drink, and presently he got up and wandered about the room,
+searching for his overcoat.  It was Janet who found it and helped him on
+with it.  He tried to say something, but failing, departed heavily for
+the mill.  Janet began to remove the dishes from the table.
+
+"You've got to eat something, too, before you go to work," said Hannah.
+
+"I've had all I want," Janet replied.
+
+Hannah followed her into the kitchen.  The scarcely touched food was laid
+aside, the coffee-pot emptied, Hannah put the cups in the basin in the
+sink and let the water run.  She turned to Janet and seized her hands
+convulsively.
+
+"Let me do this, mother," said Janet.  She knew her mother was thinking
+of the newly-found joy that Lise's disgrace had marred, but she released
+her hands, gently, and took the mop from the nail on which it hung.
+
+"You sit down, mother," she said.
+
+Hannah would not.  They finished the dishes together in silence while the
+light of the new day stole in through the windows.  Janet went into her
+room, set it in order, made up the bed, put on her coat and hat and
+rubbers.  Then she returned to Hannah, who seized her.
+
+"It ain't going to spoil your happiness?"
+
+But Janet could not answer.  She kissed her mother, and went out, down
+the stairs into the street.  The day was sharp and cold and bracing, and
+out of an azure sky the sun shone with dazzling brightness on the snow,
+which the west wind was whirling into little eddies of white smoke,
+leaving on the drifts delicate scalloped designs like those printed by
+waves on the sands of the sea.  They seemed to Janet that morning
+hatefully beautiful.  In front of his tin shop, whistling cheerfully and
+labouring energetically with a shovel to clean his sidewalk, was Johnny
+Tiernan, the tip of his pointed nose made very red by the wind.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Bumpus," he said.  "Now, if you'd only waited awhile,
+I'd have had it as clean as a parlour.  It's fine weather for coal
+bills."
+
+She halted.
+
+"Can I see you a moment, Mr. Tiernan?"
+
+Johnny looked at her.
+
+"Why sure," he said.  Leaning his shovel against the wall, he gallantly
+opened the door that she might pass in before him and then led the way to
+the back of the shop where the stove was glowing hospitably.  He placed a
+chair for her.  "Now what can I be doing to serve you?" he asked.
+
+"It's about my sister," said Janet.
+
+"Miss Lise?"
+
+"I thought you might know what man she's been going with lately," said
+Janet.
+
+Mr. Tiernan had often wondered how much Janet knew about her sister.  In
+spite of a momentary embarrassment most unusual in him, the courage of
+her question made a strong appeal, and his quick sympathies suspected the
+tragedy behind her apparent calmness.  He met her magnificently.
+
+"Why," he said, "I have seen Miss Lise with a fellow named Duval--Howard
+Duval--when he's been in town.  He travels for a Boston shoe house,
+Humphrey and Gillmount."
+
+"I'm afraid Lise has gone away with him," said Janet.  "I thought you
+might be able to find out something about him, and--whether any one had
+seen them.  She left home yesterday morning."
+
+For an instant Mr. Tiernan stood silent before her, his legs apart, his
+fingers running through his bristly hair.
+
+"Well, ye did right to come straight to me, Miss Janet.  It's me that can
+find out, if anybody can, and it's glad I am to help you.  Just you stay
+here--make yourself at home while I run down and see some of the boys.
+I'll not be long--and don't be afraid I'll let on about it."
+
+He seized his overcoat and departed.  Presently the sun, glinting on the
+sheets of tin, started Janet's glance straying around the shop, noting
+its disorderly details, the heaped-up stovepipes, the littered work-bench
+with the shears lying across the vise.  Once she thought of Ditmar
+arriving at the office and wondering what had happened to her....  The
+sound of a bell made her jump.  Mr. Tiernan had returned.
+
+"She's gone with him," said Janet, not as a question, but as one stating
+a fact.
+
+Mr. Tiernan nodded.
+
+"They took the nine-thirty-six for Boston yesterday morning.  Eddy
+Colahan was at the depot."
+
+Janet rose.  "Thank you," she said simply.
+
+"What are you going to do?" he asked.
+
+"I'm going to Boston," she answered.  "I'm going to find out where she
+is."
+
+"Then it's me that's going with you," he announced.
+
+"Oh no, Mr. Tiernan!" she protested.  "I couldn't let you do that."
+
+"And why not?" he demanded.  "I've got a little business there myself.
+I'm proud to go with you.  It's your sister you want, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, what would you be doing by yourself--a young lady?  How will you
+find your sister?"
+
+"Do you think you can find her?"
+
+"Sure I can find her," he proclaimed, confidently.  He had evidently made
+up his mind that casual treatment was what the affair demanded.  "Haven't
+I good friends in Boston?"  By friendship he swayed his world: nor was he
+completely unknown--though he did not say so--to certain influential
+members of his race of the Boston police department.  Pulling out a large
+nickel watch and observing that they had just time to catch the train, he
+locked up his shop, and they set out together for the station.  Mr.
+Tiernan led the way, for the path was narrow.  The dry snow squeaked
+under his feet.
+
+After escorting her to a seat on the train, he tactfully retired to the
+smoking car, not to rejoin her until they were on the trestle spanning
+the Charles River by the North Station.  All the way to Boston she had
+sat gazing out of the window at the blinding whiteness of the fields,
+incapable of rousing herself to the necessity of thought, to a degree of
+feeling commensurate with the situation.  She did not know what she would
+say to Lise if she should find her; and in spite of Mr. Tiernan's
+expressed confidence, the chances of success seemed remote.  When the
+train began to thread the crowded suburbs, the city, spreading out over
+its hills, instead of thrilling her, as yesterday, with a sense of
+dignity and power, of opportunity and emancipation, seemed a labyrinth
+with many warrens where vice and crime and sorrow could hide.  In front
+of the station the traffic was already crushing the snow into filth.
+They passed the spot where, the night before, the carriage had stopped,
+where Ditmar had bidden her good-bye.  Something stirred within her,
+became a shooting pain....  She asked Mr. Tiernan what he intended to do.
+
+"I'm going right after the man, if he's here in the city," he told her.
+And they boarded a street car, which almost immediately shot into the
+darkness of the subway.  Emerging at Scollay Square, and walking a few
+blocks, they came to a window where guns, revolvers, and fishing tackle
+were displayed, and on which was painted the name, "Timothy Mulally."
+Mr. Tiernan entered.
+
+"Is Tim in?" he inquired of one of the clerks, who nodded his head
+towards the rear of the store, where a middle-aged, grey-haired Irishman
+was seated at a desk under a drop light.
+
+"Is it you, Johnny?" he exclaimed, looking up.
+
+"It's meself," said Mr. Tiernan.  "And this is Miss Bumpus, a young lady
+friend of mine from Hampton."
+
+Mr. Mulally rose and bowed.
+
+"How do ye do, ma'am," he said.
+
+"I've got a little business to do for her," Mr. Tiernan continued.  "I
+thought you might offer her a chair and let her stay here, quiet, while I
+was gone."
+
+"With pleasure, ma'am," Mr. Mulally replied, pulling forward a chair with
+alacrity.  "Just sit there comfortable--no one will disturb ye."
+
+When, in the course of half an hour, Mr. Tiernan returned, there was a
+grim yet triumphant look in his little blue eyes, but it was not until
+Janet had thanked Mr. Mulally for his hospitality and they had reached
+the sidewalk that he announced the result of his quest.
+
+"Well, I caught him.  It's lucky we came when we did--he was just going
+out on the road again, up to Maine.  I know where Miss Lise is."
+
+"He told you!" exclaimed Janet.
+
+"He told me indeed, but it wasn't any joy to him.  He was all for
+bluffing at first.  It's easy to scare the likes of him.  He was as white
+as his collar before I was done with him.  He knows who I am, all right
+he's heard of me in Hampton," Mr. Tiernan added, with a pardonable touch
+of pride.
+
+"What did you say?" inquired Janet, curiously.
+
+"Say?" repeated Mr. Tiernan.  "It's not much I had to say, Miss Janet.  I
+was all ready to go to Mr. Gillmount, his boss.  I'm guessing he won't
+take much pleasure on this trip."
+
+She asked for no more details.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Once more Janet and Mr. Tiernan descended into the subway, taking a car
+going to the south and west, which finally came out of the tunnel into a
+broad avenue lined with shabby shops, hotels and saloons, and long rows
+of boarding--and rooming-houses.  They alighted at a certain corner,
+walked a little way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan
+scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a
+basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps.  Climbing these, he
+pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed
+vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; the door was
+cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a woman in
+a loose wrapper, with an untidy mass of bleached hair and a puffy face
+like a fungus grown in darkness.
+
+"I want to see Miss Lise Bumpus," Mr. Tiernan demanded.
+
+"You've got the wrong place.  There ain't no one of that name here," said
+the woman.
+
+"There ain't!  All right," he insisted aggressively, pushing open the
+door in spite of her.  "If you don't let this young lady see her quick,
+there's trouble coming to you."
