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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V1
+#2 in our series by this Winston Churchill
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+Title: The Dwelling Place of Light, V1
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: January, 2003  [Etext #3646]
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+[The actual date this file first posted = 07/03/01]
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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
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME 1.
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+In this modern industrial civilization of which we are sometimes wont to boast,
+a certain glacier-like process may be observed.  The bewildered, the helpless--
+and there are many--are torn from the parent rock, crushed, rolled smooth, and
+left stranded in strange places.  Thus was Edward Bumpus severed and rolled
+from the ancestral ledge, from the firm granite of seemingly stable and lasting
+things, into shifting shale; surrounded by fragments of cliffs from distant
+lands he had never seen.  Thus, at five and fifty, he found himself gate-keeper
+of the leviathan Chippering Mill in the city of Hampton.
+
+That the polyglot, smoky settlement sprawling on both sides of an historic
+river should be a part of his native New England seemed at times to be a
+hideous dream; nor could he comprehend what had happened to him, and to the
+world of order and standards and religious sanctions into which he had been
+born.  His had been a life of relinquishments.  For a long time he had clung to
+the institution he had been taught to believe was the rock of ages, the
+Congregational Church, finally to abandon it; even that assuming a form
+fantastic and unreal, as embodied in the edifice three blocks distant from
+Fillmore Street which he had attended for a brief time, some ten years before,
+after his arrival in Hampton.  The building, indeed, was symbolic of a decadent
+and bewildered Puritanism in its pathetic attempt to keep abreast with the age,
+to compromise with anarchy, merely achieving a nondescript medley of rounded,
+knob-like towers covered with mulberry-stained shingles.  And the minister was
+sensational and dramatic.  He looked like an actor, he aroused in Edward Bumpus
+an inherent prejudice that condemned the stage.  Half a block from this
+tabernacle stood a Roman Catholic Church, prosperous, brazen, serene, flaunting
+an eternal permanence amidst the chaos which had succeeded permanence!
+
+There were, to be sure, other Protestant churches where Edward Bumpus and his
+wife might have gone.  One in particular, which he passed on his way to the
+mill, with its terraced steeple and classic facade, preserved all the outward
+semblance of the old Order that once had seemed so enduring and secure.  He
+hesitated to join the decorous and dwindling congregation,--the remains of a
+social stratum from which he had been pried loose; and--more irony--this
+street, called Warren, of arching elms and white-gabled houses, was now the
+abiding place of those prosperous Irish who had moved thither from the
+tenements and ruled the city.
+
+On just such a street in the once thriving New England village of Dolton had
+Edward been born.  In Dolton Bumpus was once a name of names, rooted there
+since the seventeenth century, and if you had cared to listen he would have
+told you, in a dialect precise but colloquial, the history of a family that by
+right of priority and service should have been destined to inherit the land,
+but whose descendants were preserved to see it delivered to the alien.  The God
+of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards had been tried in the balance and found
+wanting.  Edward could never understand this; or why the Universe, so long
+static and immutable, had suddenly begun to move.  He had always been prudent,
+but in spite of youthful "advantages," of an education, so called, from a
+sectarian college on a hill, he had never been taught that, while prudence may
+prosper in a static world, it is a futile virtue in a dynamic one.  Experience
+even had been powerless to impress this upon him.  For more than twenty years
+after leaving college he had clung to a clerkship in a Dolton mercantile
+establishment before he felt justified in marrying Hannah, the daughter of
+Elmer Wench, when the mercantile establishment amalgamated with a rival--and
+Edward's services were no longer required.  During the succession of precarious
+places with decreasing salaries he had subsequently held a terrified sense of
+economic pressure had gradually crept over him, presently growing strong
+enough, after two girls had arrived, to compel the abridgment of the family
+....It would be painful to record in detail the cracking-off process, the
+slipping into shale, the rolling, the ending up in Hampton, where Edward had
+now for some dozen years been keeper of one of the gates in the frowning brick
+wall bordering the canal,--a position obtained for him by a compassionate but
+not too prudent childhood friend who had risen in life and knew the agent of
+the Chippering Mill, Mr. Claude Ditmar.  Thus had virtue failed to hold its
+own.
+
+One might have thought in all these years he had sat within the gates staring
+at the brick row of the company's boarding houses on the opposite bank of the
+canal that reflection might have brought a certain degree of enlightenment.  It
+was not so.  The fog of Edward's bewilderment never cleared, and the unformed
+question was ever clamouring for an answer--how had it happened?  Job's cry.
+How had it happened to an honest and virtuous man, the days of whose forebears
+had been long in the land which the Lord their God had given them?  Inherently
+American, though lacking the saving quality of push that had been the making of
+men like Ditmar, he never ceased to regard with resentment and distrust the
+hordes of foreigners trooping between the pillars, though he refrained from
+expressing these sentiments in public; a bent, broad shouldered, silent man of
+that unmistakable physiognomy which, in the seventeenth century, almost wholly
+deserted the old England for the new.  The ancestral features were there, the
+lips--covered by a grizzled moustache moulded for the precise formation that
+emphasizes such syllables as el, the hooked nose and sallow cheeks, the
+grizzled brows and grey eyes drawn down at the corners.  But for all its
+ancestral strength of feature, it was a face from which will had been
+extracted, and lacked the fire and fanaticism, the indomitable hardness it
+should have proclaimed, and which have been so characteristically embodied in
+Mr. St. Gaudens's statue of the Puritan.  His clothes were slightly shabby, but
+always neat.
+
+Little as one might have guessed it, however, what may be called a certain
+transmuted enthusiasm was alive in him.  He had a hobby almost amounting to an
+obsession, not uncommon amongst Americans who have slipped downward in the
+social scale.  It was the Bumpus Family in America.  He collected documents
+about his ancestors and relations, he wrote letters with a fine, painful
+penmanship on a ruled block he bought at Hartshorne's drug store to distant
+Bumpuses in Kansas and Illinois and Michigan, common descendants of Ebenezer,
+the original immigrant, of Dolton.  Many of these western kinsmen answered: not
+so the magisterial Bumpus who lived in Boston on the water side of Beacon, whom
+likewise he had ventured to address,--to the indignation and disgust of his
+elder daughter, Janet.
+
+"Why are you so proud of Ebenezer?" she demanded once, scornfully.
+
+"Why?  Aren't we descended from him?"
+
+"How many generations?"
+
+"Seven," said Edward, promptly, emphasizing the last syllable.
+
+Janet was quick at figures.  She made a mental calculation.
+
+"Well, you've got one hundred and twenty-seven other ancestors of Ebenezer's
+time, haven't you?"
+
+Edward was a little surprised.  He had never thought of this, but his ardour
+for Ebenezer remained undampened.  Genealogy--his own--had become his religion,
+and instead of going to church he spent his Sunday mornings poring over papers
+of various degrees of discolouration, making careful notes on the ruled block.
+
+This consciousness of his descent from good American stock that had somehow
+been deprived of its heritage, while a grievance to him, was also a comfort.
+It had a compensating side, in spite of the lack of sympathy of his daughters
+and his wife.  Hannah Bumpus took the situation more grimly: she was a logical
+projection in a new environment of the religious fatalism of ancestors whose
+God was a God of vengeance.  She did not concern herself as to what all this
+vengeance was about; life was a trap into which all mortals walked sooner or
+later, and her particular trap had a treadmill,--a round of household duties
+she kept whirling with an energy that might have made their fortunes if she had
+been the head of the family.  It is bad to be a fatalist unless one has an
+incontrovertible belief in one's destiny,--which Hannah had not.  But she kept
+the little flat with its worn furniture,--which had known so many journeys--as
+clean as a merchant ship of old Salem, and when it was scoured and dusted to
+her satisfaction she would sally forth to Bonnaccossi's grocery and provision
+store on the corner to do her bargaining in competition with the Italian
+housewives of the neighborhood.  She was wont, indeed, to pause outside for a
+moment, her quick eye encompassing the coloured prints of red and yellow
+jellies cast in rounded moulds, decked with slices of orange, the gaudy boxes
+of cereals and buckwheat flour, the "Brookfield" eggs in packages.
+Significant, this modern package system, of an era of flats with little storage
+space.  She took in at a glance the blue lettered placard announcing the
+current price of butterine, and walked around to the other side of the store,
+on Holmes Street, where the beef and bacon hung, where the sidewalk stands were
+filled, in the autumn, with cranberries, apples, cabbages, and spinach.
+
+With little outer complaint she had adapted herself to the constantly lowering
+levels to which her husband had dropped, and if she hoped that in Fillmore
+Street they had reached bottom, she did not say so.  Her unbetrayed regret was
+for the loss of what she would have called "respectability"; and the giving up,
+long ago, in the little city which had been their home, of the servant girl had
+been the first wrench.  Until they came to Hampton they had always lived in
+houses, and her adaptation to a flat had been hard--a flat without a parlour.
+Hannah Bumpus regarded a parlour as necessary to a respectable family as a
+wedding ring to a virtuous woman.  Janet and Lise would be growing up, there
+would be young men, and no place to see them save the sidewalks.  The fear that
+haunted her came true, and she never was reconciled.  The two girls went to the
+public schools, and afterwards, inevitably, to work, and it seemed to be a part
+of her punishment for the sins of her forefathers that she had no more control
+over them than if they had been boarders; while she looked on helplessly, they
+did what they pleased; Janet, whom she never understood, was almost as much a
+source of apprehension as Lise, who became part and parcel of all Hannah deemed
+reprehensible in this new America which she refused to recognize and
+acknowledge as her own country.
+
+To send them through the public schools had been a struggle.  Hannah used to
+lie awake nights wondering what would happen if Edward became sick.  It worried
+her that they never saved any money: try as she would to cut the expenses down,
+there was a limit of decency; New England thrift, hitherto justly celebrated,
+was put to shame by that which the foreigners displayed, and which would have
+delighted the souls of gentlemen of the Manchester school.  Every once in a
+while there rose up before her fabulous instances of this thrift, of Italians
+and Jews who, ignorant emigrants, had entered the mills only a few years before
+they, the Bumpuses, had come to Hampton, and were now independent property
+owners.  Still rankling in Hannah's memory was a day when Lise had returned
+from school, dark and mutinous, with a tale of such a family.  One of the
+younger children was a classmate.
+
+"They live on Jordan Street in a house, and Laura has roller skates.  I don't
+see why I can't."
+
+This was one of the occasions on which Hannah had given vent to her
+indignation.  Lise was fourteen.  Her open rebellion was less annoying than
+Janet's silent reproach, but at least she had something to take hold of.
+
+"Well, Lise," she said, shifting the saucepan to another part of the stove, "I
+guess if your father and I had put both you girls in the mills and crowded into
+one room and cooked in a corner, and lived on onions and macaroni, and put four
+boarders each in the other rooms, I guess we could have had a house, too.  We
+can start in right now, if you're willing."
+
+But Lise had only looked darker.
+
+"I don't see why father can't make money--other men do."
+
+"Isn't he working as hard as he can to send you to school, and give you a
+chance?"
+
+"I don't want that kind of a chance.  There's Sadie Howard at school--she don't
+have to work.  She liked me before she found out where I lived..."
+
+There was an element of selfishness in Hannah's mania for keeping busy, for
+doing all their housework and cooking herself.  She could not bear to have her
+daughters interfere; perhaps she did not want to give herself time to think.
+Her affection for Edward, such as it was, her loyalty to him, was the logical
+result of a conviction ingrained in early youth that marriage was an
+indissoluble bond; a point of views once having a religious sanction, no less
+powerful now that--all unconsciously--it had deteriorated into a superstition.
+Hannah, being a fatalist, was not religious.  The beliefs of other days, when
+she had donned her best dress and gone to church on Sundays, had simply lapsed
+and left--habits.  No new beliefs had taken their place....
+
+Even after Janet and Lise had gone to work the household never seemed to gain
+that margin of safety for which Hannah yearned.  Always, when they were on the
+verge of putting something by, some untoward need or accident seemed to arise
+on purpose to swallow it up: Edward, for instance, had been forced to buy a new
+overcoat, the linoleum on the dining-room floor must be renewed, and Lise had
+had a spell of sickness, losing her position in a flower shop.  Afterwards,
+when she became a saleslady in the Bagatelle, that flamboyant department store
+in Faber Street, she earned four dollars and a half a week.  Two of these were
+supposed to go into the common fund, but there were clothes to buy; Lise loved
+finery, and Hannah had not every week the heart to insist.  Even when, on an
+occasional Saturday night the girl somewhat consciously and defiantly flung
+down the money on the dining-room table she pretended not to notice it.  But
+Janet, who was earning six dollars as a stenographer in the office of the
+Chippering Mill, regularly gave half of hers.
+
+The girls could have made more money as operatives, but strangely enough in the
+Bumpus family social hopes were not yet extinct.
+
+Sharply, rudely, the cold stillness of the winter mornings was broken by
+agitating waves of sound, penetrating the souls of sleepers.  Janet would stir,
+her mind still lingering on some dream, soon to fade into the inexpressible, in
+which she had been near to the fulfilment of a heart's desire.  Each morning,
+as the clamour grew louder, there was an interval of bewilderment, of
+revulsion, until the realization came of mill bells swinging in high cupolas
+above the river,--one rousing another.  She could even distinguish the bells:
+the deep-toned, penetrating one belonged to the Patuxent Mill, over on the west
+side, while the Arundel had a high, ominous reverberation like a fire bell.
+When at last the clangings had ceased she would lie listening to the overtones
+throbbing in the air, high and low, high and low; lie shrinking, awaiting the
+second summons that never failed to terrify, the siren of the Chippering Mill,-
+-to her the cry of an insistent, hungry monster demanding its daily food, the
+symbol of a stern, ugly, and unrelenting necessity.
+
+Beside her in the bed she could feel the soft body of her younger sister
+cuddling up to her in fright.  In such rare moments as this her heart melted
+towards Lise, and she would fling a protecting arm about her.  A sense of
+Lise's need of protection invaded her, a sharp conviction, like a pang, that
+Lise was destined to wander: Janet was never so conscious of the feeling as in
+this dark hour, though it came to her at other times, when they were not
+quarreling.  Quarreling seemed to be the normal reaction between them.
+
+It was Janet, presently, who would get up, shivering, close the window, and
+light the gas, revealing the room which the two girls shared together.  Against
+the middle of one wall was the bed, opposite this a travel-dented walnut bureau
+with a marble top, with an oval mirror into which were stuck numerous magazine
+portraits of the masculine and feminine talent adorning the American stage, a
+preponderance of the music hall variety.  There were pictures of other artists
+whom the recondite would have recognized as "movie" stars, amazing yet veridic
+stories of whose wealth Lise read in the daily press: all possessed limousines-
+-an infallible proof, to Lise, of the measure of artistic greatness.  Between
+one of these movie millionaires and an ex-legitimate lady who now found
+vaudeville profitable was wedged the likeness of a popular idol whose
+connection with the footlights would doubtless be contingent upon a triumphant
+acquittal at the hands of a jury of her countrymen, and whose trial for murder,
+in Chicago, was chronicled daily in thousands of newspapers and followed by
+Lise with breathless interest and sympathy.  She was wont to stare at this lady
+while dressing and exclaim:--
+
+"Say, I hope they put it all over that district attorney!"
+
+To such sentiments, though deeply felt by her sister, Janet remained cold,
+though she was, as will be seen, capable of enthusiasms.  Lise was a truer
+daughter of her time and country in that she had the national contempt for law,
+was imbued with the American hero-worship of criminals that caused the
+bombardment of Cora Wellman's jail with candy, fruit and flowers and
+impassioned letters.  Janet recalled there had been others before Mrs. Wellman,
+caught within the meshes of the law, who had incited in her sister a similar
+partisanship.
+
+It was Lise who had given the note of ornamentation to the bedroom.  Against
+the cheap faded lilac and gold wall-paper were tacked photo-engravings that had
+taken the younger sister's fancy: a young man and woman, clad in scanty bathing
+suits, seated side by side in a careening sail boat,--the work of a popular
+illustrator whose manly and womanly "types" had become national ideals.
+
+There were other drawings, if not all by the same hand, at least by the same
+school; one, sketched in bold strokes, of a dinner party in a stately
+neo-classic dining-room, the table laden with flowers and silver,
+the bare-throated women with jewels.  A more critical eye than Lise's,
+gazing upon this portrayal of the Valhalla of success, might have detected in
+the young men, immaculate in evening dress, a certain effort to feel at home,
+to converse naturally, which their square jaws and square shoulders belied.
+This was no doubt the fault of the artist's models, who had failed to live up
+to the part.  At any rate, the sight of these young gods of leisure, the
+contemplation of the stolid butler and plush footmen in the background never
+failed to make Lise's heart beat faster.
+
+On the marble of the bureau amidst a litter of toilet articles, and bought by
+Lise for a quarter at the Bagatelle bargain counter, was an oval photograph
+frame from which the silver wash had begun to rub off, and the band of purple
+velvet inside the metal had whitened.  The frame always contained the current
+object of Lise's affections, though the exhibits--as Janet said--were subject
+to change without notice.  The Adonis who now reigned had black hair cut in the
+prevailing Hampton fashion, very long in front and hanging down over his eyes
+like a Scottish terrier's; very long behind, too, but ending suddenly, shaved
+in a careful curve at the neck and around the ears.  It had almost the
+appearance of a Japanese wig.  The manly beauty of Mr. Max Wylie was of the
+lantern-jawed order, and in his photograph he conveyed the astonished and
+pained air of one who has been suddenly seized by an invisible officer of the
+law from behind.  This effect, one presently perceived, was due to the high,
+stiff collar, the "Torture Brand," Janet called it, when she and her sister
+were engaged in one of their frequent controversies about life in general: the
+obvious retort to this remark, which Lise never failed to make, was that Janet
+could boast of no beaux at all.