+
+"Who are you?" asked the woman, impudently, yet showing signs of fear.
+
+"Never mind who I am," Mr. Tiernan declared.  "I know all about you, and
+I know all about Duval.  If you don't want any trouble you won't make
+any, and you'll take this young lady to her sister.  I'll wait here for
+you, Miss Janet," he added.
+
+"I don't know nothing about her--she rented my room that's all I know,"
+the woman replied sullenly.  "If you mean that couple that came here
+yesterday--"
+
+She turned and led the way upstairs, mounting slowly, and Janet followed,
+nauseated and almost overcome by the foul odours of dead cigarette smoke
+which, mingling with the smell of cooking cabbage rising from below,
+seemed the very essence and reek of hitherto unimagined evil.  A terror
+seized her such as she had never known before, an almost overwhelming
+impulse to turn and regain the air and sunlight of the day.  In the dark
+hallway of the second story the woman knocked at the door of a front
+room.
+
+"She's in there, unless she's gone out."  And indeed a voice was heard
+petulantly demanding what was wanted--Lise's voice!  Janet hesitated, her
+hand on the knob, her body fallen against the panels.  Then, as she
+pushed open the door, the smell of cigarette smoke grew stronger, and she
+found herself in a large bedroom, the details of which were instantly
+photographed on her mind--the dingy claret-red walls, the crayon over the
+mantel of a buxom lady in a decollete costume of the '90's, the outspread
+fan concealing the fireplace, the soiled lace curtains.  The bed was
+unmade, and on the table beside two empty beer bottles and glasses and
+the remains of a box of candy--suggestive of a Sunday purchase at a drug
+store--she recognized Lise's vanity case.  The effect of all this,
+integrated at a glance, was a paralyzing horror.  Janet could not speak.
+She remained gazing at Lise, who paid no attention to her entrance, but
+stood with her back turned before an old-fashioned bureau with a marble
+top and raised sides.  She was dressed, and engaged in adjusting her hat.
+It was not until Janet pronounced her name that she turned swiftly.
+
+"You!" she exclaimed.  "What the--what brought you here?"
+
+"Oh, Lise!" Janet repeated.
+
+"How did you get here?" Lise demanded, coming toward her.  "Who told you
+where I was?  What business have you got sleuthing 'round after me like
+this?"
+
+For a moment Janet was speechless once more, astounded that Lise could
+preserve her effrontery in such an atmosphere, could be insensible to the
+evils lurking in this house--evils so real to Janet that she seemed
+actually to feel them brushing against her.
+
+"Lise, come away from here," she pleaded, "come home with me!"
+
+"Home!" said Lise, defiantly, and laughed.  "What do you take me for?
+Why would I be going home when I've been trying to break away for two
+years?  I ain't so dippy as that--not me!  Go home like a good little
+girl and march back to the Bagatelle and ask 'em to give me another show
+standing behind a counter all day.  Nix!  No home sweet home for me!  I'm
+all for easy street when it comes to a home like that."
+
+Heartless, terrific as the repudiation was, it struck a self-convicting,
+almost sympathetic note in Janet.  She herself had revolted against the
+monotony and sordidness of that existence  She herself!  She dared not
+complete the thought, now.
+
+"But this!" she exclaimed.
+
+"What's the matter with it?" Lise demanded.  "It ain't Commonwealth
+Avenue, but it's got Fillmore Street beat a mile.  There ain't no
+whistles hereto get you out of bed at six a.m., for one thing.  There
+ain't no geezers, like Walters, to nag you 'round all day long.  What's
+the matter with it?"
+
+Something in Lise's voice roused Janet's spirit to battle.
+
+"What's the matter with it?" she cried.  "It's hell--that's the matter
+with it.  Can't you see it?  Can't you feel it?  You don't know what it
+means, or you'd come home with me."
+
+"I guess I know what it means as well as you do," said Lise, sullenly.
+"We've all got to croak sometime, and I'd rather croak this way than be
+smothered up in Hampton.  I'll get a run for my money, anyway."
+
+"No, you don't know what it means," Janet repeated, "or you wouldn't talk
+like that.  Do you think this man will support you, stick to you?  He
+won't, he'll desert you, and you'll have to go on the streets."
+
+A dangerous light grew in Lise's eyes.
+
+"He's as good as any other man, he's as good as Ditmar," she said.
+"They're all the same, to girls like us."
+
+Janet's heart caught, it seemed to stop beating.  Was this a hazard on
+Lise's part, or did she speak from knowledge?  And yet what did it matter
+whether Lise knew or only suspected, if her words were true, if men were
+all alike?  Had she been a dupe as well as Lise? and was the only
+difference between them now the fact that Lise was able, without
+illusion, to see things as they were, to accept the consequences, while
+she, Janet, had beheld visions and dreamed dreams? was there any real
+choice between the luxurious hotel to which Ditmar had taken her and this
+detestable house?  Suddenly, seemingly by chance, her eyes fell on the
+box of drug-store candy from which the cheap red ribbon had been torn,
+and by some odd association of ideas it suggested and epitomized Lise's
+Sunday excursion with a mama hideous travesty on the journey of wonders
+she herself had taken.  Had that been heaven, and this of Lise's,
+hell?...  And was.  Lise's ambition to be supported in idleness and
+luxury to be condemned because she had believed her own to be higher?
+Did not both lead to destruction?  The weight that had lain on her breast
+since the siren had awakened her that morning and she had reached out and
+touched the chilled, empty sheets now grew almost unsupportable.
+
+"It's true," said Janet, "all men are the same."
+
+Lise was staring at her.
+
+"My God!" she exclaimed.  "You?"
+
+"Yes-me," cried Janet.--"And what are you going to do about it?  Stay
+here with him in this filthy place until he gets tired of you and throws
+you out on the street?  Before I'd let any man do that to me I'd kill
+him."
+
+Lise began to whimper, and suddenly buried her face in the pillow.  But a
+new emotion had begun to take possession of Janet--an emotion so strong
+as to give her an unlookedfor sense of detachment.  And the words Lise
+had spoken between her sobs at first conveyed no meaning.
+
+"I'm going to have a baby...."
+
+Lise was going to have a child!  Why hadn't she guessed it?  A child!
+Perhaps she, Janet, would have a child!  This enlightenment as to Lise's
+condition and the possibility it suggested in regard to herself brought
+with it an overwhelming sympathy which at first she fiercely resented
+then yielded to.  The bond between them, instead of snapping, had
+inexplicably strengthened.  And Lise, despite her degradation, was more
+than ever her sister!  Forgetting her repugnance to the bed, Janet sat
+down beside Lise and put an arm around her.
+
+"He said he'd marry me, he swore he was rich--and he was a spender all
+right.  And then some guy came up to me one night at Gruber's and told me
+he was married already."
+
+"What?" Janet exclaimed.
+
+"Sure!  He's got a wife and two kids here in Boston.  That was a twenty-
+one round knockout!  Maybe I didn't have something to tell him when he
+blew into Hampton last Friday!  But he said he couldn't help it--he loved
+me."  Lise sat up, seemingly finding relief in the relation of her
+wrongs, dabbing her eyes with a cheap lace handkerchief.  "Well, while
+he'd been away--this thing came.  I didn't know what was the matter at
+first, and when I found out I was scared to death, I was ready to kill
+myself.  When I told him he was scared too, and then he said he'd fix it.
+Say, I was a goat to think he'd marry me!" Lise laughed hysterically.
+
+"And then--" Janet spoke with difficulty, "and then you came down here?"
+
+"I told him he'd have to see me through, I'd start something if he
+didn't.  Say, he almost got down on his knees, right there in Gruber's!
+But he came back inside of ten seconds--he's a jollier, for sure, he was
+right there with the goods, it was because he loved me, he couldn't help
+himself, I was his cutie, and all that kind of baby talk."
+
+Lise's objective manner of speaking about her seducer amazed Janet.
+
+"Do you love him?" she asked.
+
+"Say, what is love?" Lise demanded.  "Do you ever run into it outside of
+the movies?  Do I love him?  Well, he's a good looker and a fancy
+dresser, he ain't a tight wad, and he can start a laugh every minute.  If
+he hadn't put it over on me I wouldn't have been so sore.  I don't know
+he ain't so bad.  He's weak, that's the trouble with him."
+
+This was the climax!  Lise's mental processes, her tendency to pass from
+wild despair to impersonal comment, her inability, her courtesan's
+temperament that prevented her from realizing tragedy for more than a
+moment at a time--even though the tragedy were her own--were
+incomprehensible to Janet.
+
+"Get on to this," Lise adjured her.  "When I first was acquainted with
+him he handed me a fairy tale that he was taking five thousand a year
+from Humphrey and Gillmount, he was going into the firm.  He had me
+razzle-dazzled.  He's some hypnotizes as a salesman, too, they say.
+Nothing was too good for me; I saw myself with a house on the avenue
+shopping in a limousine.  Well, he blew up, but I can't help liking him."
+
+"Liking him!" cried Janet passionately.  "I'd kill him that's what I'd
+do."
+
+Lise regarded her with unwilling admiration.
+
+"That's where you and me is different," she declared.  "I wish I was like
+that, but I ain't.  And where would I come in?  Now you're wise why I
+can't go back to Hampton.  Even if I was stuck on the burg and cryin' my
+eyes out for the Bagatelle I couldn't go back."
+
+"What are you going to do?" Janet demanded.
+
+"Well," said Lise, "he's come across--I'll say that for him.  Maybe it's
+because he's scared, but he's stuck on me, too.  When you dropped in I
+was just going down town to get a pair of patent leathers, these are all
+wore out," she explained, twisting her foot, "they ain't fit for Boston.
+And I thought of lookin' at blouses--there's a sale on I was reading
+about in the paper.  Say, it's great to be on easy street, to be able to
+stay in bed until you're good and ready to get up and go shopping, to
+gaze at the girls behind the counter and ask the price of things.  I'm
+going to Walling's and give the salesladies the ha-ha--that's what I'm
+going to do."
+
+"But--?"  Janet found words inadequate.
+
+Lise understood her.
+
+"Oh, I'm due at the doctor's this afternoon."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"The doctor's.  Don't you get me?--it's a private hospital."  Lise gave a
+slight shudder at the word, but instantly recovered her sang-froid.
+"Howard fixed it up yesterday--and they say it ain't very bad if you take
+it early."
+
+For a space Janet was too profoundly shocked to reply.
+
+"Lise!  That's a crime!" she cried.
+
+"Crime, nothing!"  retorted Lise, and immediately became indignant.
+"Say, I sometimes wonder how you could have lived all these years without
+catching on to a few things!  What do you take me for!  What'd I do with
+a baby?"
+
+What indeed!  The thought came like an avalanche, stripping away the
+veneer of beauty from the face of the world, revealing the scarred rock
+and crushed soil beneath.  This was reality!  What right had society to
+compel a child to be born to degradation and prostitution? to beget,
+perhaps, other children of suffering?  Were not she and Lise of the
+exploited, of those duped and tempted by the fair things the more
+fortunate enjoyed unscathed?  And now, for their natural cravings, their
+family must be disgraced, they must pay the penalty of outcasts!  Neither
+Lise nor she had had a chance.  She saw that, now.  The scorching
+revelation of life's injustice lighted within her the fires of anarchy
+and revenge.  Lise, other women might submit tamely to be crushed, might
+be lulled and drugged by bribes: she would not.  A wild desire seized her
+to get back to Hampton.
+
+"Give me the address of the hospital," she said.
+
+"Come off!" cried Lise, in angry bravado.  "Do you think I'm going to let
+you butt into this?  I guess you've got enough to do to look out for your
+own business."
+
+Janet produced a pencil from her bag, and going to the table tore off a
+piece of the paper in which had been wrapped the candy box.
+
+"Give me the address," she insisted.
+
+"Say, what are you going to do?"
+
+"I want to know where you are, in case anything happens to you."
+
+"Anything happens!  What do you mean?"  Janet's words had frightened
+Lise, the withdrawal of Janet's opposition bewildered her.  But above
+all, she was cowed by the sudden change in Janet herself, by the attitude
+of steely determination eloquent of an animus persons of Lise's type are
+incapable of feeling, and which to them is therefore incomprehensible.
+"Nothing's going to happen to me," she whined.  "The place is all right--
+he'd be scared to send me there if it wasn't.  It costs something, too.
+Say, you ain't going to tell 'em at home?" she cried with a fresh access
+of alarm.
+
+"If you do as I say, I won't tell anybody," Janet replied, in that odd,
+impersonal tone her voice had acquired.  "You must write me as soon--as
+soon as it is over.  Do you understand?"
+
+"Honest to God I will," Lise assured her.
+
+"And you mustn't come back to a house like this."
+
+"Where'll I go?" Lise asked.
+
+"I don't know.  We'll find out when the time comes," said Janet,
+significantly.
+
+"You've seen him!" Lise exclaimed.
+
+"No," said Janet, "and I don't want to see him unless I have to.  Mr.
+Tiernan has seen him.  Mr. Tiernan is downstairs now, waiting for me."
+
+"Johnny Tiernan!  Is Johnny Tiernan downstairs?"
+
+Janet wrote the address, and thrust the slip of paper in her bag.
+
+"Good-bye, Lise," she said.  "I'll come down again I'll come down
+whenever you want me."  Lise suddenly seized her and clung to her,
+sobbing.  For a while Janet submitted, and then, kissing her, gently
+detached herself.  She felt, indeed, pity for Lise, but something within
+her seemed to have hardened--something that pity could not melt,
+possessing her and thrusting heron to action.  She knew not what action.
+So strong was this thing that it overcame and drove off the evil spirits
+of that darkened house as she descended the stairs to join Mr. Tiernan,
+who opened the door for her to pass out.  Once in the street, she
+breathed deeply of the sunlit air.  Nor did she observe Mr. Tiernan's
+glance of comprehension....  When they arrived at the North Station he
+said:--
+
+"You'll be wanting a bite of dinner, Miss Janet," and as she shook her
+head he did not press her to eat.  He told her that a train for Hampton
+left in ten minutes.  "I think I'll stay in Boston the rest of the day,
+as long as I'm here," he added.
+
+She remembered that she had not thanked him, she took his hand, but he
+cut her short.
+
+"It's glad I was to help you," he assured her.  "And if there's anything
+more I can do, Miss Janet, you'll be letting me know--you'll call on
+Johnny Tiernan, won't you?"
+
+He left her at the gate.  He had intruded with no advice, he had offered
+no comment that she had come downstairs alone, without Lise.  His
+confidence in her seemed never to have wavered.  He had respected,
+perhaps partly imagined her feelings, and in spite of these now a sense
+of gratitude to him stole over her, mitigating the intensity of their
+bitterness.  Mr. Tiernan alone seemed stable in a chaotic world.  He was
+a man.
+
+No sooner was she in the train, however, than she forgot Mr. Tiernan
+utterly.  Up to the present the mental process of dwelling upon her own
+experience of the last three months had been unbearable, but now she was
+able to take a fearful satisfaction in the evolving of parallels between
+her case and Lise's.  Despite the fact that the memories she had
+cherished were now become hideous things, she sought to drag them forth
+and compare them, ruthlessly, with what must have been the treasures of
+Lise.  Were her own any less tawdry?  Only she, Janet, had been the
+greater fool of the two, the greater dupe because she had allowed herself
+to dream, to believe that what she had done had been for love, for light!
+because she had not listened to the warning voice within her!  It had
+always been on the little, unpremeditated acts of Ditmar that she had
+loved to linger, and now, in the light of Lise's testimony, of Lise's
+experience, she saw them all as false.  It seemed incredible, now, that
+she had ever deceived herself into thinking that Ditmar meant to marry
+her, that he loved her enough to make her his wife.  Nor was it necessary
+to summon and marshal incidents to support this view, they came of
+themselves, crowding one another, a cumulative and appalling array of
+evidence, before which she stood bitterly amazed at her former stupidity.
+And in the events of yesterday, which she pitilessly reviewed, she beheld
+a deliberate and prearranged plan for her betrayal.  Had he not
+telephoned to Boston for the rooms, rehearsed in his own mind every
+detail of what had subsequently happened?  Was there any essential
+difference between the methods of Ditmar and Duval?  Both were skilled in
+the same art, and Ditmar was the cleverer of the two.  It had only needed
+her meeting with Lise, in that house, to reveal how he had betrayed her
+faith and her love, sullied and besmirched them.  And then came the odd
+reflection,--how strange that that same Sunday had been so fateful for
+herself and Lise!
+
+The agony of these thoughts was mitigated by the scorehing hatred that
+had replaced her love, the desire for retaliation, revenge.
+Occasionally, however, that stream of consciousness was broken by the
+recollection of what she had permitted and even advised her sister to do;
+and though the idea of the place to which Lise was going sickened her,
+though she achieved a certain objective amazement at the transformation
+in herself enabling her to endorse such a course, she was glad of having
+endorsed it, she rejoiced that Lise's child would not be born into a
+world that had seemed--so falsely--fair and sweet, and in reality was
+black and detestable.  Her acceptance of the act--for Lise--was a
+function of the hatred consuming her, a hatred which, growing in bigness,
+had made Ditmar merely the personification of that world.  From time to
+time her hands clenched, her brow furrowed, powerful waves of heat ran
+through her, the craving for action became so intense she could scarcely
+refrain from rising in her seat.
+
+By some odd whim of the weather the wind had backed around into the east,
+gathering the clouds once more.  The brilliancy of the morning had given
+place to greyness, the high slits of windows seemed dirtier than ever as
+the train pulled into the station at Hampton, shrouded in Gothic gloom.
+As she left the car Janet was aware of the presence on the platform of an
+unusual number of people; she wondered vaguely, as she pushed her way
+through them, why they were there, what they were talking about?  One
+determination possessed her, to go to the Chippering Mill, to Ditmar.