+
+It is only fair to add that the photograph scarcely did Mr. Wylie justice.  In
+real life he did not wear the collar, he was free and easy in his manners, sure
+of his powers of conquest.  As Lise observed, he had made a home-run with her
+at Slattery's Riverside Park.  "Sadie Hartmann was sure sore when I tangoed off
+with him," she would observe reminiscently ....
+
+It was Lise's habit to slight her morning toilet, to linger until the last
+minute in bed, which she left in reluctant haste to stand before the bureau
+frantically combing out kinks of the brown hair falling over her shoulders
+before jamming it down across her forehead in the latest mode.  Thus occupied,
+she revealed a certain petulant beauty.  Like the majority of shop-girls, she
+was small, but her figure was good, her skin white; her discontented mouth gave
+her the touch of piquancy apt to play havoc with the work of the world.  In
+winter breakfast was eaten by the light of a rococo metal lamp set in the
+centre of the table.  This was to save gas.  There was usually a rump steak and
+potatoes, bread and "creamery" butterine, and the inevitable New England
+doughnuts.  At six thirty the whistles screeched again,--a warning note, the
+signal for Edward's departure; and presently, after a brief respite, the heavy
+bells once more began their clamour, not to die down until ten minutes of
+seven, when the last of the stragglers had hurried through the mill gates.
+
+The Bumpus flat included the second floor of a small wooden house whose owner
+had once been evilly inspired to paint it a livid clay-yellow--as though
+insisting that ugliness were an essential attribute of domesticity.  A bay ran
+up the two stories, and at the left were two narrow doorways, one for each
+flat.  On the right the house was separated from its neighbour by a narrow
+interval, giving but a precarious light to the two middle rooms, the diningroom
+and kitchen.  The very unattractiveness of such a home, however, had certain
+compensations for Janet, after the effort of early rising had been surmounted,
+felt a real relief in leaving it; a relief, too, in leaving Fillmore Street,
+every feature of which was indelibly fixed in her mind, opposite was the blind
+brick face of a warehouse, and next to that the converted dwelling house that
+held the shop of A. Bauer, with the familiar replica of a green ten-cent
+trading stamp painted above it and the somewhat ironical announcement--when
+boar frost whitened the pavement--that ice-cold soda was to be had within, as
+well as cigars and tobacco, fruit and candy.  Then came a tenement, under which
+two enterprising Greeks by the name of Pappas--spelled Papas lower down--
+conducted a business called "The Gentleman," a tailoring, pressing, and dyeing
+establishment.  Janet could see the brilliantined black heads of the two
+proprietors bending over their boards, and sometimes they would be lifted to
+smile at her as she passed.  The Pappas Brothers were evidently as happy in
+this drab environment as they had ever been on the sunny mountain slopes of
+Hellas, and Janet sometimes wondered at this, for she had gathered from her
+education in the Charming public school that Greece was beautiful.
+
+She was one of the unfortunate who love beauty, who are condemned to dwell in
+exile, unacquainted with what they love.  Desire was incandescent within her
+breast.  Desire for what?  It would have been some relief to know.  She could
+not, like Lise, find joy and forgetfulness at dance ,halls, at the "movies," at
+Slattery's Riverside Park in summer, in "joy rides" with the Max Wylies of
+Hampton.  And beside, the Max Wylies were afraid of her.  If at times she
+wished for wealth, it was because wealth held the magic of emancipation from
+surroundings against which her soul revolted.  Vividly idealized but unconfided
+was the memory of a seaside village, the scene of one of the brief sojourns of
+her childhood, where the air was fragrant with the breath of salt marshes,
+where she recalled, through the vines of a porch, a shining glimpse of the sea
+at the end of a little street....
+
+Next to Pappas Brothers was the grey wooden building of Mule Spinners' Hall,
+that elite organization of skilled labour, and underneath it the store of
+Johnny Tiernan, its windows piled up with stoves and stovepipes, sheet iron and
+cooking utensils.  Mr. Tiernan, like the Greeks, was happy, too: unlike the
+Greeks, he never appeared to be busy, and yet he throve.  He was very proud of
+the business in which he had invested his savings, but he seemed to have other
+affairs lying blithely on his mind, affairs of moment to the community, as the
+frequent presence of the huge policemen, aldermen, and other important looking
+persons bore witness.  He hailed by name Italians, Greeks, Belgians, Syrians,
+and "French"; he hailed Janet, too, with respectful cheerfulness, taking off
+his hat.  He possessed the rare, warm vitality that is irresistible.  A native
+of Hampton, still in his thirties, his sharp little nose and twinkling blue
+eyes proclaimed the wisdom that is born and not made; his stiff hair had a
+twist like the bristles in the cleaning rod of a gun.
+
+He gave Janet the odd impression that he understood her.  And she did not
+understand herself!
+
+By the time she reached the Common the winter sun, as though red from exertion,
+had begun to dispel the smoke and heavy morning mists.  She disliked winter,
+the lumpy brown turf mildewed by the frost, but one day she was moved by a
+quality, hitherto unsuspected, in the delicate tracery against the sky made by
+the slender branches of the great elms and maples.  She halted on the pavement,
+her eyes raised, heedless of passers-by, feeling within her a throb of the
+longing that could be so oddly and unexpectedly aroused.
+
+Her way lay along Faber Street, the main artery of Hampton, a wide strip of
+asphalt threaded with car tracks, lined on both sides with incongruous edifices
+indicative of a rapid, undiscriminating, and artless prosperity.  There were
+long stretches of "ten foot" buildings, so called on account of the single
+story, their height deceptively enhanced by the superimposition of huge and
+gaudy signs, one on top of another, announcing the merits of "Stewart's
+Amberine Ale," of "Cooley's Oats, the Digestible Breakfast Food," of
+graphophones and "spring heeled" shoes, tobacco, and naphtha soaps.  "No, We
+don't give Trading Stamps, Our Products are Worth all You Pay."  These "ten
+foot" stores were the repositories of pianos, automobiles, hardware, and
+millinery, and interspersed amongst them were buildings of various heights; The
+Bagatelle, where Lise worked, the Wilmot Hotel, office buildings, and an
+occasional relic of old Hampton, like that housing the Banner.  Here, during
+those months when the sun made the asphalt soft, on a scaffolding spanning the
+window of the store, might be seen a perspiring young man in his shirt sleeves
+chalking up baseball scores for the benefit of a crowd below.  Then came the
+funereal, liver-coloured, long-windowed Hinckley Block (1872), and on the
+corner a modern, glorified drugstore thrusting forth plate glass bays--two on
+Faber Street and three on Stanley--filled with cameras and candy, hot water
+bags, throat sprays, catarrh and kidney cures, calendars, fountain pens,
+stationery, and handy alcohol lamps.  Flanking the sidewalks, symbolizing and
+completing the heterogeneous and bewildering effect of the street were long
+rows of heavy hemlock trunks, unpainted and stripped of bark, with crosstrees
+bearing webs of wires.  Trolley cars rattled along, banging their gongs, trucks
+rumbled across the tracks, automobiles uttered frenzied screeches behind
+startled pedestrians.  Janet was always galvanized into alertness here, Faber
+Street being no place to dream.  By night an endless procession moved up one
+sidewalk and down another, staring hypnotically at the flash-in and flash-out
+electric, signs that kept the breakfast foods and ales, the safety razors,
+soaps, and soups incessantly in the minds of a fickle public.
+
+Two blocks from Faber Street was the North Canal, with a granite-paved roadway
+between it and the monotonous row of company boarding houses.  Even in bright
+weather Janet felt a sense of oppression here; on dark, misty mornings the
+stern, huge battlements of the mills lining the farther bank were menacing
+indeed, bristling with projections, towers, and chimneys, flanked by heavy
+walls.  Had her experience included Europe, her imagination might have seized
+the medieval parallel,--the arched bridges flung at intervals across the water,
+lacking only chains to raise them in case of siege.  The place was always
+ominously suggestive of impending strife.  Janet's soul was a sensitive
+instrument, but she suffered from an inability to find parallels, and thus to
+translate her impressions intellectually.  Her feeling about the mills was that
+they were at once fortress and prison, and she a slave driven thither day after
+day by an all-compelling power; as much a slave as those who trooped in through
+the gates in the winter dawn, and wore down, four times a day, the oak treads
+of the circular tower stairs.
+
+The sound of the looms was like heavy rain hissing on the waters of the canal.
+
+The administrative offices of a giant mill such as the Chippering in Hampton
+are labyrinthine.  Janet did not enter by the great gates her father kept, but
+walked through an open courtyard into a vestibule where, day and night, a
+watchman stood; she climbed iron-shod stairs, passed the doorway leading to the
+paymaster's suite, to catch a glimpse, behind the grill, of numerous young men
+settling down at those mysterious and complicated machines that kept so
+unerring a record, in dollars and cents, of the human labour of the operatives.
+There were other suites for the superintendents, for the purchasing agent; and
+at the end of the corridor, on the south side of the mill, she entered the
+outer of the two rooms reserved for Mr. Claude Ditmar, the Agent and general-
+in-chief himself of this vast establishment.  In this outer office, behind the
+rail that ran the length of it, Janet worked; from the window where her
+typewriter stood was a sheer drop of eighty feet or so to the river, which ran
+here swiftly through a wide canon whose sides were formed by miles and miles of
+mills, built on buttressed stone walls to retain the banks.  The prison-like
+buildings on the farther shore were also of colossal size, casting their
+shadows far out into the waters; while in the distance, up and down the stream,
+could be seen the delicate web of the Stanley and Warren Street bridges, with
+trolley cars like toys gliding over them, with insect pedestrians creeping
+along the footpaths.
+
+Mr. Ditmar's immediate staff consisted of Mr. Price, an elderly bachelor of
+tried efficiency whose peculiar genius lay in computation, of a young Mr.
+Caldwell who, during the four years since he had left Harvard, had been
+learning the textile industry, of Miss Ottway, and Janet.  Miss Ottway was the
+agent's private stenographer, a strongly built, capable woman with immense
+reserves seemingly inexhaustible.  She had a deep, masculine voice, not
+unmusical, the hint of a masculine moustache, a masculine manner of taking to
+any job that came to hand.  Nerves were things unknown to her: she was granite,
+Janet tempered steel.  Janet was the second stenographer, and performed,
+besides, any odd tasks that might be assigned.
+
+There were, in the various offices of the superintendents, the paymaster and
+purchasing agent, other young women stenographers whose companionship Janet,
+had she been differently organized, might have found congenial, but something
+in her refused to dissolve to their proffered friendship.  She had but one
+friend,--if Eda Rawle, who worked in a bank, and whom she had met at a lunch
+counter by accident, may be called so.  As has been admirably said in another
+language, one kisses, the other offers a cheek: Janet offered the cheek.  All
+unconsciously she sought a relationship rarely to be found in banks and
+business offices; would yield herself to none other.  The young women
+stenographers in the Chippering Mill, respectable, industrious girls, were
+attracted by a certain indefinable quality, but finding they made no progress
+in their advances, presently desisted they were somewhat afraid of her; as one
+of them remarked, "You always knew she was there."  Miss Lottie Meyers, who
+worked in the office of Mr. Orcutt, the superintendent across the hall,
+experienced a brief infatuation that turned to hate.  She chewed gum
+incessantly, Janet found her cheap perfume insupportable; Miss Meyers, for her
+part, declared that Janet was "queer" and "stuck up," thought herself better
+than the rest of them.  Lottie Meyers was the leader of a group of four or five
+which gathered in the hallway at the end of the noon hour to enter animatedly
+into a discussion of waists, hats, and lingerie, to ogle and exchange
+persiflages with the young men of the paymaster's corps, to giggle, to relate,
+sotto voce, certain stories that ended invariably in hysterical laughter.
+Janet detested these conversations.  And the sex question, subtly suggested if
+not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over which she did not dare to
+ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be degraded.  Her feelings, concealed under
+an exterior of self-possession, deceptive to the casual observer, sometimes
+became molten, and she was frightened by a passion that made her tremble--a
+passion by no means always consciously identified with men, embodying all the
+fierce unexpressed and unsatisfied desires of her life.
+
+These emotions, often suggested by some hint of beauty, as of the sun glinting
+on the river on a bright blue day, had a sudden way of possessing her, and the
+longing they induced was pain.  Longing for what?  For some unimagined
+existence where beauty dwelt, and light, where the ecstasy induced by these was
+neither moiled nor degraded; where shame, as now, might not assail her.  Why
+should she feel her body hot with shame, her cheeks afire?  At such moments she
+would turn to the typewriter, her fingers striking the keys with amazing
+rapidity, with extraordinary accuracy and force,--force vaguely disturbing to
+Mr. Claude Ditmar as he entered the office one morning and involuntarily paused
+to watch her.  She was unaware of his gaze, but her colour was like a crimson
+signal that flashed to him and was gone.  Why had he never noticed her before?
+All these months, for more than a year, perhaps,--she had been in his office,
+and he had not so much as looked at her twice.  The unguessed answer was that
+he had never surprised her in a vivid moment.  He had a flair for women, though
+he had never encountered any possessing the higher values, and it was
+characteristic of the plane of his mental processes that this one should remind
+him now of a dark, lithe panther, tensely strung, capable of fierceness.  The
+pain of having her scratch him would be delectable.
+
+When he measured her it was to discover that she was not so little, and the
+shoulder-curve of her uplifted arms, as her fingers played over the keys,
+seemed to belie that apparent slimness.  And had he not been unacquainted with
+the subtleties of the French mind and language, he
+might have classed her as a fausse maigre.  Her head was small, her hair like a
+dark, blurred shadow clinging round it. He wanted to examine her hair, to see
+whether it would not betray, at closer range, an imperceptible wave,--but not
+daring to linger he went into his office, closed the door, and sat down with a
+sensation akin to weakness, somewhat appalled by his discovery, considerably
+amazed at his previous stupidity.  He had thought of Janet--when she had
+entered his mind at all--as unobtrusive, demure; now he recognized this
+demureness as repression.  Her qualities needed illumination, and he, Claude
+Ditmar, had seen them struck with fire.  He wondered whether any other man
+had been as fortunate.
+
+Later in the morning, quite casually, he made inquiries of Miss Ottway, who
+liked Janet and was willing to do her a good turn.
+
+"Why, she's a clever girl, Mr. Ditmar, a good stenographer, and conscientious
+in her work.  She's very quick, too.
+
+"Yes, I've noticed that," Ditmar replied, who was quite willing to have it
+thought that his inquiry was concerned with Janet's aptitude for business.
+
+"She keeps to herself and minds her own affairs.  You can see she comes of good
+stock."  Miss Ottway herself was proud of her New England blood.  "Her father,
+you know, is the gatekeeper down there.  He's been unfortunate."
+
+"You don't say--I didn't connect her with him.  Fine looking old man.  A friend
+of mine who recommended him told me he'd seen better days ...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+In spite of the surprising discovery in his office of a young woman of such a
+disquieting, galvanic quality, it must not be supposed that Mr. Claude Ditmar
+intended to infringe upon a fixed principle.  He had principles.  For him, as
+for the patriarchs and householders of Israel, the seventh commandment was only
+relative, yet hitherto he had held rigidly to that relativity, laying down the
+sound doctrine that women and business would not mix: or, as he put it to his
+intimates, no sensible man would fool with a girl in his office.  Hence it may
+be implied that Mr. Ditmar's experiences with the opposite sex had been on a
+property basis.  He was one of those busy and successful persons who had never
+appreciated or acquired the art of quasi-platonic amenities, whose idea of a
+good time was limited to discreet excursions with cronies, likewise busy and
+successful persons who, by reason of having married early and unwisely, are
+strangers to the delights of that higher social intercourse chronicled in
+novels and the public prints.  If one may conveniently overlook the joys of a
+companionship of the soul, it is quite as possible to have a taste in women as
+in champagne or cigars.  Mr. Ditmar preferred blondes, and he liked them rather
+stout, a predilection that had led him into matrimony with a lady of this
+description: a somewhat sticky, candy-eating lady with a mania for card
+parties, who undoubtedly would have dyed her hair if she had lived.  He was not
+inconsolable, but he had had enough of marriage to learn that it demands a
+somewhat exorbitant price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained.
+
+He was left a widower with two children, a girl of thirteen and a boy of
+twelve, both somewhat large for their ages.  Amy attended the only private
+institution for the instruction of her sex of which Hampton could boast; George
+continued at a public school.  The late Mrs. Ditmar for some years before her
+demise had begun to give evidence of certain restless aspirations to which
+American ladies of her type and situation seem peculiarly liable, and with a
+view to their ultimate realization she had inaugurated a Jericho-like campaign.