+Emerging from the street, she began to walk rapidly, the change from
+inaction to exercise bringing a certain relief, starting the working of
+her mind, arousing in her a realization of the necessity of being
+prepared for the meeting.  Therefore, instead of turning at Faber Street,
+she crossed it.  But at the corner of the Common she halted, her glance
+drawn by a dark mass of people filling the end of Hawthorne Street, where
+it was blocked by the brick-coloured facade of the Clarendon Mill.  In
+the middle distance men and boys were running to join this crowd.  A
+girl, evidently an Irish-American mill hand of the higher paid sort,
+hurried toward her from the direction of the mill itself.  Janet accosted
+her.
+
+"It's the strike," she explained excitedly, evidently surprised at the
+question.  "The Polaks and the Dagoes and a lot of other foreigners quit
+when they got their envelopes--stopped their looms and started through
+the mill, and when they came into our room I left.  I didn't want no
+trouble with 'em.  It's the fifty-four hour law--their pay's cut two
+hours.  You've heard about it, I guess."
+
+Janet nodded.
+
+"They had a big mass meeting last night in Maxwell Hall," the girl
+continued, "the foreigners--not the skilled workers.  And they voted to
+strike.  They tell me they're walking out over at the Patuxent, too."
+
+"And the Chippering?" asked Janet, eagerly.
+
+"I don't know--I guess it'll spread to all of 'em, the way these
+foreigners are going on--they're crazy.  But say," the girl added, "it
+ain't right to cut our pay, either, is it?  They never done it two years
+ago when the law came down to fifty-six."
+
+Janet did not wait to reply.  While listening to this explanation,
+excitement had been growing in her again, and some fearful, overpowering
+force of attraction emanating from that swarm in the distance drew her
+until she yielded, fairly running past the rows of Italian tenements in
+their strange setting of snow, not to pause until she reached the fruit
+shop where she and Eda had eaten the olives.  Now she was on the
+outskirts of the crowd that packed itself against the gates of the
+Clarendon.  It spread over the width of East Street, growing larger every
+minute, until presently she was hemmed in.  Here and there hoarse shouts
+of approval and cheers arose in response to invisible orators haranging
+their audiences in weird, foreign tongues; tiny American flags were
+waved; and suddenly, in one of those unforeseen and incomprehensible
+movements to which mobs are subject, a trolley car standing at the end of
+the Hawthorne Street track was surrounded, the desperate clanging of its
+bell keeping pace with the beating of Janet's heart.  A dark Sicilian,
+holding aloft the green, red, and white flag of Italy, leaped on the rear
+platform and began to speak, the Slav conductor regarding him stupidly,
+pulling the bellcord the while.  Three or four policemen fought their way
+to the spot, striving to clear the tracks, bewildered and impotent in the
+face of the alien horde momentarily growing more and more conscious of
+power.
+
+Janet pushed her way deeper and deeper into the crowd.  She wanted to
+savour to the full its wrath and danger, to surrender herself to be
+played upon by these sallow, stubbybearded exhorters, whose menacing
+tones and passionate gestures made a grateful appeal, whose wild, musical
+words, just because they were uncomprehended, aroused in her dim
+suggestions of a race-experience not her own, but in which she was now
+somehow summoned to share.  That these were the intruders whom she, as a
+native American, had once resented and despised did not occur to her.
+The racial sense so strong in her was drowned in a sense of fellowship.
+Their anger seemed to embody and express, as nothing else could have
+done, the revolt that had been rising, rising within her soul; and the
+babel to which she listened was not a confusion of tongues, but one voice
+lifted up to proclaim the wrongs of all the duped, of all the exploited
+and oppressed.  She was fused with them, their cause was her cause, their
+betrayers her betrayers.
+
+Suddenly was heard the cry for which she had been tensely but
+unconsciously awaiting.  Another cry like that had rung out in another
+mob across the seas more than a century before.  "Ala Bastille!" became
+"To the Chippering!"  Some man shouted it out in shrill English, hundreds
+repeated it; the Sicilian leaped from the trolley car, and his path could
+be followed by the agitated progress of the alien banner he bore.  "To
+the Chippering!"  It rang in Janet's ears like a call to battle.  Was she
+shouting it, too?  A galvanic thrill ran through the crowd, an impulse
+that turned their faces and started their steps down East Street toward
+the canal, and Janet was irresistibly carried along.  Nay, it seemed as
+if the force that second by second gained momentum was in her, that she
+herself had released and was guiding it!  Her feet were wet as she
+ploughed through the trampled snow, but she gave no thought to that.  The
+odour of humanity was in her nostrils.  On the left a gaunt Jew pressed
+against her, on the right a solid Ruthenian woman, one hand clasping her
+shawl, the other holding aloft a miniature emblem of New World liberty.
+Her eyes were fixed on the grey skies, and from time to time her lips
+were parted in some strange, ancestral chant that could be heard above
+the shouting.  All about Janet were dark, awakening faces....
+
+It chanced that an American, a college graduate, stood gazing down from a
+point of vantage upon this scene.  He was ignorant of anthropology,
+psychology, and the phenomena of environment; but bits of "knowledge"--
+which he embodied in a newspaper article composed that evening stuck wax-
+like in his brain.  Not thus, he deplored, was the Anglo-Saxon wont to
+conduct his rebellions.  These Czechs and Slavs, Hebrews and Latins and
+Huns might have appropriately been clad in the skins worn by the hordes
+of Attila.  Had they not been drawn hither by the renown of the
+Republic's wealth?  And how essentially did they differ from those other
+barbarians before whose bewildered, lustful gaze had risen the glittering
+palaces on the hills of the Tiber?  The spoils of Rome!  The spoils of
+America!  They appeared to him ferocious, atavistic beasts as they broke
+into the lumberyard beneath his window to tear the cord-wood from the
+piles and rush out again, armed with billets....
+
+Janet, in the main stream sweeping irresistibly down the middle of the
+street, was carried beyond the lumberyard into the narrow roadway beside
+the canal--presently to find herself packed in the congested mass in
+front of the bridge that led to the gates of the Chippering Mill.  Across
+the water, above the angry hum of human voices could be heard the
+whirring of the looms, rousing the mob to a higher pitch of fury.  The
+halt was for a moment only.  The bridge rocked beneath the weight of
+their charge, they battered at the great gates, they ran along the snow-
+filled tracks by the wall of the mill.  Some, in a frenzy of passion,
+hurled their logs against the windows; others paused, seemingly to
+measure the distance and force of the stroke, thus lending to their act a
+more terrible and deliberate significance.  A shout of triumph announced
+that the gates, like a broken dam, had given way, and the torrent poured
+in between the posts, flooding the yard, pressing up the towered
+stairways and spreading through the compartments of the mill.  More
+ominous than the tumult seemed the comparative silence that followed this
+absorption of the angry spirits of the mob.  Little by little, as the
+power was shut off, the antiphonal throbbing of the looms was stilled.
+Pinioned against the parapet above the canal--almost on that very spot
+where, the first evening, she had met Ditmar--Janet awaited her chance to
+cross.  Every crashing window, every resounding blow on the panels gave
+her a fierce throb of joy.  She had not expected the gates to yield--her
+father must have insecurely fastened them.  Gaining the farther side of
+the canal, she perceived him flattened against the wall of the gatehouse
+shaking his fist in the faces of the intruders, who rushed past him
+unheeding.  His look arrested her.  His face was livid, his eyes were red
+with anger, he stood transformed by a passion she had not believed him to
+possess.  She had indeed heard him give vent to a mitigated indignation
+against foreigners in general, but now the old-school Americanism in
+which he had been bred, the Americanism of individual rights, of respect
+for the convention of property, had suddenly sprung into flame.  He was
+ready to fight for it, to die for it.  The curses he hurled at these
+people sounded blasphemous in Janet's ears.
+
+"Father!" she cried.  "Father!"
+
+He looked at her uncomprehendingly, seemingly failing to recognize her.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he demanded, seizing her and attempting to
+draw her to the wall beside him.  But she resisted.  There sprang from
+her lips an unpremeditated question: "Where is Mr. Ditmar?"  She was,
+indeed, amazed at having spoken it.
+
+"I don't know," Edward replied distractedly.  "We've been looking for him
+everywhere.  My God, to think that this should happen with me at the
+gates!" he lamented.  "Go home, Janet.  You can't tell what'll happen,
+what these fiends will do, you may get hurt.  You've got no business
+here."  Catching sight of a belated and breathless policeman, he turned
+from her in desperation.  "Get 'em out!  Far God's sake, can't you get
+'em out before they ruin the machines?"
+
+But Janet waited no longer.  Pushing her way frantically through the
+people filling the yard she climbed the tower stairs and made her way
+into one of the spinning rooms.  The frames were stilled, the overseer
+and second hands, thrust aside, looked on helplessly while the intruders
+harangued, cajoled or threatened the operatives, some of whom were cowed
+and already departing; others, sullen and resentful, remained standing in
+the aisles; and still others seemed to have caught the contagion of the
+strike.  Suddenly, with reverberating strokes, the mill bells rang out,
+the electric gongs chattered, the siren screeched, drowning the voices.