+Death had released Ditmar from its increasing pressure.  For his wife had
+possessed that admirable substitute for character, persistence, had been expert
+in the use of importunity, often an efficient weapon in the hands of the female
+economically dependent.  The daughter of a defunct cashier of the Hampton
+National Bank, when she had married Ditmar, then one of the superintendents of
+the Chippering and already a marked man, she had deemed herself fortunate among
+women, looking forward to a life of ease and idleness and candy in great
+abundance,--a dream temporarily shattered by the unforeseen discomfort of
+bringing two children into the world, with an interval of scarcely a year
+between them.  Her parents from an excess of native modesty having failed to
+enlighten her on this subject, her feelings were those of outraged
+astonishment, and she was quite determined not to repeat the experience a third
+time.  Knowledge thus belatedly acquired, for a while she abandoned herself to
+the satisfaction afforded by the ability to take a commanding position in
+Hampton society, gradually to become aware of the need of a more commodious
+residence.  In a certain kind of intuition she was rich.  Her husband had
+meanwhile become Agent of the Chippering Mill, and she strongly suspected that
+his prudent reticence on the state of his finances was the best indication of
+an increasing prosperity.  He had indeed made money, been given many
+opportunities for profitable investments; but the argument for social pre-
+eminence did not appeal to him: tears and reproaches, recriminations, when
+frequently applied, succeeded better; like many married men, what he most
+desired was to be let alone; but in some unaccountable way she had come to
+suspect that his preference for blondes was of a more liberal nature than at
+first, in her innocence, she had realized.  She was jealous, too, of his
+cronies, in spite of the fact that these gentlemen, when they met her, treated
+her with an elaborate politeness; and she accused him with entire justice of
+being more intimate with them than with her, with whom he was united in holy
+bonds.  The inevitable result of these tactics was the modern mansion in the
+upper part of Warren Street, known as the "residential" district.  Built on a
+wide lot, with a garage on one side to the rear, with a cement driveway divided
+into squares, and a wall of democratic height separating its lawn from the
+sidewalk, the house may for the present be better imagined than described.
+
+A pious chronicler of a more orthodox age would doubtless have deemed it a
+judgment that Cora Ditmar survived but two years to enjoy the glories of the
+Warren Street house.  For a while her husband indulged in a foolish optimism,
+only to learn that the habit of matrimonial blackmail, once acquired, is not
+easily shed.  Scarcely had he settled down to the belief that by the
+gratification of her supreme desire he had achieved comparative peace, than he
+began to suspect her native self-confidence of cherishing visions of a career
+contemplating nothing less than the eventual abandonment of Hampton itself as a
+field too limited for her social talents and his business ability and bank
+account--at which she was pleased to hint.  Hampton suited Ditmar, his passion
+was the Chippering Mill; and he was in process of steeling himself to resist,
+whatever the costs, this preposterous plan when he was mercifully released by
+death.  Her intention of sending the children away to acquire a culture and
+finish Hampton did not afford,--George to Silliston Academy, Amy to a
+fashionable boarding school,--he had not opposed, yet he did not take the idea
+with sufficient seriousness to carry it out.  The children remained at home,
+more or less--increasingly less--in the charge of an elderly woman who acted as
+housekeeper.
+
+Ditmar had miraculously regained his freedom.  And now, when he made trips to
+New York and Boston, combining business with pleasure, there were no questions
+asked, no troublesome fictions to be composed.  More frequently he was in
+Boston, where he belonged to a large and comfortable club, not too exacting in
+regard to membership, and here he met his cronies and sometimes planned
+excursions with them, automobile trips in summer to the White Mountains or
+choice little resorts to spend Sundays and holidays, generally taking with them
+a case of champagne and several bags of golf sticks.  He was fond of shooting,
+and belonged to a duck club on the Cape, where poker and bridge were not
+tabooed.  To his intimates he was known as "Dit."  Nor is it surprising that
+his attitude toward women had become in general one of resentment; matrimony he
+now regarded as unmitigated folly.  At five and forty he was a vital,
+dominating, dust-coloured man six feet and half an inch in height, weighing a
+hundred and ninety pounds, and thus a trifle fleshy.  When relaxed, and in
+congenial company, he looked rather boyish, an aspect characteristic of many
+American business men of to-day.
+
+His head was large, he wore his hair short, his features also proclaimed him as
+belonging to a modern American type in that they were not clear-cut, but rather
+indefinable; a bristling, short-cropped moustache gave him a certain efficient,
+military look which, when introduced to strangers as "Colonel," was apt to
+deceive them into thinking him an army officer.  The title he had once received
+as a member of the staff of the governor of the state, and was a tribute to a
+gregariousness and political influence rather than to a genius for the art of
+war.  Ex officio, as the agent of the Chippering Mill and a man of substance to
+boot, he was "in" politics, hail fellow well met with and an individual to be
+taken into account by politicians from the governor and member of congress
+down.  He was efficient, of course; he had efficient hands and shrewd,
+efficient eyes, and the military impression was deepened by his manner of
+dealing with people, his conversation being yea, yea and nay, nay,--save with
+his cronies and those of the other sex from whom he had something to gain.  His
+clothes always looked new, of pronounced patterns and light colours set aside
+for him by an obsequious tailor in Boston.
+
+If a human being in such an enviable position as that of agent of the
+Chippering Mill can be regarded as property, it might be said that Mr. Claude
+Ditmar belonged to the Chipperings of Boston, a family still owning a
+controlling interest in the company.  His loyalty to them and to the mill he so
+ably conducted was the great loyalty of his life.  For Ditmar, a Chippering
+could do no wrong.  It had been the keen eye of Mr. Stephen Chippering that
+first had marked him, questioned him, recognized his ability, and from the
+moment of that encounter his advance had been rapid.  When old Stephen had been
+called to his fathers, Ditmar's allegiance was automatically, as it were,
+transferred to the two sons, George and Worthington, already members of the
+board of directors.  Sometimes Ditmar called on them at their homes, which
+stood overlooking the waters of the Charles River Basin.  The attitude toward
+him of the Chipperings and their wives was one of an interesting adjustment of
+feudalism to democracy.  They were fond of him, grateful to him, treating him
+with a frank camaraderie that had in it not the slightest touch of
+condescension, but Ditmar would have been the first to recognize that there
+were limits to the intimacy.  They did not, for instance--no doubt out of
+consideration--invite him to their dinner parties or take him to their club,
+which was not the same as that to which he himself belonged.  He felt no
+animus.  Nor would he, surprising though it may seem, have changed places with
+the Chipperings.  At an early age, and quite unconsciously, he had accepted
+property as the ruling power of the universe, and when family was added thereto
+the combination was nothing less than divine.
+
+There were times, especially during the long winters, when life became almost
+unbearable for Janet, and she was seized by a desire to run away from Fillmore
+Street, from the mills, from Hampton itself.  Only she did not know where to
+go, or how to get away.  She was convinced of the existence in the world of
+delightful spots where might be found congenial people with whom it would be a
+joy to talk.  Fillmore Street, certainly, did not contain any such.  The office
+was not so bad.  It is true that in the mornings, as she entered West Street,
+the sight of the dark facade of the fortress-like structure, emblematic of the
+captivity in which she passed her days, rarely failed to arouse in her
+sensations of oppression and revolt; but here, at least, she discovered an
+outlet for her energies; she was often too busy to reflect, and at odd moments
+she could find a certain solace and companionship in the river, so intent, so
+purposeful, so beautiful, so undisturbed by the inconcinnity, the clatter and
+confusion of Hampton as it flowed serenely under the bridges and between the
+mills toward the sea.  Toward the sea!
+
+It was when, at night, she went back to Fillmore Street--when she thought of
+the monotony, yes, and the sordidness of home, when she let herself in at the
+door and climbed the dark and narrow stairway, that her feet grew leaden.  In
+spite of the fact that Hannah was a good housekeeper and prided herself on
+cleanliness, the tiny flat reeked with the smell of cooking, and Janet, from
+the upper hall, had a glimpse of a thin, angular woman with a scrawny neck,
+with scant grey hair tightly drawn into a knot, in a gingham apron covering an
+old dress bending over the kitchen stove.  And occasionally, despite a
+resentment that fate should have dealt thus inconsiderately with the family,
+Janet felt pity welling within her.  After supper, when Lise had departed with
+her best young man, Hannah would occasionally, though grudgingly, permit Janet
+to help her with the dishes.
+
+"You work all day, you have a right to rest."
+
+"But I don't want to rest," Janet would declare, and rub the dishes the harder.
+With the spirit underlying this protest, Hannah sympathized.  Mother and
+daughter were alike in that both were inarticulate, but Janet had a secret
+contempt for Hannah's uncomplaining stoicism.  She loved her mother, in a way,
+especially at certain times,--though she often wondered why she was unable to
+realize more fully the filial affection of tradition; but in moments of
+softening, such as these, she was filled with rage at the thought of any woman
+endowed with energy permitting herself to be overtaken and overwhelmed by such
+a fate as Hannah's: divorce, desertion, anything, she thought, would have been
+better--anything but to be cheated out of life.  Feeling the fires of rebellion
+burning hotly within her,--rebellion against environment and driving necessity
+she would glance at her mother and ask herself whether it were possible that
+Hannah had ever known longings, had ever been wrung by inexpressible desires,--
+desires in which the undiscovered spiritual was so alarmingly compounded with
+the undiscovered physical.  She would have died rather than speak to Hannah of
+these unfulfilled experiences, and the mere thought of confiding them to any
+person appalled her.  Even if there existed some wonderful, understanding being
+to whom she might be able thus to empty her soul, the thought of the ecstasy of
+that kenosis was too troubling to be dwelt upon.
+
+She had tried reading, with unfortunate results,--perhaps because no Virgil had
+as yet appeared to guide her through the mysteries of that realm.  Her
+schooling had failed to instil into her a discriminating taste for literature;
+and when, on occasions, she had entered the Public Library opposite the Common
+it had been to stare hopelessly at rows of books whose authors and titles
+offered no clue to their contents.  Her few choices had not been happy, they
+had failed to interest and thrill...
+
+Of the Bumpus family Lise alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement in
+the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose
+heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims.  Lise went out into it,
+became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,--a tendency Hannah found
+unaccountable, and against which even her stoicism was not wholly proof.
+Scarce an evening went by without an expression of uneasiness from Hannah.
+
+"She didn't happen to mention where she was going, did she, Janet?"  Hannah
+would query, when she had finished her work and put on her spectacles to read
+the Banner.
+
+"To the movies, I suppose," Janet would reply.  Although well aware that her
+sister indulged in other distractions, she thought it useless to add to
+Hannah's disquietude.  And if she had little patience with Lise, she had less
+with the helpless attitude of her parents.
+
+"Well," Hannah would add, "I never can get used to her going out nights the way
+she does, and with young men and women I don't know anything about.  I wasn't
+brought up that way.  But as long as she's got to work for a living I guess
+there's no help for it."
+
+And she would glance at Edward.  It was obviously due to his inability
+adequately to cope with modern conditions that his daughters were forced to
+toil, but this was the nearest she ever came to reproaching him.  If he heard,
+he acquiesced humbly, and in silence: more often than not he was oblivious,
+buried in the mazes of the Bumpus family history, his papers spread out on the
+red cloth of the dining-room table, under the lamp.  Sometimes in his
+simplicity and with the enthusiasm that demands listeners he would read aloud
+to them a letter, recently received from a distant kinsman, an Alpheus Bumpus,
+let us say, who had migrated to California in search of wealth and fame, and
+who had found neither.  In spite of age and misfortunes, the liberal attitude
+of these western members of the family was always a matter of perplexity to
+Edward.
+
+"He tells me they're going to give women the ballot,--doesn't appear to be much
+concerned about his own womenfolks going to the polls."
+
+"Why shouldn't they, if they want to?"  Janet would exclaim, though she had
+given little thought to the question.
+
+Edward would mildly ignore this challenge.
+
+"He has a house on what they call Russian Hill, and he can watch the vessels as
+they come in from Japan," he would continue in his precise voice, emphasizing
+admirably the last syllables of the words "Russian," "vessels," and "Japan."
+"Wouldn't you like to see the letter?"
+
+To do Hannah justice, although she was quite incapable of sharing his passion,
+she frequently feigned an interest, took the letter, presently handing it on to
+Janet who, in deciphering Alpheus's trembling calligraphy, pondered over his
+manifold woes.  Alpheus's son, who had had a good position in a sporting goods
+establishment on Market Street, was sick and in danger of losing it, the son's
+wife expecting an addition to the family, the house on Russian Hill mortgaged.
+Alpheus, a veteran of the Civil War, had been for many years preparing his
+reminiscences, but the newspapers nowadays seemed to care nothing for matters
+of solid worth, and so far had refused to publish them....  Janet, as she read,
+reflected that these letters invariably had to relate tales of failures, of
+disappointed hopes; she wondered at her father's perennial interest in
+failures,--provided they were those of his family; and the next evening, as he
+wrote painfully on his ruled paper, she knew that he in turn was pouring out
+his soul to Alpheus, recounting, with an emotion by no means unpleasurable, to
+this sympathetic but remote relative the story of his own failure!
+
+If the city of Hampton was emblematic of our modern world in which
+haphazardness has replaced order, Fillmore Street may be likened to a back eddy
+of the muddy and troubled waters, in which all sorts of flotsam and jetsam had
+collected.  Or, to find perhaps an even more striking illustration of the
+process that made Hampton in general and Fillmore Street in particular, one had
+only to take the trolley to Glendale, the Italian settlement on the road
+leading to the old New England village of Shrewsbury.  Janet sometimes walked
+there, alone or with her friend Eda Rawle.  Disintegration itself--in a
+paradoxically pathetic attempt at reconstruction--had built Glendale.  Human
+hands, Italian hands.  Nor, surprising though it may seem, were these
+descendants of the people of the Renaissance in the least offended by their
+handiwork.  When the southern European migration had begun and real estate
+became valuable, one by one the more decorous edifices of the old American
+order had been torn down and carried piecemeal by sons of Italy to the bare
+hills of Glendale, there to enter into new combinations representing, to an eye
+craving harmony, the last word of a chaos, of a mental indigestion, of a colour
+scheme crying aloud to heaven for retribution.  Standing alone and bare amidst
+its truck gardens, hideous, extreme, though typical of the entire settlement,
+composed of fragments ripped from once-appropriate settings, is a house with a
+tiny body painted strawberry-red, with scroll-work shutters a tender green;
+surmounting the structure and almost equalling it in size is a sky-blue cupola,
+once the white crown of the Sutter mansion, the pride of old Hampton.  The
+walls of this dwelling were wrested from the sides of Mackey's Tavern, while
+the shutters for many years adorned the parsonage of the old First Church.
+Similarly, in Hampton and in Fillmore Street, lived in enforced neighbourliness
+human fragments once having their places in crystallized communities where
+existence had been regarded as solved.  Here there was but one order,--if such
+it may be called,--one relationship, direct, or indirect, one necessity
+claiming them all--the mills.
+
+Like the boards forming the walls of the shacks at Glendale, these human planks
+torn from an earlier social structure were likewise warped, which is to say
+they were dominated by obsessions.  Edward's was the Bumpus family; and Chris
+Auermann, who lived in the flat below, was convinced that the history of
+mankind is a deplorable record of havoc caused by women.  Perhaps he was right,
+but the conviction was none the less an obsession.  He came from a little
+village near Wittenburg that has scarcely changed since Luther's time.  Like
+most residents of Hampton who did not work in the mills, he ministered to those
+who did, or to those who sold merchandise to the workers, cutting their hair in
+his barber shop on Faber Street.
+
+The Bumpuses, save Lise, clinging to a native individualism and pride,
+preferred isolation to companionship with the other pieces of driftwood by
+which they were surrounded, and with which the summer season compelled a
+certain enforced contact.  When the heat in the little dining-room grew
+unbearable, they were driven to take refuge on the front steps shared in common
+with the household of the barber.  It is true that the barber's wife was a mild
+hausfrau who had little to say, and that their lodgers, two young Germans who
+worked in the mills, spent most of their evenings at a bowling club; but
+Auermann himself, exhaling a strong odour of bay rum, would arrive promptly at
+quarter past eight, take off his coat, and thus, as it were stripped for
+action, would turn upon the defenceless Edward.
+
+"Vill you mention one great man--yoost one--who is not greater if the vimmen
+leave him alone?" he would demand.  "Is it Anthony, the conqueror of Egypt and
+the East?  I vill show you Cleopatra.  Und Burns, and Napoleon, the greatest
+man what ever lived--vimmen again.  I tell you there is no Elba, no St. Helena
+if it is not for the vimmen.  Und vat vill you say of Goethe?"
+
+Poor Edward could think of nothing to say of Goethe.
+
+"He is great, I grant you," Chris would admit, "but vat is he if the vimmen
+leave him alone?  Divine yoost that."  And he would proceed to cite endless
+examples of generals and statesmen whose wives or mistresses had been their
+bane.  Futile Edward's attempts to shift the conversation to the subject of his
+own obsession; the German was by far the more aggressive, he would have none of
+it.  Perhaps if Edward had been willing to concede that the Bumpuses had been
+brought to their present lowly estate by the sinister agency of the fair sex
+Chris might conditionally have accepted the theme.  Hannah, contemptuously
+waving a tattered palm leaf fan, was silent; but on one occasion Janet took
+away the barber's breath by suddenly observing:--
+
+"You never seem to think of the women whose lives are ruined by men, Mr.
+Auermann."