+Janet did not pause, but hurried from room to room until, in passing
+through an open doorway in the weaving department she ran into Mr.
+Caldwell.  He halted a moment, in surprise at finding her there, calling
+her by name.  She clung to his sleeve, and again she asked the question:--
+
+"Where's Mr. Ditmar?"
+
+Caldwell shook his head.  His answer was the same as Edward's.  "I don't
+know," he shouted excitedly above the noise.  "We've got to get this mob
+out before they do any damage."
+
+He tore himself away, she saw him expostulating with the overseer, and
+then she went on.  These tower stairs, she remembered, led to a yard
+communicating by a little gate with the office entrance.  The door of the
+vestibule was closed, but the watchman, Simmons, recognizing her,
+permitted her to enter.  The offices were deserted, silent, for the bells
+and the siren had ceased their clamour; the stenographers and clerks had
+gone.  The short day was drawing to a close, shadows were gathering in
+the corners of Ditmar's room as she reached the threshold and gazed about
+her at the objects there so poignantly familiar.  She took off her coat.
+His desk was littered with books and papers, and she started,
+mechanically, to set it in order, replacing the schedule books on the
+shelves, sorting out the letters and putting them in the basket.  She
+could not herself have told why she should take up again these trivial
+tasks as though no cataclysmic events had intervened to divide forever
+the world of yesterday from that of to-morrow.  With a movement
+suggestive of tenderness she was picking up Ditmar's pen to set it in the
+glass rack when her ear caught the sound of voices, and she stood
+transfixed, listening intently.  There were footsteps in the corridor,
+the voices came nearer; one, loud and angered, she detected above the
+others.  It was Ditmar's!  Nothing had happened to him!  Dropping the
+pen, she went over to the window, staring out over the grey waters,
+trembling so violently that she could scarcely stand.
+
+She did not look around when they entered the room Ditmar, Caldwell,
+Orcutt, and evidently a few watchmen and overseers.  Some one turned on
+the electric switch, darkening the scene without.  Ditmar continued to
+speak in vehement tones of uncontrolled rage.
+
+"Why in hell weren't those gates bolted tight?" he demanded.  "That's
+what I want to know!  There was plenty of time after they turned the
+corner of East Street.  You might have guessed what they would do.  But
+instead of that you let 'em into the mill to shut off the power and
+intimidate our own people."  He called the strikers an unprintable name,
+and though Janet stood, with her back turned, directly before him, he
+gave no sign of being aware of her presence.
+
+"It wasn't the gatekeeper's fault," she heard Orcutt reply in a tone
+quivering with excitement and apprehension.  "They really didn't give us
+a chance--that's the truth.  They were down Canal Street and over the
+bridge before we knew it."
+
+"It's just as I've said a hundred times," Ditmar retorted.  "I can't
+afford to leave this mill a minute, I can't trust anybody--" and he
+broke out in another tirade against the intruders.  "By God, I'll fix 'em
+for this--I'll crush 'em.  And if any operatives try to walkout here I'll
+see that they starve before they get back--after all I've done for 'em,
+kept the mill going in slack times just to give 'em work.  If they desert
+me now, when I've got this Bradlaugh order on my hands--" Speech became
+an inadequate expression of his feelings, and suddenly his eye fell on
+Janet.  She had turned, but her look made no impression on him.  "Call up
+the Chief of Police," he said.
+
+Automatically she obeyed, getting the connection and handing him the
+receiver, standing by while he denounced the incompetence of the
+department for permitting the mob to gather in East Street and demanded
+deputies.  The veins of his forehead were swollen as he cut short the
+explanations of the official and asked for the City Hall.  In making an
+appointment with the Mayor he reflected on the management of the city
+government.  And when Janet by his command obtained the Boston office, he
+gave the mill treasurer a heated account of the afternoon's occurrences,
+explaining circumstantially how, in his absence at a conference in the
+Patuxent Mill, the mob had gathered in East Street and attacked the
+Chippering; and he urged the treasurer to waste no time in obtaining a
+force of detectives, in securing in Boston and New York all the
+operatives that could be hired, in order to break the impending strike.
+Save for this untimely and unreasonable revolt he was bent on stamping
+out, for Ditmar the world to-day was precisely the same world it had been
+the day before.  It seemed incredible to Janet that he could so regard
+it, could still be blind to the fact that these workers whom he was
+determined to starve and crush if they dared to upset his plans and
+oppose his will were human beings with wills and passions and grievances
+of their own.  Until to-day her eyes had been sealed.  In agony they had
+been opened to the panorama of sorrow and suffering, of passion and evil;
+and what she beheld now as life was a vast and terrible cruelty.  She had
+needed only this final proof to be convinced that in his eyes she also
+was but one of those brought into the world to minister to his pleasure
+and profit.  He had taken from her, as his weed, the most precious thing
+a woman has to give, and now that she was here again at his side, by some
+impulse incomprehensible to herself--in spite of the wrong he had done
+her!--had sought him out in danger, he had no thought of her, no word for
+her, no use save a menial one: he cared nothing for any help she might be
+able to give, he had no perception of the new light which had broken
+within her soul....  The telephoning seemed interminable, yet she waited
+with a strange patience while he talked with Mr. George Chippering and
+two of the most influential directors.  These conversations had covered
+the space of an hour or more.  And perhaps as a result of self-
+suggestion, of his repeated assurances to Mr. Semple, to Mr. Chippering,
+and the directors of his ability to control the situation, Ditmar's
+habitual self-confidence was gradually restored.  And when at last he
+hung up the instrument and turned to her, though still furious against
+the strikers, his voice betrayed the joy of battle, the assurance of
+victory.
+
+"They can't bluff me, they'll have to guess again.  It's that damned
+Holster--he hasn't any guts--he'd give in to 'em right now if I'd let
+him.  It's the limit the way he turned the Clarendon over to them.  I'll
+show him how to put a crimp in 'em if they don't turn up here to-morrow
+morning."
+
+He was so magnificently sure of her sympathy!  She did, not reply, but
+picked up her coat from the chair where she had laid it.
+
+"Where are you going?"  he demanded.  And she replied laconically,
+"Home."
+
+"Wait a minute," he said, rising and taking a step toward her.
+
+"You have an appointment with the Mayor," she reminded him.
+
+"I know," he said, glancing at the clock over the door.  "Where have you
+been?--where were you this morning?  I was worried about you, I--I was
+afraid you might be sick."
+
+"Were you?" she said.  "I'm all right.  I had business in Boston."
+
+"Why didn't you telephone me?  In Boston?" he repeated.
+
+She nodded.  He started forward again, but she avoided him.
+
+"What's the matter?" he cried.  "I've been worried about you all day--
+until this damned strike broke loose.  I was afraid something had
+happened."
+
+"You might have asked my father," she said.
+
+"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!"
+
+His desire for her mounted as his conviction grew more acute that
+something had happened to disturb a relationship which, he had
+congratulated himself, after many vicissitudes and anxieties had at last
+been established.  He was conscious, however, of irritation because this
+whimsical and unanticipated grievance of hers should have developed at
+the moment when the caprice of his operatives threatened to interfere
+with his cherished plans--for Ditmar measured the inconsistencies of
+humanity by the yardstick of his desires.  Her question as to why he had
+not made inquiries of her father added a new element to his disquietude.
+As he stood thus, worried, exasperated, and perplexed, the fact that
+there was in her attitude something ominous, dangerous, was slow to dawn
+on him.  His faculties were wholly unprepared for the blow she struck
+him.
+
+"I hate you!" she said.  She did not raise her voice, but the deliberate,
+concentrated conviction she put into the sentence gave it the dynamic
+quality of a bullet.  And save for the impact of it--before which he
+physically recoiled--its import was momentarily without meaning.
+
+"What?" he exclaimed, stupidly.
+
+"I might have known you never meant to marry me," she went on.  Her hands
+were busy with the buttons of her coat.
+
+"All you want is to use me, to enjoy me and turn me out when you get
+tired of me--the way you've done with other women.  It's just the same
+with these mill hands, they're not human beings to you, they're--they're
+cattle.  If they don't do as you like, you turn them out; you say they
+can starve for all you care."
+
+"For God's sake, what do you mean?" he demanded.  "What have I done to
+you, Janet?  I love you, I need you!"
+
+"Love me!" she repeated.  "I know how men of your sort love--I've seen
+it--I know.  As long as I give you what you want and don't bother you,
+you love me.  And I know how these workers feel," she cried, with sudden,
+passionate vehemence.  "I never knew before, but I know now.  I've been
+with them, I marched up here with them from the Clarendon when they
+battered in the gates and smashed your windows--and I wanted to smash
+your windows, too, to blow up your mill."
+
+"What are you saying?  You came here with the strikers? you were with
+that mob?" asked Ditmar, astoundedly.