+
+It was unheard-of, this invasion of a man's argument by a woman, and by a young
+woman at that.  He glared at her through his spectacles, took them off, wiped
+them, replaced them, and glared at her again.  He did not like Janet; she was
+capable of what may be called a speaking silence, and he had never been wholly
+unaware of her disapproval and ridicule.  Perhaps he recognized in her,
+instinctively, the potential qualities of that emerging modern woman who to him
+was anathema.
+
+"It is somethings I don't think about," he said.
+
+He was a wizened little man with faience-blue eyes, and sat habitually hunched
+up with his hands folded across his shins.
+
+"Nam fuit ante Helenam"--as Darwin quotes.  Toward all the masculine residents
+of Fillmore Street, save one, the barber's attitude was one of unconcealed
+scorn for an inability to recognize female perfidy.  With Johnny Tiernan alone
+he refused to enter the lists.  When the popular proprietor of the tin shop
+came sauntering along the sidewalk with nose uptilted, waving genial greetings
+to the various groups on the steps, Chris Auermann's expression would suddenly
+change to one of fatuous playfulness.
+
+"What's this I hear about giving the girls the vote, Chris?"  Johnny would
+innocently inquire, winking at Janet, invariably running his hand through the
+wiry red hair that resumed its corkscrew twist as soon as he released it.  And
+Chris would as invariably reply:--
+
+"You have the dandruffs--yes?  You come to my shop, I give you somethings...."
+
+Sometimes the barber, in search of a more aggressive adversary than Edward,
+would pay visits, when as likely as not another neighbour with profound
+convictions and a craving for proselytes would swoop down on the defenceless
+Bumpuses: Joe Shivers, for instance, who lived in one of the tenements above
+the cleaning and dyeing establishment kept by the Pappas Bros., and known as
+"The Gentleman."  In the daytime Mr. Shivers was a model of acquiescence in a
+system he would have designated as one of industrial feudalism, his duty being
+to examine the rolls of cloth as they came from the looms of the Arundel Mill,
+in case of imperfections handing them over to the women menders: at night, to
+borrow a vivid expression from Lise, he was "batty in the belfry" on the
+subject of socialism.  Unlike the barber, whom he could not abide, for him the
+cleavage of the world was between labour and capital instead of man and woman;
+his philosophy was stern and naturalistic; the universe--the origin of which he
+did not discuss--just an accidental assemblage of capricious forces over which
+human intelligence was one day to triumph.  Squatting on the lowest step, his
+face upturned, by the light of the arc sputtering above the street he looked
+like a yellow frog, his eager eyes directed toward Janet, whom he suspected of
+intelligence.
+
+"If there was a God, a nice, kind, all-powerful God, would he permit what
+happened in one of the loom-rooms last week?  A Polak girl gets her hair caught
+in the belt pfff!"  He had a marvellously realistic gift when it came to
+horrors: Janet felt her hair coming out by the roots.  Although she never went
+to church, she did not like to think that no God existed.  Of this Mr. Shivers
+was very positive.  Edward, too, listened uneasily, hemmed and hawed, making
+ineffectual attempts to combat Mr. Shivers's socialism with a deeply-rooted
+native individualism that Shivers declared as defunct as Christianity.
+
+"If it is possible for the workingman to rise under a capitalistic system, why
+do you not rise, then?  Why do I not rise?  I'm as good as Ditmar, I'm better
+educated, but we're all slaves.  What right has a man to make you and me work
+for him just because he has capital?"
+
+"Why, the right of capital," Edward would reply.
+
+Mr. Shivers, with the manner of one dealing with an incurable romanticism and
+sentimentality, would lift his hands in despair.  And in spite of the fact that
+Janet detested him, he sometimes exercised over her a paradoxical fascination,
+suggesting as he did unexplored intellectual realms.  She despised her father
+for not being able to crush the little man.  Edward would make pathetic
+attempts to capture the role Shivers had appropriated, to be the practical
+party himself, to convict Shivers of idealism.  Socialism scandalized him,
+outraged, even more than atheism, something within him he held sacred, and he
+was greatly annoyed because he was unable adequately to express this feeling.
+
+"You can't change human nature, Mr. Shivers," Edward would insist in his
+precise but ineffectual manner.  "We all want property, you would accept a
+fortune if it was offered to you, and so should I.  Americans will never become
+socialists."
+
+"But look at me, wasn't I born in Meriden, Connecticut?  Ain't that Yankee
+enough for you?"  Thus Mr. Shivers sought blandly to confound him.
+
+A Yankee  Shades of the Pilgrim fathers, of seven, generations of Bumpuses!  A
+Yankee who used his hands in that way, a Yankee with a nose like that, a Yankee
+with a bald swathe down the middle of his crown and bunches of black, moth-
+eaten hair on either side!  But Edward, too polite to descend to personalities,
+was silent....
+
+In brief, this very politeness of Edward's, which his ancestors would have
+scorned, this consideration and lack of self-assertion made him the favourite
+prey of the many "characters" in Fillmore Street whose sanity had been
+disturbed by pressure from above, in whose systems had lodged the germs of
+those exotic social doctrines floating so freely in the air of our modern
+industrial communities ....  Chester Glenn remains for a passing mention.  A
+Yankee of Yankees, this, born on a New Hampshire farm, and to the ordinary
+traveller on the Wigmore branch of the railroad just a good-natured, round-
+faced, tobacco-chewing brakeman who would take a seat beside ladies of his
+acquaintance aid make himself agreeable until it was time to rise and bawl out,
+in the approved manner of his profession, the name of the next station.
+Fillmore Street knew that the flat visored cap which his corporation compelled
+him to wear covered a brain into which had penetrated the maggot of the Single
+Tax.  When he encountered Mr. Shivers or Auermann the talk became coruscating..
+
+Eda Rawle, Janet's solitary friend of these days, must also be mentioned,
+though the friendship was merely an episode in Janet's life.  Their first
+meeting was at Grady's quick-lunch counter in Faber Street, which they both
+frequented at one time, and the fact that each had ordered a ham sandwich, a
+cup of coffee, and a confection--new to Grady's--known as a Napoleon had led to
+conversation.
+
+Eda, of course, was the aggressor; she was irresistibly drawn, she would not be
+repulsed.  A stenographer in the Wessex National Bank, she boarded with a Welsh
+family in Spruce Street; matter-of-fact, plodding, commonplace, resembling--as
+Janet thought--a horse, possessing, indeed many of the noble qualities of that
+animal, she might have been thought the last person in the world to discern and
+appreciate in Janet the hidden elements of a mysterious fire.  In appearance
+Miss Rawle was of a type not infrequent in Anglo-Saxon lands, strikingly
+blonde, with high malar bones, white eyelashes, and eyes of a metallic blue,
+cheeks of an amazing elasticity that worked rather painfully as she talked or
+smiled, drawing back inadequate lips, revealing long, white teeth and vivid
+gums.  It was the craving in her for romance Janet assuaged; Eda's was the love
+content to pour out, that demands little.  She was capable of immolation.
+Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though in
+moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was able to
+give such a meagre return for the wealth of its offering.
+
+In other moments, when the world seemed all disorder and chaos,--as Mr. Shivers
+described it,--or when she felt within her, like demons, those inexpressible
+longings and desires, leaping and straining, pulling her, almost irresistibly,
+she knew not whither, Eda shone forth like a light in the darkness, like the
+beacon of a refuge and a shelter.  Eda had faith in her, even when Janet had
+lost faith in herself: she went to Eda in the same spirit that Marguerite went
+to church; though she, Janet, more resembled Faust, being--save in these hours
+of lowered vitality--of the forth-faring kind ....  Unable to confess the need
+that drove her, she arrived in Eda's little bedroom to be taken into Eda's
+arms.  Janet was immeasurably the stronger of the two, but Eda possessed the
+masculine trait of protectiveness, the universe never bothered her, she was one
+of those persons--called fortunate--to whom the orthodox Christian virtues come
+as naturally as sun or air.  Passion, when sanctified by matrimony, was her
+ideal, and now it was always in terms of Janet she dreamed of it, having read
+about it in volumes her friend would not touch, and never
+having experienced deeply its discomforts.  Sanctified or unsanctified, Janet
+regarded it with terror, and whenever Eda innocently broached the subject she
+recoiled.  Once Eda exclaimed:--
+
+"When you do fall in love, Janet, you must tell me all about it, every word!"
+
+Janet blushed hotly, and was silent.  In Eda's mind such an affair was a kind
+of glorified fireworks ending in a cluster of stars, in Janet's a volcanic
+eruption to turn the world red.  Such was the difference between them.
+
+Their dissipations together consisted of "sundaes" at a drug-store, or
+sometimes of movie shows at the Star or the Alhambra.  Stereotyped on Eda's
+face during the legitimately tender passages of these dramas was an expression
+of rapture, a smile made peculiarly infatuate by that vertical line in her
+cheeks, that inadequacy of lip and preponderance of white teeth and red gums.
+It irritated, almost infuriated Janet, to whom it appeared as the logical
+reflection of what was passing on the screen; she averted her glance from both,
+staring into her lap, filled with shame that the relation between the sexes
+should be thus exposed to public gaze, parodied, sentimentalized, degraded....
+There were, however, marvels to stir her, strange landscapes, cities, seas, and
+ships,--once a fire in the forest of a western reserve with gigantic tongues of
+orange flame leaping from tree to tree.  The movies brought the world to
+Hampton, the great world into which she longed to fare, brought the world to
+her!  Remote mountain hamlets from Japan, minarets and muezzins from the
+Orient, pyramids from Egypt, domes from Moscow resembling gilded beets turned
+upside down; grey houses of parliament by the Thames, the Tower of London, the
+Palaces of Potsdam, the Tai Mahal.  Strange lands indeed, and stranger peoples!
+booted Russians in blouses, naked Equatorial savages tattooed and amazingly
+adorned, soldiers and sailors, presidents, princes and emperors brought into
+such startling proximity one could easily imagine one's self exchanging the
+time of day!  Incredible to Janet how the audiences, how even Eda accepted with
+American complacency what were to her never-ending miracles; the yearning to
+see more, to know more, became acute, like a pain, but even as she sought to
+devour these scenes, to drink in every detail, with tantalizing swiftness they
+were whisked away.  They were peepholes in the walls of her prison; and at
+night she often charmed herself to sleep with remembered visions of wide,
+empty, treeshaded terraces reserved for kings.
+
+But Eda, however complacent her interest in the scenes themselves, was thrilled
+to the marrow by their effect on Janet, who was her medium.  Emerging from the
+vestibule of the theatre, Janet seemed not to see the slushy street, her eyes
+shone with a silver light like that of a mountain lake in a stormy sunset.  And
+they walked in silence until Janet would exclaim:
+
+"Oh Eda, wouldn't you love to travel!"
+
+Thus Eda Rawle was brought in contact with values she herself was powerless to
+detect, and which did not become values until they had passed through Janet.
+One "educative" reel they had seen had begun with scenes in a lumber camp high
+in the mountains of Galicia, where grow forests of the priceless pine that
+becomes, after years of drying and seasoning, the sounding board of the
+Stradivarius and the harp.  Even then it must respond to a Player.  Eda, though
+failing to apply this poetic parallel, when alone in her little room in the
+Welsh boarding-house often indulged in an ecstasy of speculation as to that
+man, hidden in the mists of the future, whose destiny it would be to awaken her
+friend.  Hampton did not contain him,--of this she was sure; and in her efforts
+to visualize him she had recourse to the movies, seeking him amongst that
+brilliant company of personages who stood so haughtily or walked so
+indifferently across the ephemeral brightness of the screen.
+
+By virtue of these marvels of the movies Hampton ugly and sordid Hampton! --
+actually began for Janet to take on a romantic tinge.  Were not the strange
+peoples of the earth flocking to Hampton?  She saw them arriving
+at the station, straight from Ellis Island, bewildered, ticketed like dumb
+animals, the women draped in the soft, exotic colours many of them were
+presently to exchange for the cheap and gaudy apparel of Faber Street.  She
+sought to summon up in her mind the glimpses she had had of the wonderful lands
+from which they had come, to imagine their lives in that earlier environment.
+Sometimes she wandered, alone or with Eda, through the various quarters of the
+city.  Each quarter had a flavour of its own, a synthetic flavour belonging
+neither to the old nor to the new, yet partaking of both: a difference in
+atmosphere to which Janet was keenly sensitive.  In the German quarter, to the
+north, one felt a sort of ornamental bleakness--if the expression may be
+permitted: the tenements here were clean and not too crowded, the scroll-work
+on their superimposed porches, like that decorating the Turnverein and the stem
+Lutheran Church, was eloquent of a Teutonic inheritance: The Belgians were to
+the west, beyond the base-ball park and the car barns, their grey houses
+scattered among new streets beside the scarred and frowning face of Torrey's
+hill.  Almost under the hill itself, which threatened to roll down on it, and
+facing a bottomless, muddy street, was the quaint little building giving the
+note of foreign thrift, of socialism and shrewdness, of joie de vivre to the
+settlement, the FrancoBelgian co-operative store, with its salle de reunion
+above and a stage for amateur theatricals.  Standing in the mud outside, Janet
+would gaze through the tiny windows in the stucco wall at the baskets prepared
+for each household laid in neat rows beside the counter; at the old man with
+the watery blue eyes and lacing of red in his withered cheeks who spoke no
+English, whose duty it was to distribute the baskets to the women and children
+as they called.
+
+Turning eastward again, one came to Dey Street, in the heart of Hampton, where
+Hibernian Hall stood alone and grim, sole testimony of the departed Hibernian
+glories of a district where the present Irish rulers of the city had once lived
+and gossiped and fought in the days when the mill bells had roused the
+boarding-house keepers at half past four of a winter morning.  Beside the hall
+was a corner lot, heaped high with hills of ashes and rubbish like the
+vomitings of some filthy volcano; the unsightliness of which was half concealed
+by huge signs announcing the merits of chewing gums, tobaccos, and cereals.
+But why had the departure of the Irish, the coming of the Syrians made Dey
+Street dark, narrow, mysterious, oriental? changed the very aspect of its
+architecture?  Was it the coffee-houses?  One of these, in front of which Janet
+liked to linger, was set weirdly into an old New England cottage, and had,
+apparently, fathomless depths.  In summer the whole front of it lay open to the
+street, and here all day long, beside the table where the charcoal squares were
+set to dry, could be seen saffron-coloured Armenians absorbed in a Turkish game
+played on a backgammon board, their gentleness and that of the loiterers
+looking on in strange contrast with their hawk-like profiles and burning eyes.
+Behind this group, in the half light of the middle interior, could be discerned
+an American soda-water fountain of a bygone fashion, on its marble counter
+oddly shaped bottles containing rose and violet syrups; there was a bottle-
+shaped stove, and on the walls, in gilt frames, pictures evidently dating from
+the period in American art that flourished when Franklin Pierce was President;
+and there was an array of marble topped tables extending far back into the
+shadows.  Behind the fountain was a sort of cupboard--suggestive of the Arabian
+Nights, which Janet had never read--from which, occasionally, the fat
+proprietor emerged bearing Turkish coffee or long Turkish pipes.
+
+When not thus occupied the proprietor carried a baby.  The street swarmed with
+babies, and mothers nursed them on the door-steps.  And in this teeming,
+prolific street one could scarcely move without stepping on a fat, almond eyed
+child, though some, indeed, were wheeled; wheeled in all sorts of queer
+contrivances by one another, by fathers with ragged black moustaches and eagle
+noses who, to the despair of mill superintendents, had decided in the morning
+that three days' wages would since to support their families for the week ....
+In the midst of the throng might be seen occasionally the stout and comfortable
+and not too immaculate figure of a shovel bearded Syrian priest, in a frock
+coat and square-topped "Derby" hat, sailing along serenely, heedless of the
+children who scattered out of his path.
+
+Nearby was the quarter of the Canadian French, scarcely now to be called
+foreigners, though still somewhat reminiscent of the cramped little towns in
+the northern wilderness of water and forest.  On one corner stood almost
+invariably a "Pharmacie Francaise"; the signs were in French, and the elders
+spoke the patois.  These, despite the mill pallor, retained in their faces, in
+their eyes, a suggestion of the outdoor look of their ancestors, the coureurs
+des bois, but the children spoke English, and the young men, as they played
+baseball in the street or in the corner lots might be heard shouting out
+derisively the cry of the section hands so familiar in mill cities, "Doff, you
+beggars you, doff!"
+
+Occasionally the two girls strayed into that wide thoroughfare not far from the
+canal, known by the classic name of Hawthorne, which the Italians had
+appropriated to themselves.  This street, too, in spite of the telegraph poles
+flaunting crude arms in front of its windows, in spite of the trolley running
+down its middle, had acquired a character, a unity all its own, a warmth and
+picturesqueness that in the lingering light of summer evenings assumed an
+indefinable significance.  It was not Italy, but it was something--something
+proclaimed in the ornate, leaning lines of the pillared balconies of the yellow
+tenement on the second block, in the stone-vaulted entrance of the low house
+next door, in fantastically coloured walls, in curtained windows out of which
+leaned swarthy, earringed women.  Blocking the end of the street, in stern
+contrast, was the huge Clarendon Mill with its sinister brick pillars running
+up the six stories between the glass.  Here likewise the sidewalks overflowed
+with children, large-headed, with great, lustrous eyes, mute, appealing, the
+eyes of cattle.  Unlike American children, they never seemed to be playing.
+Among the groups of elders gathered for gossip were piratical Calabrians in
+sombre clothes, descended from Greek ancestors, once the terrors of the
+Adriatic Sea.  The women, lingering in the doorways, hemmed in by more
+children, were for the most part squat and plump, but once in a while Janet's
+glance was caught and held by a strange, sharp beauty worthy of a cameo.
+
+Opposite the Clarendon Mill on the corner of East Street was a provision store
+with stands of fruit and vegetables encroaching on the pavement.  Janet's eye
+was attracted by a box of olives.
+
+"Oh Eda," she cried, "do you remember, we saw them being picked--in the movies?
+All those old trees on the side of a hill?"
+
+"Why, that's so," said Eda.  "You never would have thought anything'd grow on
+those trees."
+
+The young Italian who kept the store gave them a friendly grin.
+
+"You lika the olives?" he asked, putting some of the shining black fruit into
+their hands.  Eda bit one dubiously with her long, white teeth, and giggled.
+
+"Don't they taste funny!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Good--very good," he asserted gravely, and it was to Janet he turned, as
+though recognizing a discrimination not to be found in her companion.  She
+nodded affirmatively.  The strange taste of the fruit enhanced her sense of
+adventure, she tried to imagine herself among the gatherers in the grove; she
+glanced at the young man to perceive that he was tall and well formed, with
+remarkably expressive eyes almost the colour of the olives themselves.  It
+surprised her that she liked him, though he was an Italian and a foreigner: a
+certain debonnair dignity in him appealed to her--a quality lacking in many of
+her own countrymen.
+
+And she wanted to talk to him about Italy,--only she did not know how to
+begin,--when a customer appeared, an Italian woman who conversed with him in
+soft, liquid tones that moved her ....
+
+Sometimes on these walks--especially if the day were grey and sombre--Janet's
+sense of romance and adventure deepened, became more poignant, charged with
+presage.  These feelings, vague and unaccountable, she was utterly unable to
+confide to Eda, yet the very fear they inspired was fascinating; a fear and a
+hope that some day, in all this Babel of peoples, something would happen!  It
+was as though the conflicting soul of the city and her own soul were one....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Lise was the only member of the Bumpus family who did not find uncongenial such
+distractions and companionships as were offered by the civilization that
+surrounded them.  The Bagatelle she despised; that was slavery--but slavery out
+of which she might any day be snatched, like Leila Hawtrey, by a prince
+charming who had made a success in life.  Success to Lise meant money.
+Although what some sentimental sociologists might call a victim of our
+civilization, Lise would not have changed it, since it produced not only Lise
+herself, but also those fabulous financiers with yachts and motors and town and
+country houses she read about in the supplements of the Sunday newspapers.  It
+contained her purgatory, which she regarded in good conventional fashion as a
+mere temporary place of detention, and likewise the heaven toward which she
+strained, the dwelling-place of light.  In short, her philosophy was that of
+the modern, orthodox American, tinged by a somewhat commercialized Sunday
+school tradition of an earlier day, and highly approved by the censors of the
+movies.  The peculiar kind of abstinence once euphemistically known as
+"virtue," particularly if it were combined with beauty, never failed of its
+reward.  Lise, in this sense, was indeed virtuous, and her mirror told her she
+was beautiful.  Almost anything could happen to such a lady: any day she might
+be carried up into heaven by that modern chariot of fire, the motor car, driven
+by a celestial chauffeur.
+
+One man's meat being another's poison, Lise absorbed from the movies an element
+by which her sister Janet was repelled.  A popular production known as "Leila
+of Hawtrey's" contained her creed,--Hawtrey's being a glittering metropolitan
+restaurant where men of the world are wont to gather and discuss the stock
+market, and Leila a beautiful, blonde and orphaned waitress upon whom several
+of the fashionable frequenters had exercised seductive powers in vain.  They
+lay in wait for her at the side entrance, followed her, while one dissipated
+and desperate person, married, and said to move in the most exclusive circles,
+sent her an offer of a yearly income in five figures, the note being reproduced
+on the screen, and Leila pictured reading it in her frigid hall-bedroom.  There
+are complications; she is in debt, and the proprietor of Hawtrey's has
+threatened to discharge her and in order that the magnitude of the temptation
+may be most effectively realized the vision appears of Leila herself, wrapped
+in furs, stepping out of a limousine and into an elevator lifting her to an
+apartment containing silk curtains, a Canet bed, a French maid, and a
+Pomeranian.  Virtue totters, but triumphs, being reinforced by two more visions
+the first of these portrays Leila, prematurely old, dragging herself along
+pavements under the metallic Broadway lights accosting gentlemen in evening
+dress; and the second reveals her in the country, kneeling beside a dying
+mother's bed, giving her promise to remain true to the Christian teachings of
+her childhood.
+
+And virtue is rewarded, lavishly, as virtue should be, in dollars and cents, in
+stocks and bonds, in pearls and diamonds.  Popular fancy takes kindly to rough
+but honest westerners who have begun life in flannel shirts, who have struck
+gold and come to New York with a fortune but despising effeteness; such a one,
+tanned by the mountain sun, embarrassed in raiment supplied by a Fifth Avenue
+tailor, takes a table one evening at Hawtrey's and of course falls desperately
+in love.  He means marriage from the first, and his faith in Leila is great
+enough to survive what appears to be an almost total eclipse of her virtue.
+Through the machinations of the influential villain, and lured by the false
+pretence that one of her girl friends is ill, she is enticed into a mysterious
+house of a sinister elegance, and apparently irretrievably compromised.  The
+westerner follows, forces his way through the portals, engages the villain, and
+vanquishes him.  Leila becomes a Bride.  We behold her, at the end, mistress of
+one of those magnificent stone mansions with grilled vestibules and negro
+butlers into whose sacred precincts we are occasionally, in the movies,
+somewhat breathlessly ushered--a long way from Hawtrey's restaurant and a hall-
+bedroom.  A long way, too, from the Bagatelle and Fillmore Street--but to Lise
+a way not impossible, nor even improbable.
+
+This work of art, conveying the moral that virtue is an economic asset, made a
+great impression on Lise.  Good Old Testament doctrine, set forth in the Book
+of Job itself.  And Leila, pictured as holding out for a higher price and
+getting it, encouraged Lise to hold out also.  Mr. Wiley, in whose company she
+had seen this play, and whose likeness filled the plush and silver-plated frame
+on her bureau, remained ironically ignorant of the fact that he had paid out
+his money to make definite an ambition, an ideal hitherto nebulous in the mind
+of the lady whom he adored.  Nor did Lise enlighten him, being gifted with a
+certain inserutableness.  As a matter of fact it had never been her intention
+to accept him, but now that she was able concretely to visualize her Lochinvar
+of the future, Mr. Whey's lack of qualifications became the more apparent.  In
+the first place, he had been born in Lowell and had never been west of
+Worcester; in the second, his salary was sixteen dollars a week: it is true she
+had once fancied the Scottish terrier style of hair-cut abruptly ending in the
+rounded line of the shaven neck, but Lochinvar had been close-cropped.  Mr.
+Wiley, close-cropped, would have resembled a convict.
+
+Mr. Wiley was in love, there could be no doubt about that, and if he had not
+always meant marriage, he meant it now, having reached a state where no folly
+seems preposterous.  The manner of their meeting had had just the adventurous
+and romantic touch that Lise liked, one of her favourite amusements in the
+intervals between "steadies" being to walk up and down Faber Street of an
+evening after supper, arm in arm with two or three other young ladies, all
+chewing gum, wheeling into store windows and wheeling out again, pretending the
+utmost indifference to melting glances cast in their direction.  An exciting
+sport, though incomprehensible to masculine intelligence.  It was a principle
+with Lise to pay no attention to any young man who was not "presented," those
+venturing to approach her with the ready formula "Haven't we met before?" being
+instantly congealed.  She was strict as to etiquette.  But Mr. Wiley, it
+seemed, could claim acquaintance with Miss Schuler, one of the ladies to whose
+arm Lise's was linked, and he had the further advantage of appearing in a large
+and seductive touring car, painted green, with an eagle poised above the hood
+and its name, Wizard, in a handwriting rounded and bold, written in nickel
+across the radiator.  He greeted Miss Schuler effusively, but his eye was on
+Lise from the first, and it was she he took with, him in the front seat,
+indifferent to the giggling behind.  Ever since then Lise had had a motor at
+her disposal, and on Sundays they took long "joy rides" beyond the borders of
+the state.  But it must not be imagined that Mr. Whey was the proprietor of the
+vehicle; nor was he a chauffeur,--her American pride would not have permitted
+her to keep company with a chauffeur: he was the demonstrator for the Wizard,
+something of a wizard himself, as Lise had to admit when they whizzed over the
+tarvia of the Riverside Boulevard at fifty or sixty miles an hour with the
+miner cut out--a favourite diversion of Mr. Whey's, who did not feel he was
+going unless he was accompanied by a noise like that of a mitrailleuse in
+action.  Lise, experiencing a ravishing terror, hung on to her hat with one
+hand and to Mr. Wiley with the other, her code permitting this; permitting him
+also, occasionally, when they found themselves in tenebrous portions of
+Slattery's Riverside Park, to put his arm around her waist and kiss her.  So
+much did Lise's virtue allow, and no more, the result being that he existed in
+a tantalizing state of hope and excitement most detrimental to the nerves.
+
+He never lost, however,--in public at least, or before Lise's family,--the fine
+careless, jaunty air of the demonstrator, of the free-lance for whom seventy
+miles an hour has no terrors; the automobile, apparently, like the ship, sets a
+stamp upon its votaries.  No Elizabethan buccaneer swooping down on defenceless
+coasts ever exceeded in audacity Mr. Wiley's invasion of quiet Fillmore Street.
+He would draw up with an ear-splitting screaming of brakes in front of the
+clay-yellow house, and sometimes the muffler, as though unable to repress its
+approval of the performance, would let out a belated pop that never failed to
+jar the innermost being of Auermann, who had been shot at, or rather shot past,
+by an Italian, and knew what it was.  He hated automobiles, he hated Mr. Wiley.
+
+"Vat you do?" he would demand, glaring.
+
+And Mr. Wiley would laugh insolently.
+
+"You think I done it, do you, Dutchie--huh!"
+
+He would saunter past, up the stairs, and into the Bumpus dining-room, often
+before the family had finished their evening meal.  Lise alone made him
+welcome, albeit demurely; but Mr. Wiley, not having sensibilities, was proof
+against Hannah's coldness and Janet's hostility.  With unerring instinct he
+singled out Edward as his victim.
+
+"How's Mr. Bumpus this evening?" he would genially inquire.
+
+Edward invariably assured Mr. Wiley that he was well, invariably took a drink
+of coffee to emphasize the fact, as though the act of lifting his cup had in it
+some magic to ward off the contempt of his wife and elder daughter.
+
+"Well, I've got it pretty straight that the Arundel's going to run nights,
+starting next week," Lise's suitor would continue.
+
+And to save his soul Edward could not refrain from answering, "You don't say
+so!"  He feigned interest in the information that the Hampton Ball Team, owing
+to an unsatisfactory season, was to change managers next year.  Mr. Wiley
+possessed the gift of gathering recondite bits of news, he had confidence in
+his topics and in his manner of dealing with them; and Edward, pretending to be
+entertained, went so far in his politeness as to ask Mr. Wiley if he had had
+supper.
+
+"I don't care if I sample one of Mis' Bumpus's doughnuts," Mr. Wiley would
+reply politely, reaching out a large hand that gave evidence, in spite of
+Sapolio, of an intimacy with grease cups and splash pans.  "I guess there's
+nobody in this burg can make doughnuts to beat yours, Miss Bumpus."
+
+If she had only known which doughnut he would take; Hannah sometimes thought
+she might have been capable of putting arsenic in it.  Her icy silence did not
+detract from the delights of his gestation.
+
+Occasionally, somewhat to Edward's alarm, Hannah demanded: "Where are you
+taking Lise this evening?"
+
+Mr. Wiley's wisdom led him to be vague.
+
+Oh, just for a little spin up the boulevard.  Maybe we'll pick up Ella Schuler
+and one or two other young ladies."
+
+Hannah and Janet knew very well he had no intention of doing this, and Hannah
+did not attempt to conceal her incredulity.  As a matter of fact, Lise
+sometimes did insist on a "party."
+
+"I want you should bring her back by ten o'clock.  That's late enough for a
+girl who works to be out.  It's late enough for any girl."
+
+"Sure, Mis' Bumpus," Wiley would respond easily.
+
+Hannah chafed because she had no power to enforce this, because Mr. Wiley and
+Lise understood she had no power.  Lise went to put on her hat; if she skimped
+her toilet in the morning, she made up for it in the evening when she came home
+from the store, and was often late for supper.  In the meantime, while Lise was
+in the bedroom adding these last touches, Edward would contemptibly continue
+the conversation, fingering the Evening Banner as it lay in his lap, while Mr.
+Wiley helped himself boldly to another doughnut, taking--as Janet observed--
+elaborate precautions to spill none of the crumbs on a brown suit, supposed to
+be the last creation in male attire.  Behind a plate glass window in Faber
+Street, belonging to a firm of "custom" tailors whose stores had invaded every
+important city in the country, and who made clothes for "college" men, only the
+week before Mr. Wiley had seen this same suit artistically folded, combined
+with a coloured shirt, brown socks, and tie and "torture" collar--lures for the
+discriminating.  Owing to certain expenses connected with Lise, he had been
+unable to acquire the shirt and the tie, but he had bought the suit in the hope
+and belief that she would find him irresistible therein.  It pleased him, too,
+to be taken for a "college" man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened
+shoulders and diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had not been
+spent in vain; that strange young ladies--to whom, despite his infatuation for
+the younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly indifferent--would mistake him for
+an undergraduate of Harvard,--an imposition concerning which he had no
+scruples.  But Lise, though shaken, had not capitulated.....
+
+When she returned to the dining-room, arrayed in her own finery, demure,
+triumphant, and had carried off Mr. Whey there would ensue an interval of
+silence broken only by the clattering together of the dishes Hannah snatched
+up.
+
+"I guess he's the kind of son-in-law would suit you," she threw over her
+shoulder once to Edward.
+
+"Why?" he inquired, letting down his newspaper nervously.
+
+"Well, you seem to favour him, to make things as pleasant for him as you can."
+
+Edward would grow warm with a sense of injustice, the inference being that he
+was to blame for Mr. Wiley; if he had been a different kind of father another
+sort of suitor would be courting Lise.
+
+"I have to be civil," he protested.  He pronounced that, word "civil"
+exquisitely, giving equal value to both syllables.
+
+"Civil!" Hannah scoffed, as she left the room; and to Janet, who had followed
+her into the kitchen, she added:  "That's the trouble with your father, he's
+always be'n a little too civil.  Edward Bumpus is just as simple as a child,
+he's afraid of offending folks' feelings ....  Think of being polite to that
+Whey!"  In those two words Hannah announced eloquently her utter condemnation
+of the demonstrator of the Wizard.  It was characteristic of her, however, when
+she went back for another load of dishes and perceived that Edward was only
+pretending to read his Banner, to attempt to ease her husband's feelings.  She
+thought it queer because she was still fond of Edward Bumpus, after all he had
+"brought on her."
+
+"It's Lise," she said, as though speaking to Janet, "she attracts 'em.
+Sometimes I just can't get used to it that she's my daughter.  I don't know who
+she takes after.  She's not like any of my kin, nor any of the Bumpuses."
+
+"What can you do?" asked Edward.  "You can't order him out of the house.  It's
+better for him to come here.  And you can't stop Lise from going with him--
+she's earning her own money...."
+
+They had talked over the predicament before, and always came to the same
+impasse.  In the privacy of the kitchen Hannah paused suddenly in her energetic
+rubbing of a plate and with supreme courage uttered a question.
+
+"Janet, do you calculate he means anything wrong?"
+
+"I don't know what he means," Janet replied, unwilling to give Mr. Wiley credit
+for anything, "but I know this, that Lise is too smart to let him take
+advantage of her."
+
+Hannah ruminated.  Cleverness as the modern substitute for feminine virtue did
+not appeal to her, but she let it pass.  She was in no mood to quarrel with any
+quality that would ward off disgrace.
+
+"I don't know what to make of Lise--she don't appear to have any
+principles...."
+
+If the Wiley affair lasted longer than those preceding it, this was because
+former suitors had not commanded automobiles.  When Mr. Wiley lost his
+automobile he lost his luck--if it may be called such.  One April evening,
+after a stroll with Eda, Janet reached home about nine o'clock to find Lise
+already in their room, to remark upon the absence of Mr. Wiley's picture from
+the frame.
+
+"I'm through with him," Lise declared briefly, tugging at her hair.
+
+"Through with him?" Janet repeated.
+
+Lise paused in her labours and looked at her sister steadily.  "I handed him
+the mit--do you get me?"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Why?  I was sick of him--ain't that enough?  And then he got mixed up with a
+Glendale trolley and smashed his radiator, and the Wizard people sacked him.  I
+always told him he was too fly.  It's lucky for him I wasn't in the car."
+
+"It's lucky for you," said Janet.  Presently she inquired curiously: "Aren't
+you sorry?"
+
+"Nix."  Lise shook her head, which was now bowed, her face hidden by hair.
+"Didn't I tell you I was sick of him?  But he sure was some spender," she
+added, as though in justice bound to give him his due.