+
+"Yes, I was in that mob.  I belong there, with them, I tell you--I don't
+belong here, with you.  But I was a fool even then, I was afraid they'd
+hurt you, I came into the mill to find you, and you--and you you acted as
+if you'd never seen me before.  I was a fool, but I'm glad I came--I'm
+glad I had a chance to tell you this."
+
+"My God--won't you trust me?" he begged, with a tremendous effort to
+collect himself.  "You trusted me yesterday.  What's happened to change
+you?  Won't you tell me?  It's nothing I've done--I swear.  And what do
+you mean when you say you were in that mob?  I was almost crazy when I
+came back and found they'd been here in this mill--can't you understand?
+It wasn't that I didn't think of you.  I'd been worrying about you all
+day.  Look at this thing sensibly.  I love you, I can't get along without
+you--I'll marry you.  I said I would, I meant it I'll marry you just as
+soon as I can clean up this mess of a strike.  It won't take long."
+
+"Don't touch me!" she commanded, and he recoiled again.  "I'll tell you
+where I've been, if you want to know,--I've been to see my sister in--in
+a house, in Boston.  I guess you know what kind of a house I mean, you've
+been in them, you've brought women to them,--just like the man that
+brought her there.  Would you marry me now--with my sister there?  And am
+I any different from her?  You you've made me just like her."  Her voice
+had broken, now, into furious, uncontrolled weeping--to which she paid no
+heed.
+
+Ditmar was stunned; he could only stare at her.
+
+"If I have a child," she said, "I'll--I'll kill you--I'll kill myself."
+
+And before he could reply--if indeed he had been able to reply--she had
+left the office and was running down the stairs....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+What was happening to Hampton?  Some hundreds of ignorant foreigners,
+dissatisfied with the money in their pay envelopes, had marched out of
+the Clarendon Mill and attacked the Chippering and behold, the revered
+structure of American Government had quivered and tumbled down like a
+pack of cards!  Despite the feverish assurances in the Banner "extra"
+that the disturbance was merely local and temporary, solid citizens
+became panicky, vaguely apprehending the release of elemental forces
+hitherto unrecognized and unknown.  Who was to tell these solid, educated
+business men that the crazy industrial Babel they had helped to rear, and
+in which they unconsciously dwelt, was no longer the simple edifice they
+thought it? that Authority, spelled with a capital, was a thing of the
+past? that human instincts suppressed become explosives to displace the
+strata of civilization and change the face of the world? that conventions
+and institutions, laws and decrees crumble before the whirlwind of human
+passions?  that their city was not of special, but of universal
+significance?  And how were these, who still believed themselves to be
+dwelling under the old dispensation, to comprehend that environments
+change, and changing demand new and terrible Philosophies?  When night
+fell on that fateful Tuesday the voice of Syndicalism had been raised in
+a temple dedicated to ordered, Anglo-Saxon liberty--the Hampton City
+Hall.
+
+Only for a night and a day did the rebellion lack both a leader and a
+philosophy.  Meanwhile, in obedience to the unerring instinct for drama
+peculiar to great metropolitan dailies, newspaper correspondents were
+alighting from every train, interviewing officials and members of labour
+unions and mill agents: interviewing Claude Ditmar, the strongest man in
+Hampton that day.  He at least knew what ought to be done, and even
+before his siren broke the silence of the morning hours in vigorous and
+emphatic terms he had informed the Mayor and Council of their obvious
+duty.  These strikers were helots, unorganized scum; the regular unions--
+by comparison respectable--held aloof from them.  Here, in effect, was
+his argument: a strong show of force was imperative; if the police and
+deputies were inadequate, request the Governor to call out the local
+militia; but above all, waste no time, arrest the ringleaders, the
+plotters, break up all gatherings, keep the streets clear.  He demanded
+from the law protection of his property, protection for those whose right
+to continue at work was inalienable.  He was listened to with sympathy
+and respect--but nothing was done!  The world had turned upside down
+indeed if the City Government of Hampton refused to take the advice of
+the agent of the Chippering Mill!  American institutions were a failure!
+But such was the fact.  Some unnamed fear, outweighing their dread of the
+retributions of Capital, possessed these men, made them supine, derelict
+in the face of their obvious duty.
+
+By the faint grey light of that bitter January morning Ditmar made his
+way to the mill.  In Faber Street dark figures flitted silently across
+the ghostly whiteness of the snow, and gathered in groups on the corners;
+seeking to avoid these, other figures hurried along the sidewalks close
+to the buildings, to be halted, accosted, pleaded with--threatened,
+perhaps.  Picketing had already begun!  The effect of this pantomime of
+the eternal struggle for survivals which he at first beheld from a
+distance, was to exaggerate appallingly the emptiness of the wide street,
+to emphasize the absence of shoppers and vehicles; and a bluish darkness
+lurked in the stores, whose plate glass windows were frosted in quaint
+designs.  Where were the police?  It was not fear that Ditmar felt, he
+was galvanized and dominated by anger, by an overwhelming desire for
+action; physical combat would have brought him relief, and as he
+quickened his steps he itched to seize with his own hands these
+foreigners who had dared to interfere with his cherished plans, who had
+had the audacity to challenge the principles of his government which
+welcomed them to its shores.  He would have liked to wring their necks.
+His philosophy, too, was environmental.  And beneath this wrath,
+stimulating and energizing it the more, was the ache in his soul from the
+loss for which he held these enemies responsible.  Two days ago happiness
+and achievement had both been within his grasp.  The only woman--so now
+it seemed--he had ever really wanted!  What had become of her?  What
+obscure and passionate impulse had led her suddenly to defy and desert
+him, to cast in her lot with these insensate aliens?  A hundred times
+during the restless, inactive hours of a sleepless night this question
+had intruded itself in the midst of his scheming to break the strike, as
+he reviewed, word by word, act by act, that almost incomprehensible
+revolt of hers which had followed so swiftly--a final, vindictive blow of
+fate--on that other revolt of the workers.  At moments he became
+confused, unable to separate the two.  He saw her fire in that other....
+Her sister, she had said, had been disgraced; she had defied him to marry
+her in the face of that degradation--and this suddenly had sickened him.
+He had let her go.  What a fool he had been to let her go!  Had she
+herself been--!  He did not finish this thought.  Throughout the long
+night he had known, for a certainty, that this woman was a vital part of
+him, flame of his flame.  Had he never seen her he would have fought
+these strikers to their knees, but now the force of this incentive was
+doubled.  He would never yield until he had crushed them, until he had
+reconquered her.
+
+He was approaching one of the groups of strikers, and unconsciously he
+slowed his steps.  The whites of his eyes reddened.  The great coat of
+golden fur he wore gave to his aspect an added quality of formidableness.
+There were some who scattered as he drew near, and of the less timorous
+spirits that remained only a few raised dark, sullen glances to encounter
+his, which was unflinching, passionately contemptuous.  Throughout the
+countless generations that lay behind them the instinct of submission had
+played its dominant, phylogenetic role.  He was the Master.  The journey
+across the seas had not changed that.  A few shivered--not alone because
+they were thinly clad.  He walked on, slowly, past other groups, turned
+the corner of West Street, where the groups were more numerous, while the
+number of those running the gantlet had increased.  And he heard, twice
+or thrice, the word "Scab!" cried out menacingly.  His eyes grew redder
+still as he spied a policeman standing idly in a doorway.
+
+"Why in hell don't you do your duty?" he demanded.  "What do you mean by
+letting them interfere with these workers?"
+
+The man flinched.  He was apologetic.  "So long as they're peaceable, Mr.
+Ditmar--those are my orders.  I do try to keep 'em movin'."
+
+"Your orders?  You're a lot of damned cowards," Ditmar replied, and went
+on.  There were mutterings here; herded together, these slaves were
+bolder; and hunger and cold, discouragement at not being able to stop the
+flow toward the mills were having their effect.  By the frozen canal, the
+scene of the onslaught of yesterday, the crowd had grown comparatively
+thick, and at the corner of the lodginghouse row Ditmar halted a moment,
+unnoticed save by a few who nudged one another and murmured.  He gave
+them no attention, he was trying to form an estimate of the effect of the
+picketing on his own operatives.  Some came with timid steps; others,
+mostly women, fairly ran; still others were self-possessed, almost
+defiant--and such he marked.  There were those who, when the picketers
+held them by the sleeve, broke precipitately from their annoyers, and
+those who hesitated, listening with troubled faces, with feelings torn
+between dread of hunger for themselves and their children and sympathy
+with the revolt.  A small number joined the ranks of the picketers.
+Ditmar towered above these foreigners, who were mostly undersized: a
+student of human nature and civilization, free from industrial complexes,
+would from that point of vantage have had much to gather from the
+expressions coming within his view, but to Ditmar humanity was a means to
+an end.  Suddenly, from the cupolas above the battlement of the mill, the
+bells shattered the early morning air, the remnant of the workers
+hastened across the canal and through the guarded gates, which were
+instantly closed.  Ditmar was left alone among the strikers.  As he moved
+toward the bridge they made a lane for him to pass; one or two he thrust
+out of his way.  But there were mutterings, and from the sidewalk he
+heard a man curse him.