+
+Janet was shocked by the ruthlessness of it, for Lise appeared relieved, almost
+gay.  She handed Janet a box containing five peppermint creams--all that
+remained of Mr. Wiley's last gift.
+
+One morning in the late spring Janet crossed the Warren Street bridge, the
+upper of the two spider-like structures to be seen from her office window,
+spanning the river beside the great Hampton dam.  The day, dedicated to the
+memory of heroes fallen in the Civil War, the thirtieth of May, was a legal
+holiday.  Gradually Janet had acquired a dread of holidays as opportunities
+never realized, as intervals that should have been filled with unmitigated
+joys, and yet were invariably wasted, usually in walks with Eda Rawle.  To-day,
+feeling an irresistible longing for freedom, for beauty, for adventure, for
+quest and discovery of she knew not what, she avoided Eda, and after gazing
+awhile at the sunlight dancing in the white mist below the falls, she walked
+on, southward, until she had left behind her the last straggling houses of the
+city and found herself on a wide, tarvia road that led, ultimately, to Boston.
+So read the sign.
+
+Great maples, heavy with leaves, stood out against the soft blue of the sky,
+and the sunlight poured over everything, bathing the stone walls, the thatches
+of the farmhouses, extracting from the copses of stunted pine a pungent,
+reviving perfume.  Sometimes she stopped to rest on the pine needles, and
+walked on again, aimlessly, following the road because it was the easiest way.
+There were spring flowers in the farmhouse yards, masses of lilacs whose purple
+she drank in eagerly; the air, which had just a tang of New England sharpness,
+was filled with tender sounds, the clucking of hens, snatches of the songs of
+birds, the rustling of maple leaves in the fitful breeze.  A chipmunk ran down
+an elm and stood staring at her with beady, inquisitive eyes, motionless save
+for bas quivering tail, and she put forth her hand, shyly, beseechingly, as
+though he held the secret of life she craved.  But he darted away.
+
+She looked around her unceasingly, at the sky, at the trees, at the flowers and
+ferns and fields, at the vireos and thrushes, the robins and tanagers gashing
+in and out amidst the foliage, and she was filled with a strange yearning to
+expand and expand until she should become a part of all nature, be absorbed
+into it, cease to be herself.  Never before had she known just that feeling,
+that degree of ecstasy mingled with divine discontent ....  Occasionally,
+intruding faintly upon the countryside peace, she was aware of a distant
+humming sound that grew louder and louder until there shot roaring past her an
+automobile filled with noisy folk, leaving behind it a suffocating cloud of
+dust.  Even these intrusions, reminders of the city she had left, were
+powerless to destroy her mood, and she began to skip, like a schoolgirl,
+pausing once in a while to look around her fearfully, lest she was observed;
+and it pleased her to think that she had escaped forever, that she would never
+go back: she cried aloud, as she skipped, "I won't go back, I won't go back,"
+keeping time with her feet until she was out of breath and almost intoxicated,
+delirious, casting herself down, her heart beating wildly, on a bank of ferns,
+burying her face in them.  She had really stopped because a pebble had got into
+her shoe, and as she took it out she looked at her bare heel and remarked
+ruefully:--
+
+"Those twenty-five cent stockings aren't worth buying!"
+
+Economic problems, however, were powerless to worry her to-day, when the sun
+shone and the wind blew and the ferns, washed by the rill running through the
+culvert under the road, gave forth a delicious moist odour reminding her of the
+flower store where her sister Lise had once been employed.  But at length she
+arose, and after an hour or more of sauntering the farming landscape was left
+behind, the crumbling stone fences were replaced by a well-kept retaining wall
+capped by a privet hedge, through which, between stone pillars, a driveway
+entered and mounted the shaded slope, turning and twisting until lost to view.
+But afar, standing on the distant crest, through the tree trunks and foliage
+Janet saw one end of the mansion to which it led, and ventured timidly but
+eagerly in among the trees in the hope of satisfying her new-born curiosity.
+Try as she would, she never could get any but disappointing and partial
+glimpses of a house which, because of the mystery of its setting, fired her
+imagination, started her to wondering why it was that some were permitted to
+live in the midst of such beauty while she was condemned to spend her days in
+Fillmore Street and the prison of the mill.  She was not even allowed to look
+at it!  The thought was like a cloud across the sun.
+
+However, when she had regained the tarvia road and walked a little way the
+shadow suddenly passed, and she stood surprised.  The sight of a long common
+with its ancient trees in the fullness of glory, dense maples, sturdy oaks,
+strong, graceful elms that cast flickering, lacy shadows across the road filled
+her with satisfaction, with a sense of peace deepened by the awareness, in the
+background, ranged along the common on either side, of stately, dignified
+buildings, each in an appropriate frame of foliage.  With the essence rather
+than the detail of all this her consciousness became steeped; she was naturally
+ignorant of the great good fortune of Silliston Academy of having been spared
+with one or two exceptions--donations during those artistically lean years of
+the nineteenth century when American architecture affected the Gothic, the
+Mansard, and the subsequent hybrid.  She knew this must be Silliston, the seat
+of that famous academy of which she had heard.
+
+The older school buildings and instructors' houses, most of them white or
+creamy yellow, were native Colonial, with tall, graceful chimneys and classic
+pillars and delicate balustrades, eloquent at once of the racial inheritance of
+the Republic and of a bygone individuality, dignity, and pride.  And the modern
+architect, of whose work there was an abundance, had graciously and intuitively
+held this earlier note and developed it.  He was an American, but an American
+who had been trained.  The result was harmony, life as it should proceed, the
+new growing out of the old.  And no greater tribute can be paid to Janet Bumpus
+than that it pleased her, struck and set exquisitely vibrating within her
+responsive chords.  For the first time in her adult life she stood in the
+presence of tradition, of a tradition inherently if unconsciously the innermost
+reality of her being a tradition that miraculously was not dead, since after
+all the years it had begun to put forth these vigorous shoots....
+
+What Janet chiefly realized was the delicious, contented sense of having come,
+visually at least, to the home for which she had longed.  But her humour was
+that of a child who has strayed, to find its true dwelling place in a region of
+beauty hitherto unexplored and unexperienced, tinged, therefore, with
+unreality, with mystery,--an effect enhanced by the chance stillness and
+emptiness of the place.  She wandered up and down the Common, whose vivid green
+was starred with golden dandelions;  and then, spying the arched and shady
+vista of a lane, entered it, bent on new discoveries.  It led past one of the
+newer buildings, the library--as she read in a carved inscription over the
+door--plunged into shade again presently to emerge at a square farmhouse,
+ancient and weathered, with a great square chimney thrust out of the very
+middle of the ridge-pole,--a landmark left by one of the earliest of
+Silliston's settlers.  Presiding over it, embracing and protecting it, was a
+splendid tree.  The place was evidently in process of reconstruction and
+repair, the roof had been newly shingled, new frames, with old-fashioned, tiny
+panes had been put in the windows; a little garden was being laid out under the
+sheltering branches of the tree, and between the lane and the garden, half
+finished, was a fence of an original and pleasing design, consisting of pillars
+placed at intervals with upright pickets between, the pickets sawed in curves,
+making a line that drooped in the middle.  Janet did not perceive the workman
+engaged in building this fence until the sound of his hammer attracted her
+attention.  His back was bent, he was absorbed in his task.
+
+"Are there any stores near here?" she inquired.
+
+He straightened up.  "Why yes," he replied, "come to think of it, I have seen
+stores, I'm sure I have."
+
+Janet laughed; his expression, his manner of speech were so delightfully
+whimsical, so in keeping with the spirit of her day, and he seemed to accept
+her sudden appearance in the precise make-believe humour she could have wished.
+And yet she stood a little struck with timidity, puzzled by the contradictions
+he presented of youth and age, of shrewdness, experience and candour, of
+gentility and manual toil.  He must have been about thirty-five; he was
+hatless, and his hair, uncombed but not unkempt, was greying at the temples;
+his eyes--which she noticed particularly--were keen yet kindly, the irises
+delicately stencilled in a remarkable blue; his speech was colloquial yet
+cultivated, his workman's clothes belied his bearing.
+
+"Yes, there are stores, in the village," he went on, "but isn't it a holiday,
+or Sunday--perhaps--or something of the kind?"
+
+"It's Decoration Day," she reminded him, with deepening surprise.
+
+"So it is!  And all the storekeepers have gone on picnics in their automobiles,
+or else they're playing golf.  Nobody's working today."
+
+"But you--aren't you working?" she inquired.
+
+"Working?" he repeated.  "I suppose some people would call it work.  I--I
+hadn't thought of it in that way."
+
+"You mean--you like it," Janet was inspired to say.
+
+"Well, yes," he confessed.  "I suppose I do."
+
+Her cheeks dimpled.  If her wonder had increased, her embarrassment had flown,
+and he seemed suddenly an old acquaintance.  She had, however, profound doubts
+now of his being a carpenter.
+
+"Were you thinking of going shopping?" he asked, and at the very ludicrousness
+of the notion she laughed again.  She discovered a keen relish for this kind of
+humour, but it was new to her experience, and she could not cope with it.
+
+"Only to buy some crackers, or a sandwich," she replied, and blushed.
+
+"Oh," he said.  "Down in the village, on the corner where the cars stop, is a
+restaurant.  It's not as good as the Parker House in Boston, I believe, but
+they do have sandwiches, yes, and coffee.  At least they call it coffee."
+
+"Oh, thank you," she said.
+
+"You'd better wait till you try it," he warned her.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind, I don't want much."  And she was impelled to add: "It's such
+a beautiful day."
+
+"It's absurd to get hungry on such a day--absurd," he agreed.
+
+"Yes, it is," she laughed.  "I'm not really hungry, but I haven't time to get
+back to Hampton for dinner."  Suddenly she grew hot at the thought that he
+might suspect her of hinting.  "You see, I live in Hampton," she went on
+hurriedly, "I'm a stenographer there, in the Chippering Mill, and I was just
+out for a walk, and--I came farther than I intended."  She had made it worse.
+
+But he said, "Oh, you came from Hampton!" with an intonation of surprise, of
+incredulity even, that soothed and even amused while it did not deceive her.
+Not that the superior intelligence of which she had begun to suspect him had
+been put to any real test by the discovery of her home, and she was quite sure
+her modest suit of blue serge and her $2.99 pongee blouse proclaimed her as a
+working girl of the mill city.  "I've been to Hampton," he declared, just as
+though it were four thousand miles away instead of four.
+
+"But I've never been here before, to Silliston," she responded in the same
+spirit: and she added wistfully, "it must be nice to live in such a beautiful
+place as this!"
+
+"Yes, it is nice," he agreed.  "We have our troubles, too,--but it's nice."
+
+She ventured a second, appraising glance.  His head, which he carried a little
+flung back, his voice, his easy and confident bearing--all these contradicted
+the saw and the hammer, the flannel shirt, open at the neck, the khaki trousers
+still bearing the price tag.  And curiosity beginning to get the better of her,
+she was emboldened to pay a compliment to the fence.  If one had to work, it
+must be a pleasure to work on things pleasing to the eye--such was her
+inference.
+
+"Why, I'm glad you like it," he said heartily.  "I was just hoping some one
+would come along here and admire it.  Now--what colour would you paint it?"
+
+"Are you a painter, too?"
+
+"After a fashion.  I'm a sort of man of all work--I thought of painting it
+white, with the pillars green."
+
+"I think that would be pretty," she answered, judicially, after a moment's
+thought.  "What else can you do?"
+
+He appeared to be pondering his accomplishments.
+
+"Well, I can doctor trees," he said, pointing an efficient finger at the
+magnificent maple sheltering, like a guardian deity, the old farmhouse.  "I put
+in those patches."
+
+"They're cement," she exclaimed.  "I never heard of putting cement in trees."
+
+"They don't seem to mind."
+
+"Are the holes very deep?"
+
+"Pretty deep."
+
+"But I should think the tree would be dead."
+
+"Well, you see the life of a tree is right under the bark.  If you can keep the
+outer covering intact, the tree will live."
+
+"Why did you let the holes get so deep?"
+
+"I've just come here.  The house was like the tree the shingles all rotten, but
+the beams were sound.  Those beams were hewn out of the forest two hundred and
+fifty years ago."
+
+"Gracious!" said Janet.  "And how old is the tree?"
+
+"I should say about a hundred.  I suppose it wouldn't care to admit it."
+
+"How do you know?" she inquired.
+
+"Oh, I'm very intimate with trees.  I find out their secrets."
+
+"It's your house!" she exclaimed, somewhat appalled by the discovery.
+
+"Yes--yes it is," he answered, looking around at it and then in an
+indescribably comical manner down at his clothes.  His gesture, his expression
+implied that her mistake was a most natural one.
+
+"Excuse me, I thought--" she began, blushing hotly, yet wanting to laugh again.
+
+"I don't blame you--why shouldn't you?" he interrupted her.  "I haven't got
+used to it yet, and there is something amusing about--my owning a house.  When
+the parlour's finished I'll have to wear a stiff collar, I suppose, in order to
+live up to it."
+
+Her laughter broke forth, and she tried to imagine him in a stiff collar....
+But she was more perplexed than ever.  She stood balancing on one foot, poised
+for departure.
+
+"I ought to be going," she said, as though she had been paying him a formal
+visit.
+
+"Don't hurry," he protested cordially.  "Why hurry back to Hampton?"
+
+"I never want to go back!" she cried with a vehemence that caused him to
+contemplate her anew, suddenly revealing the intense, passionate quality which
+had so disturbed Mr. Ditmar.  She stood transformed.  "I hate it!" she
+declared.  "It's so ugly, I never want to see it again."
+
+"Yes, it is ugly," he confessed.  "Since you admit it, I don't mind saying so.
+But it's interesting, in a way."  Though his humorous moods had delighted her,
+she felt subtly flattered because he had grown more serious.
+
+"It is interesting," she agreed.  She was almost impelled to tell him why, in
+her excursions to the various quarters, she had found Hampton interesting, but
+a shyness born of respect for the store of knowledge she divined in him
+restrained her.  She was curious to know what this man saw in Hampton.  His
+opinion would be worth something.  Unlike her neighbours in Fillmore Street, he
+was not what her sister Lise would call "nutty"; he had an air of fine sanity,
+of freedom, of detachment,--though the word did not occur to her; he betrayed
+no bitter sense of injustice, and his beliefs were uncoloured by the obsession
+of a single panacea.  "Why do you think it's interesting?" she demanded.
+
+"Well, I'm always expecting to hear that it's blown up.  It reminds me of
+nitro-glycerine," he added, smiling.
+
+She repeated the word.
+
+"An explosive, you know--they put it in dynamite.  They say a man once made it
+by accident, and locked up his laboratory and ran home--and never went back."
+
+"I know what you mean!" she cried, her eyes alight with excitement.  "All those
+foreigners!  I've felt it that something would happen, some day, it frightened
+me, and yet I wished that something would happen.  Only, I never would have
+thought of--nitro-glycerine."
+
+She was unaware of the added interest in his regard.  But he answered lightly
+enough:--
+
+"Oh, not only the foreigners.  Human chemicals--you can't play with human
+chemicals any more than you can play with real ones--you've got to know
+something about chemistry."
+
+This remark was beyond her depth.
+
+"Who is playing with them?" she asked.
+
+"Everybody--no one in particular.  Nobody seems to know much about them, yet,"
+he replied, and seemed disinclined to pursue the subject.  A robin with a worm
+in its bill was hopping across the grass; he whistled softly, the bird stopped,
+cocking its head and regarding them.  Suddenly, in conflict with her desire to
+remain indefinitely talking with this strange man, Janet felt an intense
+impulse to leave.  She could bear the conversation no longer, she might burst
+into tears--such was the extraordinary effect he had produced on her.
+
+"I must go,--I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said.
+
+"Drop in again," he said, as he took her trembling hand ....  When she had
+walked a little way she looked back over her shoulder to see him leaning idly
+against the post, gazing after her, and waving his hammer in friendly fashion.
+
+For a while her feet fairly flew, and her heart beat tumultuously, keeping time
+with her racing thoughts.  She walked about the Common, seeing nothing, paying
+no attention to the passers-by, who glanced at her curiously.  But at length as
+she grew calmer the needs of a youthful and vigorous body became imperative,
+and realizing suddenly that she was tired and hungry, sought and found the
+little restaurant in the village below.  She journeyed back to Hampton
+pondering what this man had said to her; speculating, rather breathlessly,
+whether he had been impelled to conversation by a natural kindness and
+courtesy, or whether he really had discovered something in her worthy of
+addressing, as he implied.  Resentment burned in her breast, she became
+suddenly blinded by tears: she might never see him again, and if only she were
+"educated" she might know him, become his friend.  Even in this desire she was
+not conventional, and in the few moments of their contact he had developed
+rather than transformed what she meant by "education."  She thought of it not
+as knowledge reeking of books and schools, but as the acquirement of the
+freemasonry which he so evidently possessed, existence on terms of
+understanding, confidence, and freedom with nature; as having the world open up
+to one like a flower filled with colour and life.  She thought of the robin, of
+the tree whose secrets he had learned, of a mental range including even that
+medley of human beings amongst whom she lived.  And the fact that something of
+his meaning had eluded her grasp made her rebel all the more bitterly against
+the lack of a greater knowledge ....