+
+Perhaps we shall understand some day that the social body, also, is
+subject to the operation of cause and effect.  It was not what an
+ingenuous orthodoxy, keeping alive the fate of the ancient city from
+which Lot fled, would call the wrath of heaven that visited Hampton,
+although a sermon on these lines was delivered from more than one of her
+pulpits on the following Sunday.  Let us surmise, rather, that a decrepit
+social system in a moment of lowered vitality becomes an easy prey to
+certain diseases which respectable communities are not supposed to have.
+The germ of a philosophy evolved in decadent Europe flies across the sea
+to prey upon a youthful and vigorous America, lodging as host wherever
+industrial strife has made congenial soil.  In four and twenty hours
+Hampton had "caught" Syndicalism.  All day Tuesday, before the true
+nature of the affection was developed, prominent citizens were outraged
+and appalled by the supineness of their municipal phagocytes.  Property,
+that sacred fabric of government, had been attacked and destroyed, law
+had been defied, and yet the City Hall, the sanctuary of American
+tradition, was turned over to the alien mob for a continuous series of
+mass meetings.  All day long that edifice, hitherto chastely familiar
+with American doctrine alone, with patriotic oratory, with perorations
+that dwelt upon the wrongs and woes of Ireland--part of our national
+propaganda--all day long that edifice rang with strange, exotic speech,
+sometimes guttural, often musical, but always impassioned, weirdly
+cadenced and intoned.  From the raised platform, in place of the shrewd,
+matter-of-fact New England politician alive to the vote--getting powers
+of Fourth of July patriotism, in place of the vehement but fun-loving son
+of Erin, men with wild, dark faces, with burning black eyes and unkempt
+hair, unshaven, flannel skirted--made more alien, paradoxically, by their
+conventional, ready-made American clothes--gave tongue to the
+inarticulate aspirations of the peasant drudge of Europe.  From lands
+long steeped in blood they came, from low countries by misty northern
+seas, from fair and ancient plains of Lombardy, from Guelph and
+Ghibelline hamlets in the Apennines, from vine-covered slopes in Sicily
+and Greece; from the Balkans, from Caucasus and Carpathia, from the
+mountains of Lebanon, whose cedars lined the palaces of kings; and from
+villages beside swollen rivers that cross the dreary steppes.  Each
+peasant listened to a recital in his own tongue--the tongue in which the
+folklore, the cradle sayings of his race had been preserved--of the
+common wrongs of all, of misery still present, of happiness still
+unachieved in this land of liberty and opportunity they had found a
+mockery; to appeals to endure and suffer for a common cause.  But who was
+to weld together this medley of races and traditions, to give them the
+creed for which their passions were prepared, to lead into battle these
+ignorant and unskilled from whom organized labour held aloof?  Even as
+dusk was falling, even as the Mayor, the Hon. Michael McGrath, was making
+from the platform an eloquent plea for order and peace, promising a
+Committee of Arbitration and thinking about soldiers, the leader and the
+philosophy were landing in Hampton.
+
+The "five o'clock" edition of the Banner announced him, Antonio
+Antonelli, of the Industrial Workers of the World!  An ominous name, an
+ominous title,--compared by a wellknown publicist to the sound of a fire-
+bell in the night.  The Industrial Workers, not of America, but of the
+World!  No wonder it sent shivers down the spine of Hampton!  The writer
+of the article in the Banner was unfamiliar with the words "syndicalism"
+and "sabotage," or the phrase "direct action," he was too young to know
+the history of the Knights, he had never heard of a philosophy of labour,
+or of Sorel or Pouget, but the West he had heard of,--the home of
+lawlessness, of bloodshed, rape, and murder.  For obvious reasons he did
+not betray this opinion, but for him the I.W.W. was born in the West,
+where it had ravaged and wrecked communities.  His article was guardedly
+respectful, but he ventured to remind his readers that Mr. Antonelli had
+been a leader in some of these titanic struggles between crude labour and
+capital--catastrophes that hitherto had seemed to the citizens of Hampton
+as remote as Kansas cyclones....
+
+Some of the less timorous of the older inhabitants, curious to learn what
+doctrine this interloper had to proclaim, thrust their way that evening
+into the City Hall, which was crowded, as the papers said, "to
+suffocation."  Not prepossessing, this modern Robespierre; younger than
+he looked, for life had put its mark on him; once, in the days of severe
+work in the mines, his body had been hard, and now had grown stout.  In
+the eyes of a complacent, arm-chair historian he must have appeared one
+of the, strange and terrifying creatures which, in times of upheaval, are
+thrust from the depths of democracies to the surface, with gifts to voice
+the longings and passions of those below.  He did not blink in the light;
+he was sure of himself, he had a creed and believed in it; he gazed
+around him with the leonine stare of the conqueror, and a hush came over
+the hall as he arose.  His speech was taken down verbatim, to be
+submitted to the sharpest of legal eyes, when was discovered the
+possession of a power--rare among agitators--to pour forth in torrents
+apparently unpremeditated appeals, to skirt the border of sedition and
+never transgress it, to weigh his phrases before he gave them birth, and
+to remember them.  If he said an incendiary thing one moment he qualified
+it the next; he justified violence only to deprecate it; and months
+later, when on trial for his life and certain remarks were quoted against
+him, he confounded his prosecutors by demanding the contexts.  Skilfully,
+always within the limits of their intelligence, he outlined to his
+hearers his philosophy and proclaimed it as that of the world's
+oppressed.  Their cause was his--the cause of human progress; he
+universalized, it.  The world belonged to the "producer," if only he had
+the courage to take possession of his own....
+
+Suddenly the inspirer was transformed into the man of affairs who calmly
+proposed the organization of a strike committee, three members of which
+were to be chosen by each nationality.  And the resolution, translated
+into many tongues, was adopted amidst an uproar of enthusiasm.  Until
+that moment the revolt had been personal, local, founded on a particular
+grievance which had to do with wages and the material struggle for
+existence.  Now all was changed; now they were convinced that the
+deprivation and suffering to which they had pledged themselves were not
+for selfish ends alone, but also vicarious, dedicated to the liberation
+of all the downtrodden of the earth.  Antonelli became a saviour; they
+reached out to touch him as he passed; they trooped into the snowy
+street, young men and old, and girls, and women holding children in their
+arms, their faces alight with something never known or felt before.
+
+Such was Antonelli to the strikers.  But to those staid residents of
+Hampton who had thought themselves still to be living in the old New
+England tradition, he was the genius of an evil dream.  Hard on his heels
+came a nightmare troop, whose coming brought to the remembrance of the
+imaginative the old nursery rhyme:--
+
+"Hark! Hark!  The dogs do bark, The beggars are come to town."
+
+It has, indeed, a knell-like ring.  Do philosophies tend also to cast
+those who adopt them into a mould?  These were of the self-same breed,
+indubitably the followers of Antonelli.  The men wore their hair long,
+affected, like their leader, soft felt hats and loose black ties that
+fell over the lapels of their coats.  Loose morals and loose ties!  The
+projection of these against a Puritan background ties symbolical of
+everything the Anglo-Saxon shudders at and abhors; of anarchy and mob
+rule, of bohemia and vagabondia, of sedition and murder, of Latin
+revolutions and reigns of terror; of sex irregularity--not of the
+clandestine sort to be found in decent communities--but of free love that
+flaunts itself in the face of an outraged public.  For there were women
+in the band.  All this, and more, the invaders suggested--atheism,
+unfamiliarity with soap and water, and, more vaguely, an exotic poetry
+and art that to the virile of American descent is saturated with
+something indefinable yet abhorrent.  Such things are felt.  Few of the
+older citizens of Hampton were able to explain why something rose in
+their gorges, why they experienced a new and clammy quality of fear and
+repulsion when, on the day following Antonelli's advent, these strangers
+arrived from nowhere to install themselves--with no baggage to speak of--
+in Hampton's more modest but hitherto respectable hostelries.  And no
+sooner had the city been rudely awakened to the perilous presence, in
+overwhelming numbers, of ignorant and inflammable foreigners than these
+turned up and presumed to lead the revolt, to make capital out of it, to
+interpret it in terms of an exotic and degenerate creed.  Hampton would
+take care of itself--or else the sovereign state within whose borders it
+was would take care of it.  And his Honour the Mayor, who had proclamed
+his faith in the reasonableness of the strikers, who had scorned the
+suggestions of indignant inhabitants that the Governor be asked for
+soldiers, twenty-four hours too late arranged for the assembly of three
+companies of local militia in the armory, and swore in a hundred extra
+police.
+
+The hideous stillness of Fillmore Street was driving Janet mad.  What she
+burned to do was to go to Boston and take a train for somewhere in the
+West, to lose herself, never to see Hampton again.  But--there was her
+mother.  She could not leave Hannah in these empty rooms, alone; and
+Edward was to remain at the mill, to eat and sleep there, until the
+danger of the strike had passed.  A messenger had come to fetch his
+clothes.  After leaving Ditmar in the office of the mill, Janet crept up
+the dark stairs to the flat and halted in the hallway.  Through the open
+doorway of the dining-room she saw Hannah seated on the horsehair sofa--
+for the first time within memory idle at this hour of the day.  Nothing
+else could have brought home to her like this the sheer tragedy of their
+plight.  Until then Janet had been sustained by anger and excitement, by
+physical action.  She thought Hannah was staring at her; after a moment
+it seemed that the widened pupils were fixed in fascination on something
+beyond, on the Thing that had come to dwell here with them forever.
+
+Janet entered the room.  She sat down on the sofa and took her mother's
+hand in hers.  And Hannah submitted passively.  Janet could not speak.  A
+minute might have passed, and the silence, which neither had broken,
+acquired an intensity that to Janet became unbearable.  Never had the
+room been so still!  Her glance, raised instinctively to the face of the
+picture-clock, saw the hands pointing to ten.  Every Monday morning, as
+far back as she could recall, her father had wound it before going to
+work--and to-day he had forgotten.  Getting up, she opened the glass
+door, and stood trying to estimate the hour: it must be, she thought,
+about six.  She set the hands, took the key from the nail above the
+shelf, wound up the weight, and started the pendulum.  And the sound of
+familiar ticking was a relief, releasing at last her inhibited powers of
+speech.
+
+"Mother," she said, "I'll get some supper for you."
+
+On Hannah, these simple words had a seemingly magical effect.  Habit
+reasserted itself.  She started, and rose almost briskly.
+
+"No you won't," she said, "I'll get it.  I'd ought to have thought of it
+before.  You must be tired and hungry."
+
+Her voice was odd and thin.  Janet hesitated a moment, and ceded.
+
+"Well, I'll set the dishes on the table, anyway."
+
+Janet had sought refuge, wistfully, in the commonplace.  And when the
+meal was ready she strove to eat, though food had become repulsive.
+
+"You must take something, mother," she said.
+
+"I don't feel as if I ever wanted to eat anything again," she replied.
+
+"I know," said Janet, "but you've got to."  And she put some of the cold
+meat, left over from Sunday's dinner, on Hannah's plate.  Hannah took up
+a fork, and laid it down again.  Suddenly she said:--
+
+"You saw Lise?"
+
+"Yes," said Janet.
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"In a house--in Boston."
+
+"One of--those houses?"
+
+"I--I don't know," said Janet.  "I think so."
+
+"You went there?"
+
+"Mr. Tiernan went with me."
+
+"She wouldn't come home?"
+
+"Not--not just now, mother."
+
+"You left her there, in that place?  You didn't make her come home?"
+
+The sudden vehemence of this question, the shrill note of reproach in
+Hannah's voice that revealed, even more than the terrible inertia from
+which she had emerged, the extent of her suffering, for the instant left
+Janet utterly dismayed.  "Oh mother!" she exclaimed.  "I tried--I--I
+couldn't."
+
+Hannah pushed back her chair.
+
+"I'll go to her, I'll make her come.  She's disgraced us, but I'll make
+her.  Where is she?  Where is the house?"
+
+Janet, terrified, seized her mother's arm.  Then she said:--
+
+"Lise isn't there any more--she's gone away."
+
+"Away  and you let her go away?  You let your sister go away and be a--a
+woman of the town?  You never loved her--you never had any pity for her."
+
+Tears sprang into Janet's eyes--tears of pity mingled with anger.  The
+situation had grown intolerable!  Yet how could she tell Hannah where
+Lise was!
+
+"You haven't any right to say that, mother!" she cried.  "I did my best.
+She wouldn't come.  I--I can't tell you where she's gone, but she
+promised to write, to send me her address."
+
+"Lise" Hannah's cry seemed like the uncomprehending whimper of a stricken
+child, and then a hidden cadence made itself felt, a cadence revealing to
+Janet with an eloquence never before achieved the mystery of mother love,
+and by some magic of tone was evoked a new image of Lise--of Lise as she
+must be to Hannah.  No waywardness, no degradation or disgrace could
+efface it.  The infant whom Hannah had clutched to her breast, the woman,
+her sister, whom Janet had seen that day were one--immutably one.  This,
+then, was what it meant to be a mother!  All the years of deadening hope
+had not availed to kill the craving--even in this withered body it was
+still alive and quick.  The agony of that revelation was scarcely to be
+borne.  And it seemed that Lise, even in the place where she was, must
+have heard that cry and heeded it.  And yet--the revelation of Lise's
+whereabouts, of Lise's contemplated act Janet had nearly been goaded into
+making, died on her lips.  She could not tell Hannah!  And Lise's child
+must not come into a world like this.  Even now the conviction remained,
+fierce, exultant, final.  But if Janet had spoken now Hannah would not
+have heard her.  Under the storm she had begun to rock, weeping
+convulsively....  But gradually her weeping ceased.  And to Janet,
+helplessly watching, this process of congealment was more terrible even
+than the release that only an unmitigated violence of grief had been able
+to produce.  In silence Hannah resumed her shrunken duties, and when
+these were finished sat awhile, before going to bed, her hands lying
+listless in her lap.  She seemed to have lived for centuries, to have
+exhausted the gamut of suffering which, save for that one wild outburst,
+had been the fruit of commonplace, passive, sordid tragedy that knows no
+touch of fire....
+
+The next morning Janet was awakened by the siren.  Never, even in the
+days when life had been routine and commonplace, had that sound failed to
+arouse in her a certain tremor of fear; with its first penetrating
+shriek, terror invaded her: then, by degrees, overcoming her numbness,
+came an agonizing realization of tragedy to be faced.  The siren blew and
+blew insistently, as though it never meant to stop; and now for the first
+time she seemed to detect in it a note of futility.  There were those who
+would dare to defy it.  She, for one, would defy it.  In that reflection
+she found a certain fierce joy.  And she might lie in bed if she wished--
+how often had she longed to!  But she could not.  The room was cold,
+appallingly empty and silent as she hurried into her clothes.  The
+dining-room lamp was lighted, the table set, her mother was bending over
+the stove when she reached the kitchen.  After the pretence of breakfast
+was gone through Janet sought relief in housework, making her bed,
+tidying her room.  It was odd, this morning, how her notice of little,
+familiar things had the power to add to her pain, brought to mind
+memories become excruciating as she filled the water pitcher from the
+kitchen tap she found herself staring at the nick broken out of it when
+Lise had upset it.  She recalled Lise's characteristically flippant
+remark.  And there was the streak in the wall-paper caused one night by
+the rain leaking through the roof.  After the bed was made and the room
+swept she stood a moment, motionless, and then, opening the drawer in the
+wardrobe took from it the rose which she had wrapped in tissue paper and
+hidden there, and with a perverse desire as it were to increase the
+bitterness consuming her, to steep herself in pain, she undid the parcel
+and held the withered flower to her face.  Even now a fragrance, faint
+yet poignant, clung to it....  She wrapped it up again, walked to the
+window, hesitated, and then with a sudden determination to destroy this
+sole relic of her happiness went to the kitchen and flung it into the
+stove.  Hannah, lingering over her morning task of cleaning, did not seem
+to notice the act.  Janet turned to her.
+
+"I think I'll go out for a while, mother," she said.
+
+"You'd ought to," Hannah replied.  "There's no use settin' around here."
+
+The silence of the flat was no longer to be endured.  And Janet, putting
+on her coat and hat, descended the stairs.  Not once that morning had her
+mother mentioned Lise; nor had she asked about her own plans--about
+Ditmar.  This at least was a relief; it was the question she had feared
+most.  In the street she met the postman.
+
+"I have a letter for you, Miss Janet," he said.  And on the pink envelope
+he handed her, in purple ink, she recognized the unformed, childish
+handwriting of Lise.  "There's great doings down at the City Hall," the
+postman added "the foreigners are holding mass meetings there."
+Janet scarcely heard him as she tore open the envelope.  "Dear Janet,"
+the letter ran.  "The doctor told me I had a false alarm, there was
+nothing to it.  Wouldn't that jar you?  Boston's a slow burg, and there's
+no use of my staying here now.  I'm going to New York, and maybe I'll
+come back when I've had a look at the great white way.  I've got the
+coin, and I gave him the mit to-night.  If you haven't anything better to
+do, drop in at the Bagatelle and give Walters my love, and tell them not
+to worry at home.  There's no use trying to trail me.  Your affectionate
+sister Lise."
+
+Janet thrust the letter in her pocket.  Then she walked rapidly westward
+until she came to the liver-coloured faeade of the City Hall, opposite
+the Common.  Pushing through the crowd of operatives lingering on the
+pavement in front of it, she entered the building....
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Anger and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid
+Janet resented that pity
+She resented being prayed for
+Struggled against her woman's desire to give
+Tested the limits of Janet's ingenuity and powers of resistance
+There had been something sorrowful in that kiss
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V2
+by Winston Churchill
+
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