+
+Often during the weeks that followed he dwelt in her mind as she sat at her
+desk and stared out across the river, and several times that summer she started
+to walk to Silliston.  But always she turned back.  Perhaps she feared to break
+the charm of that memory ....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Our American climate is notoriously capricious.  Even as Janet trudged homeward
+on that Memorial Day afternoon from her Cinderella-like adventure in Silliston
+the sun grew hot, the air lost its tonic, becoming moist and tepid, white
+clouds with dark edges were piled up in the western sky.  The automobiles of
+the holiday makers swarmed ceaselessly over the tarvia.  Valiantly as she
+strove to cling to her dream, remorseless reality was at work dragging her
+back, reclaiming her; excitement and physical exercise drained her vitality,
+her feet were sore, sadness invaded her as she came in view of the ragged
+outline of the city she had left so joyfully in the morning.  Summer, that most
+depressing of seasons in an environment of drab houses and grey pavements, was
+at hand, listless householders and their families were already, seeking refuge
+on front steps she passed on her way to Fillmore Street.
+
+It was about half past five when she arrived.  Lise, her waist removed, was
+seated in a rocking chair at the window overlooking the littered yards and the
+backs of the tenements on Rutger Street.  And Lise, despite the heaviness of
+the air, was dreaming.  Of such delicate texture was the fabric of Janet's
+dreams that not only sordid reality, but contact with other dreams of a
+different nature, such as her sister's, often sufficed to dissolve them.  She
+resented, for instance, the presence in the plush oval of Mr. Eustace
+Arlington; the movie star whose likeness had replaced Mr. Wiley's, and who had
+played the part of the western hero in "Leila of Hawtrey's."  With his burning
+eyes and sensual face betraying the puffiness that comes from over-indulgence,
+he was not Janet's ideal of a hero, western or otherwise.  And now Lise was
+holding a newspaper: not the Banner, whose provinciality she scorned, but a
+popular Boston sheet to be had for a cent, printed at ten in the morning and
+labelled "Three O'clock Edition," with huge red headlines stretched across the
+top of the page:--
+
+               "JURY FINDS IN MISS NEALY'S FAVOR."
+
+As Janet entered Lise looked up and exclaimed:--
+
+"Say, that Nealy girl's won out!"
+
+"Who is she?" Janet inquired listlessly.
+
+"You are from the country, all right," was her sister's rejoinder.  "I would
+have bet there wasn't a Reub in the state that wasn't wise to the Ferris breach
+of promise case, and here you blow in after the show's over and want to know
+who Nelly Nealy is.  If that doesn't beat the band!"
+
+"This woman sued a man named Ferris--is that it?"
+
+"A man named Ferris!" Lise repeated, with the air of being appalled by her
+sister's ignorance.  "I guess you never heard of Ferris, either--the biggest
+copper man in Boston.  He could buy Hampton, and never feel it, and they say
+his house in Brighton cost half a million dollars.  Nelly Nealy put her damages
+at one hundred and fifty thousand and stung him for seventy five.  I wish I'd
+been in court when that jury came back!  There's her picture."
+
+To Janet, especially in the mood of reaction in which she found herself that
+evening, Lise's intense excitement, passionate partisanship and approval of
+Miss Nealy were incomprehensible, repellent.  However, she took the sheet,
+gazing at the image of the lady who, recently an obscure
+stenographer, had suddenly leaped into fame and become a "headliner," the
+envied of thousands of working girls all over New England.  Miss Nealy, in
+spite of the "glare of publicity" she deplored, had borne up admirably under
+the strain, and evidently had been able to consume three meals a day and give
+some thought to her costumes.  Her smile under the picture hat was coquettish,
+if not bold.  The special article, signed by a lady reporter whose sympathies
+were by no means concealed and whose talents were given free rein, related how
+the white-haired mother had wept tears of joy; how Miss Nealy herself had been
+awhile too overcome to speak, and then had recovered sufficiently to express
+her gratitude to the twelve gentlemen who had vindicated the honour of American
+womanhood.  Mr. Ferris, she reiterated, was a brute; never as long as she lived
+would she be able to forget how she had loved and believed in him, and how,
+when at length she unwillingly became convinces of his perfidy, she had been
+"prostrated," unable to support her old mother.  She had not, naturally, yet
+decided how she would invest her fortune; as for going on the stage, that had
+been suggested, but she had made no plans.  "Scores of women sympathizers" had
+escorted her to a waiting automobile....
+
+Janet, impelled by the fascination akin to disgust, read thus far, and flinging
+the newspaper on the floor, began to tidy herself for supper.  But presently,
+when she heard Lise sigh, she could contain herself no longer.
+
+"I don't see how you can read such stuff as that," she exclaimed.  "It's--it's
+horrible."
+
+"Horrible?" Lise repeated.
+
+Janet swung round from the washbasin, her hands dripping.
+
+"Instead of getting seventy five thousand dollars she ought to be tarred and
+feathered.  She's nothing but a blackmailer."
+
+
+Lise, aroused from her visions, demanded vehemently "Ain't he a millionaire?"
+
+"What difference does that make?" Janet retorted.  "And you can't tell me she
+didn't know what she was up to all along--with that face."
+
+"I'd have sued him, all right," declared Lise, defiantly.
+
+"Then you'd be a blackmailer, too.  I'd sooner scrub floors, I'd sooner starve
+than do such a thing--take money for my affections.  In the first place, I'd
+have more pride, and in the second place, if I really loved a man, seventy five
+thousand or seventy five million dollars wouldn't help me any.  Where do you
+get such ideas?  Decent people don't have them."
+
+Janet turned to the basin again and began rubbing her face vigorously--ceasing
+for an instance to make sure of the identity of a sound reaching her ears
+despite the splashing of water.  Lise was sobbing.  Janet dried her face and
+hands, arranged her hair, and sat down on the windowsill; the scorn and anger,
+which had been so intense as completely to possess her, melting into a pity and
+contempt not unmixed with bewilderment.  Ordinarily Lise was hard, impervious
+to such reproaches, holding her own in the passionate quarrels that
+occasionally took place between them yet there were times, such as this, when
+her resistance broke down unexpectedly, and she lost all self control.  She
+rocked to and fro in the chair, her shoulders bowed, her face hidden in her
+hands.  Janet reached out and touched her.
+
+"Don't be silly," she began, rather sharply, "just because I said it was a
+disgrace to have such ideas.  Well, it is."
+
+"I'm not silly," said Lise.  "I'm sick of that job at the Bagatelle " sob--
+"there's nothing in it--I'm going to quit--I wish to God I was dead!  Standing
+on your feet all day till you're wore out for six dollars a week--what's there
+in it?"--sob--"With that guy Walters who walks the floor never lettin' up on
+you.  He come up to me yesterday and says, `I didn't know you was near sighted,
+Miss Bumpus' just because there was a customer Annie Hatch was too lazy to wait
+on"--sob--"That's his line of dope--thinks he's sarcastic--and he's sweet on
+Annie.  Tomorrow I'm going to tell him to go to hell.  I'm through I'm sick of
+it, I tell you"--sob--"I'd rather be dead than slave like that for six
+dollars."
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Janet.
+
+"I don't know--I don't care.  What's the difference? any place'd be better than
+this."  For awhile she continued to cry on a ridiculously high, though subdued,
+whining note, her breath catching at intervals.  A feeling of helplessness, of
+utter desolation crept over Janet; powerless to comfort herself, how could she
+comfort her sister?  She glanced around the familiar, sordid room, at the
+magazine pages against the faded wall-paper, at the littered bureau and the
+littered bed, over which Lise's clothes were flung.  It was hot and close even
+now, in summer it would be stifling.  Suddenly a flash of sympathy revealed to
+her a glimpse of the truth that Lise, too, after her own nature, sought beauty
+and freedom!  Never did she come as near comprehending Lise as in such moments
+as this, and when, on dark winter mornings, her sister clung to her, terrified
+by the siren.  Lise was a child, and the thought that she, Janet, was powerless
+to change her was a part of the tragic tenderness.  What would become of Lise?
+And what would become of her, Janet?...  So she clung, desperately, to her
+sister's hand until at last Lise roused herself, her hair awry, her face
+puckered and wet with tears and perspiration.
+
+"I can't stand it any more--I've just got to go away anywhere," she said, and
+the cry found an echo in Janet's heart....
+
+But the next morning Lise went back to the Bagatelle, and Janet to the mill....
+
+The fact that Lise's love affairs had not been prospering undoubtedly had
+something to do with the fit of depression into which she had fallen that
+evening.  A month or so before she had acquired another beau.  It was
+understood by Lise's friends and Lise's family, though not by the gentleman
+himself, that his position was only temporary or at most probationary; he had
+not even succeeded to the rights, title, and privileges of the late Mr. Wiley,
+though occupying a higher position in the social scale--being the agent of a
+patent lawn sprinkler with an office in Faber Street.
+
+"Stick to him and you'll wear diamonds--that's what he tries to put across,"
+was Lise's comment on Mr. Frear's method, and thus Janet gained the impression
+that her sister's feelings were not deeply involved.  "If I thought he'd make
+good with the sprinkler I might talk business.  But say, he's one of those
+ginks that's always tryin' to beat the bank.  He's never done a day's work in
+his life.  Last year he was passing around Foley's magazine, and before that he
+was with the race track that went out of business because the ministers got
+nutty over it.  Well, he may win out," she added reflectively, "those guys
+sometimes do put the game on the blink.  He sure is a good spender when the
+orders come in, with a line of talk to make you holler for mercy."
+
+Mr. Frear's "line of talk" came wholly, astonishingly, from one side of his
+mouth--the left side.  As a muscular feat it was a triumph.  A deaf person on
+his right side would not have known he was speaking.  The effect was secretive,
+extraordinarily confidential; enabling him to sell sprinklers, it ought to have
+helped him to make love, so distinctly personal was it, implying as it did that
+the individual addressed was alone of all the world worthy of consideration.
+Among his friends it was regarded as an accomplishment, but Lise was critical,
+especially since he did not look into one's eyes, but gazed off into space, as
+though he weren't talking at all.
+
+She had once inquired if the right side of his face was paralyzed.
+
+She permitted him to take her, however, to Gruber's Cafe, to the movies, and
+one or two select dance halls, and to Slattery's Riverside Park, where one
+evening she had encountered the rejected Mr. Wiley.
+
+"Say, he was sore!" she told Janet the next morning, relating the incident with
+relish, "for two cents he would have knocked Charlie over the ropes.  I guess
+he could do it, too, all right."
+
+Janet found it curious that Lise should display such vindictiveness toward Mr.
+Wiley, who was more sinned against than sinning.  She was moved to inquire
+after his welfare.
+
+"He's got one of them red motorcycles," said Lise.  "He was gay with it too--
+when we was waiting for the boulevard trolley he opened her up and went right
+between Charlie and me.  I had to laugh.  He's got a job over in Haverhill you
+can't hold that guy under water long."
+
+Apparently Lise had no regrets.  But her premonitions concerning Mr. Frear
+proved to be justified.  He did not "make good."  One morning the little office
+on Faber Street where the sprinklers were displayed was closed, Hampton knew
+him no more, and the police alone were sincerely regretful.  It seemed that of
+late he had been keeping all the money for the sprinklers, and spending a good
+deal of it on Lise.  At the time she accepted the affair with stoical
+pessimism, as one who has learned what to expect of the world, though her moral
+sense was not profoundly disturbed by the reflection that she had indulged in
+the delights of Slattery's and Gruber's and a Sunday at "the Beach" at the
+expense of the Cascade Sprinkler Company of Boston.  Mr. Frear inconsiderately
+neglected to prepare her for his departure, the news of which was conveyed to
+her in a singular manner, and by none other than Mr. Johnny Tiernan of the tin
+shop,--their conversation throwing some light, not only on Lise's
+sophistication, but on the admirable and intricate operation of Hampton's city
+government.  About five o'clock Lise was coming home along Fillmore Street
+after an uneventful, tedious and manless holiday spent in the company of Miss
+Schuler and other friends when she perceived Mr. Tiernan seated on his steps,
+grinning and waving a tattered palm-leaf fan.
+
+"The mercury is sure on the jump," he observed.  "You'd think it was July."
+
+And Lise agreed.
+
+"I suppose you'll be going to Tim Slattery's place tonight," he went on.  "It's
+the coolest spot this side of the Atlantic Ocean."
+
+There was, apparently, nothing cryptic in this remark, yet it is worth noting
+that Lise instantly became suspicious.
+
+"Why would I be going out there?" she inquired innocently, darting at him a
+dark, coquettish glance.
+
+Mr. Tiernan regarded her guilelessly, but there was admiration in his soul; not
+because of her unquestioned feminine attractions,--he being somewhat amazingly
+proof against such things,--but because it was conveyed to him in some
+unaccountable way that her suspicions were aroused.  The brain beneath that
+corkscrew hair was worthy of a Richelieu.  Mr. Tiernan's estimate of Miss Lise
+Bumpus, if he could have been induced to reveal it, would have been worth
+listening to.
+
+"And why wouldn't you?" he replied heartily.  "Don't I see all the pretty young
+ladies out there, including yourself, and you dancing with the Cascade man.
+Why is it you'll never give me a dance?"
+
+"Why is it you never ask me?" demanded Lise.
+
+"What chance have I got, against him?"
+
+"He don't own me," said Lise.
+
+Mr. Tiernan threw back his head, and laughed.
+
+"Well, if you're there to-night, tangoin' with him and I come up and says,
+`Miss Bumpus, the pleasure is mine,' I'm wondering what would happen."
+
+"I'm not going to Slattery's to-night," she declared having that instant
+arrived at this conclusion.
+
+"And where then?  I'll come along, if there's a chance for me."
+
+"Quit your kidding," Lise reproved him.
+
+Mr. Tiernan suddenly looked very solemn:
+
+"Kidding, is it?  Me kiddin' you?  Give me a chance, that's all I'm asking.
+Where will you be, now?"
+
+"Is Frear wanted?" she demanded.
+
+Mr. Tiernan's expression changed.  His nose seemed to become more pointed, his
+eyes to twinkle more merrily than ever.  He didn't take the trouble, now, to
+conceal his admiration.
+
+"Sure, Miss Bumpus," he said, "if you was a man, we'd have you on the force to-
+morrow."
+
+"What's he wanted for?"
+
+"Well," said Johnny, "a little matter of sprinklin'.  He's been sprinklin' his
+company's water without a license."
+
+She was silent a moment before she exclaimed:--
+
+"I ought to have been wise that he was a crook!"
+
+"Well," said Johnny consolingly, "there's others that ought to have been wise,
+too.  The Cascade people had no business takin' on a man that couldn't use but
+half of his mouth."
+
+This seemed to Lise a reflection on her judgment.  She proceeded to clear
+herself.
+
+"He was nothing to me.  He never gave me no rest.  He used to come 'round and
+pester me to go out with him--"
+
+"Sure!" interrupted Mr. Tiernan.  "Don't I know how it is with the likes of
+him!  A good time's a good time, and no harm in it.  But the point is " and
+here he cocked his nose--"the point is, where is he?  Where will he be
+tonight?"
+
+All at once Lise grew vehement, almost tearful.
+
+"I don't know--honest to God, I don't.  If I did I'd tell you.  Last night he
+said he might be out of town.  He didn't say where he was going."  She fumbled
+in her bag, drawing out an imitation lace handkerchief and pressing it to her
+eyes.
+
+"There now!" exclaimed Mr. Tiernan, soothingly.  "How would you know?  And he
+deceivin' you like he did the company--"
+
+"He didn't deceive me," cried Lise.
+
+"Listen," said Mr. Tiernan, who had risen and laid his hand on her arm.  "It's
+not young ladies like you that works and are self-respecting that any one would
+be troublin', and you the daughter of such a fine man as your father.  Run
+along, now, I won't be detaining you, Miss Bumpus, and you'll accept my
+apology.  I guess we'll never see him in Hampton again...."
+
+Some twenty minutes later he sauntered down the street, saluting acquaintances,
+and threading his way across the Common entered a grimy brick building where a
+huge policeman with an insignia on his arm was seated behind a desk.  Mr.
+Tiernan leaned on the desk, and reflectively lighted a Thomas-Jefferson-Five-
+Cent Cigar, Union Label, the excellencies of which were set forth on large
+signs above the "ten foot" buildings on Faber Street.
+
+"She don't know nothing, Mike," he remarked.  "I guess he got wise this
+morning."
+
+The sergeant nodded....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+To feel potential within one's self the capacity to live and yet to have no
+means of realizing this capacity is doubtless one of the least comfortable and
+agreeable of human experiences.  Such, as summer came on, was Janet's case.
+The memory of that visit to Silliston lingered in her mind, sometimes to flare
+up so vividly as to make her existence seem unbearable.  How wonderful, she
+thought, to be able to dwell in such a beautiful place, to have as friends and
+companions such amusing and intelligent people as the stranger with whom she
+had talked!  Were all the inhabitants of Silliston like him?  They must be,
+since it was a seat of learning.  Lise's cry, "I've just got to go away,
+anywhere," found an echo in Janet's soul.  Why shouldn't she go away?  She was
+capable of taking care of herself, she was a good stenographer, her salary had
+been raised twice in two years,--why should she allow consideration for her
+family to stand in the way of what she felt would be self realization?
+Unconsciously she was a true modern in that the virtues known as duty and self
+sacrifice did not appeal to her,--she got from them neither benefit nor
+satisfaction, she understood instinctively that they were impeding to
+growth.  Unlike Lise, she was able to see life as it is, she did not expect of
+it miracles, economic or matrimonial.  Nothing would happen unless she made it
+happen.  She was twenty-one, earning nine dollars a week, of which she now
+contributed five to the household,--her father, with characteristic
+incompetence, having taken out a larger insurance policy than he could
+reasonably carry.  Of the remaining four dollars she spent more than one on
+lunches, there were dresses and underclothing, shoes and stockings to buy, in
+spite of darning and mending; little treats with Eda that mounted up; and
+occasionally the dentist--for Janet would not neglect her teeth as Lise
+neglected hers.  She managed to save something, but it was very little.  And
+she was desperately unhappy when she contemplated the grey and monotonous vista
+of the years ahead, saw herself growing older and older, driven always by the
+stern necessity of accumulating a margin against possible disasters; little by
+little drying up, losing, by withering disuse, those rich faculties of
+enjoyment with which she was endowed, and which at once fascinated and
+frightened her.  Marriage, in such an environment, offered no solution;
+marriage meant dependence, from which her very nature revolted: and in her
+existence, drab and necessitous though it were, was still a remnant of freedom
+that marriage would compel her to surrender....
+
+One warm evening, oppressed by such reflections, she had started home when she
+remembered having left her bag in the office, and retraced her steps.  As she
+turned the corner of West Street, she saw, beside the canal and directly in
+front of the bridge, a new and smart-looking automobile, painted crimson and
+black, of the type known as a runabout, which she recognized as belonging to
+Mr. Ditmar.  Indeed, at that moment Mr. Ditmar himself was stepping off the end
+of the bridge and about to start the engine when, dropping the crank, he walked
+to the dashboard and apparently became absorbed in some mechanisms there.  Was
+it the glance cast in her direction that had caused him to delay his departure?
+Janet was seized by a sudden and rather absurd desire to retreat, but Canal
+Street being empty, such an action would appear eccentric, and she came slowly
+forward, pretending not to see her employer, ridiculing to herself the idea
+that he had noticed her.  Much to her annoyance, however, her embarrassment
+persisted, and she knew it was due to the memory of certain incidents, each in
+itself almost negligible, but cumulatively amounting to a suspicion that for
+some months he had been aware of her: many times when he had passed through the
+outer office she had felt his eyes upon her, had been impelled to look up from
+her work to surprise in them a certain glow to make her bow her head again in
+warm confusion.  Now, as she approached him, she was pleasantly but rather
+guiltily conscious of the more rapid beating of the blood that precedes an
+adventure, yet sufficiently self-possessed to note the becoming nature of the
+light flannel suit axed rather rakish Panama he had pushed back from his
+forehead.  It was not until she had almost passed him that he straightened up,
+lifted the Panama, tentatively, and not too far, startling her.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Bumpus," he said.  "I thought you had gone."
+
+"I left my bag in the office," she replied, with the outward calmness that
+rarely deserted her--the calmness, indeed, that had piqued him and was leading
+him on to rashness.
+
+"Oh," he said.  "Simmons will get it for you."  Simmons was the watchman who
+stood in the vestibule of the office entrance.
+
+"Thanks.  I can get it myself," she told him, and would have gone on had he not
+addressed her again.  "I was just starting out for a spin.  What do you think
+of the car?  It's good looking, isn't it?"  He stood off and surveyed it,
+laughing a little, and in his laugh she detected a note apologetic, at variance
+with the conception she had formed of his character, though not alien, indeed,
+to the dust-coloured vigour of the man.  She scarcely recognized Ditmar as he
+stood there, yet he excited her, she felt from him an undercurrent of something
+that caused her inwardly to tremble.  "See how the lines are carried through."
+He indicated this by a wave of his hand, but his eyes were now on her.
+
+"It is pretty," she agreed.
+
+In contrast to the defensive tactics which other ladies of his acquaintance had
+adopted, tactics of a patently coy and coquettish nature, this self-collected
+manner was new and spicy, challenging to powers never as yet fully exerted
+while beneath her manner he felt throbbing that rare and dangerous thing in
+women, a temperament, for which men have given their souls.  This conviction of
+her possession of a temperament,--he could not have defined the word, emotional
+rather than intellectual, produced the apologetic attitude she was quick to
+sense.  He had never been, at least during his maturity, at a loss with the
+other sex, and he found the experience delicious.
+
+"You like pretty things, I'm sure of that," he hazarded.  But she did not ask
+him how he knew, she simply assented.  He raised the hood, revealing the
+engine.  "Isn't that pretty?  See how nicely everything is adjusted in that
+little space to do the particular work for which it is designed."
+
+Thus appealed to, she came forward and stopped, still standing off a little
+way, but near enough to see, gazing at the shining copper caps on the
+cylinders, at the bright rods and gears.
+
+"It looks intricate," said Mr. Ditmar, "but really it's very simple.  The
+gasoline comes in here from the tank behind--this is called the carburetor, it
+has a jet to vaporize the gasoline, and the vapour is sucked into each of these
+cylinders in turn when the piston moves--like this."  He sought to explain the
+action of the piston.  "That compresses it, and then a tiny electric spark
+comes just at the right moment to explode it, and the explosion sends the
+piston down again, and turns the shaft.  Well, all four cylinders have an
+explosion one right after another, and that keeps the shaft going."  Whereupon
+the most important personage in Hampton, the head of the great Chippering Mill
+proceeded, for the benefit of a humble assistant stenographer, to remove the
+floor boards behind the dash.  "There's the shaft, come here and look at it."
+She obeyed, standing beside him, almost touching him, his arm, indeed, brushing
+her sleeve, and into his voice crept a tremor.  "The shaft turns the rear
+wheels by means of a gear at right angles on the axle, and the rear wheels
+drive the car.  Do you see?"
+
+"Yes," she answered faintly, honesty compelling her to add: "a little."
+
+He was looking, now, not at the machinery, but intently at her, and she could
+feel the blood flooding into her cheeks and temples.  She was even compelled
+for an instant to return his glance, and from his eyes into hers leaped a flame
+that ran scorching through her body.  Then she knew with conviction that the
+explanation of the automobile had been an excuse; she had comprehended almost
+nothing of it, but she had been impressed by the facility with which he
+described it, by his evident mastery over it.  She had noticed his hands, how
+thick his fingers were and close together; yet how deftly he had used them,
+without smearing the cuffs of his silk shirt or the sleeves of his coat with
+the oil that glistened everywhere.
+
+"I like machinery," he told her as he replaced the boards.  "I like to take
+care of it myself."
+
+"It must be interesting," she assented, aware of the inadequacy of the remark,
+and resenting in herself an inarticulateness seemingly imposed by inhibition
+connected with his nearness.  Fascination and antagonism were struggling within
+her.  Her desire to get away grew desperate.
+
+"Thank you for showing it to me."  With an effort of will she moved toward the
+bridge, but was impelled by a consciousness of the abruptness of her departure
+to look back at him once--and smile, to experience again the thrill of the
+current he sped after her.  By lifting his hat, a little higher, a little more
+confidently than in the first instance, he made her leaving seem more gracious,
+the act somehow conveying an acknowledgment on his part that their relationship
+had changed.
+
+Once across the bridge and in the mill, she fairly ran up the stairs and into
+the empty office, to perceive her bag lying on the desk where she had left it,
+and sat down for a few minutes beside the window, her heart pounding in her
+breast as though she had barely escaped an accident threatening her with
+physical annihilation.  Something had happened to her at last!  But what did it
+mean?  Where would it lead?  Her fear, her antagonism, of which she was still
+conscious, her resentment that Ditmar had thus surreptitiously chosen to
+approach her in a moment when they were unobserved were mingled with a
+throbbing exultation in that he had noticed her, that there was something in
+her to attract him in that way, to make his voice thicker and his smile
+apologetic when he spoke to her.  Of that "something-in-her" she had been aware
+before, but never had it been so unmistakably recognized and beckoned to from
+without.  She was at once terrified, excited--and flattered.
+
+At length, growing calmer, she made her way out of the building.  When she
+reached the vestibule she had a moment of sharp apprehension, of paradoxical
+hope, that Ditmar might still be there, awaiting her.  But he had gone....
+
+In spite of her efforts to dismiss the matter from her mind, to persuade
+herself there had been no significance in the encounter, when she was seated at
+her typewriter the next morning she experienced a renewal of the palpitation of
+the evening before, and at the sound of every step in the corridor she started.
+Of this tendency she was profoundly ashamed.  And when at last Ditmar arrived,
+though the blood rose to her temples, she kept her eyes fixed on the keys.  He
+went quickly into his room: she was convinced he had not so much as glanced at
+her....  As the days went by, however, she was annoyed by the discovery that
+his continued ignoring of her presence brought more resentment than relief, she
+detected in it a deliberation implying between them a guilty secret: she hated
+secrecy, though secrecy contained a thrill.  Then, one morning when she was
+alone in the office with young Caldwell, who was absorbed in some reports,
+Ditmar entered unexpectedly and looked her full in the eyes, surprising her
+into answering his glance before she could turn away, hating herself and hating
+him.  Hate, she determined, was her prevailing sentiment in regard to Mr.
+Ditmar.
+
+The following Monday Miss Ottway overtook her, at noon, on the stairs.
+
+"Janet, I wanted to speak to you, to tell you I'm leaving," she said.
+
+"Leaving!"  repeated Janet, who had regarded Miss Ottway as a fixture.
+
+"I'm going to Boston," Miss Ottway explained, in her deep, musical voice.
+"I've always wanted to go, I have an unmarried sister there of whom I'm very
+fond, and Mr. Ditmar knows that.  He's got me a place with the Treasurer, Mr.
+Semple."
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry you're going, though of course I'm glad for you," Janet said
+sincerely, for she liked and respected Miss Ottway, and was conscious in the
+older woman of a certain kindly interest.
+
+"Janet, I've recommended you to Mr. Ditmar for my place."
+
+"Oh!" cried Janet, faintly.
+
+"It was he who asked about you, he thinks you are reliable and quick and
+clever, and I was very glad to say a good word for you, my dear, since I could
+honestly do so."  Miss Ottway drew Janet's arm through hers and patted it
+affectionately.  "Of course you'll have to expect some jealousy, there are
+older women in the other offices who will think they ought to have the place,
+but if you attend to your own affairs, as you always have done, there won't be
+any trouble."
+
+"Oh, I won't take the place, I can't!"Janet cried, so passionately that Miss
+Ottway looked at her in surprise.  "I'm awfully grateful to you," she added,
+flushing crimson, "I--I'm afraid I'm not equal to it."
+
+"Nonsense," said the other with decision.  "You'd be very foolish not to try
+it.  You won't get as much as I do, at first, at any rate, but a little more
+money won't be unwelcome, I guess.  Mr. Ditmar will speak to you this
+afternoon.  I leave on Saturday.  I'm real glad to do you a good turn, Janet,
+and I know you'll get along," Miss Ottway added impulsively as they parted at
+the corner of Faber Street.  "I've always thought a good deal of you."
+
+For awhile Janet stood still, staring after the sturdy figure of her friend,
+heedless of the noonday crowd that bumped her.  Then she went to Grady's Quick
+Lunch Counter and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk, which she consumed
+slowly, profoundly sunk in thought.  Presently Eda Rawle arrived, and noticing
+her preoccupation, inquired what was the matter.
+
+"Nothing," said Janet....
+
+At two o'clock, when Ditmar returned to the office, he called Miss Ottway, who
+presently came out to summon Janet to his presence.  Fresh, immaculate, yet
+virile in his light suit and silk shirt with red stripes, he was seated at his
+desk engaged in turning over some papers in a drawer.  He kept her waiting a
+moment, and then said, with apparent casualness:--
+
+"Is that you, Miss Bumpus?  Would you mind closing the door?"
+
+Janet obeyed, and again stood before him.  He looked up.  A suggestion of
+tenseness in her pose betraying an inner attitude of alertness, of defiance,
+conveyed to him sharply and deliciously once more the panther-like impression
+he had received when first, as a woman, she had come to his notice.  The
+renewed and heightened perception of this feral quality in her aroused a sense
+of danger by no means unpleasurable, though warning him that he was about to
+take an unprecedented step, being drawn beyond the limits of caution he had
+previously set for himself in divorcing business and sex.  Though he was by no
+means self-convinced of an intention to push the adventure, preferring to leave
+its possibilities open, he strove in voice and manner to be business-like; and
+instinct, perhaps, whispered that she might take alarm.
+
+"Sit down, Miss Bumpus," he said pleasantly, as he closed the drawer.
+
+She seated herself on an office chair.
+
+"Do you like your work here?"  he inquired.
+
+"No," said Janet.
+
+"Why not?"  he demanded, staring at her.
+
+"Why should I?"  she retorted.
+
+"Well--what's the trouble with it?  It isn't as hard as it would be in some
+other places, is it?"
+
+"I'm not saying anything against the place."
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"You asked me if I liked my work.  I don't."
+
+"Then why do you do it?" he demanded.
+
+"To live," she replied.
+
+He smiled, but his gesture as he stroked his moustache implied a slight
+annoyance at her composure.  He found it difficult with this dark, self-
+contained young woman to sustain the role of benefactor.
+
+"What kind of work would you like to do?" he demanded.
+
+"I don't know.  I haven't got the choice, anyway," she said.
+
+He observed that she did her work well, to which she made no answer.  She
+refused to help him, although Miss Ottway must have warned her.  She acted as
+though she were conferring the favour.  And yet, clearing his throat, he was
+impelled to say:--
+
+"Miss Ottway's leaving me, she's going into the Boston office with Mr. Semple,
+the treasurer of the corporation.  I shall miss her, she's an able and reliable
+woman, and she knows my ways."  He paused, fingering his paper knife.  "The
+fact is, Miss Bumpus, she's spoken highly of you, she tells me you're quick and
+accurate and painstaking--I've noticed that for myself.  She seems to think you
+could do her work, and recommends that I give you a trial.  You understand, of
+course, that the position is in a way confidential, and that you could not
+expect at first, at any rate, the salary Miss Ottway has had, but I'm willing
+to offer you fourteen dollars a week to begin with, and afterwards, if we get
+along together, to give you more.  What do you say?"
+
+"I'd like to try it, Mr. Ditmar," Janet said, and added nothing, no word of
+gratitude or of appreciation to that consent.
+
+"Very well then," he replied, "that's settled.  Miss Ottway will explain things
+to you, and tell you about my peculiarities.  And when she goes you can take
+her desk, by the window nearest my door."
+
+Ditmar sat idle for some minutes after she had gone, staring through the open
+doorway into the outer office....
+
+To Ditmar she had given no evidence of the storm his offer had created in her
+breast, and it was characteristic also that she waited until supper was nearly
+over to inform her family, making the announcement in a matter-of-fact tone,
+just as though it were not the unique piece of good fortune that had come to
+the Bumpuses since Edward had been eliminated from the mercantile establishment
+at Dolton.  The news was received with something like consternation.  For the
+moment Hannah was incapable of speech, and her hand trembled as she resumed the
+cutting of the pie: but hope surged within her despite her effort to keep it
+down, her determination to remain true to the fatalism from which she had
+paradoxically derived so much comfort.  The effect on Edward, while somewhat
+less violent, was temporarily to take away his appetite.  Hope, to flower in
+him, needed but little watering.  Great was his faith in the Bumpus blood, and
+secretly he had always regarded his eldest daughter as the chosen vessel for
+their redemption.
+
+"Well, I swan!" he exclaimed, staring at her in admiration and neglecting his
+pie, "I've always thought you had it in you to get on, Janet.  I guess I've
+told you you've always put me in mind of Eliza Bumpus--the one that held out
+against the Indians till her husband came back with the neighbours.  I was just
+reading about her again the other night."
+
+"Yes, you've told us, Edward," said Hannah.
+
+"She had gumption," he went on, undismayed.  "And from what I can gather of her
+looks I calculate you favour her--she was dark and not so very tall--not so
+tall as you, I guess.  So you're goin'" (he pronounced it very slowly) "you're
+goin' to be Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer!  He's a smart man, Mr. Ditmar,
+he's a good man, too.  All you've got to do is to behave right by him.  He
+always speaks to me when he passes by the gate.  I was sorry for him when his
+wife died--a young woman, too.  And he's never married again!  Well, I swan!"
+
+"You'd better quit swanning," exclaimed Hannah.  "And what's Mr. Ditmar's
+goodness got to do with it?  He's found-out Janet has sense, she's willing and
+hard working, he won't" (pronounced want) "he won't be the loser by it, and
+he's not giving her what he gave Miss Ottway.  It's just like you, thinking
+he's doing her a good turn."
+
+"I'm not saying Janet isn't smart," he protested, "but I know it's hard to get
+work with so many folks after every job."
+
+"Maybe it ain't so hard when you've got some get-up and go," Hannah retorted
+rather cruelly.  It was thus characteristically and with unintentional
+sharpness she expressed her maternal pride by a reflection not only upon
+Edward, but Lise also.  Janet had grown warm at the mention of Ditmar's name.
+
+"It was Miss Ottway who recommended me," she said, glancing at her sister, who
+during this conversation had sat in silence.  Lise's expression, normally
+suggestive of a discontent not unbecoming to her type, had grown almost sullen.
+Hannah's brisk gathering up of the dishes was suddenly arrested.
+
+"Lise, why don't you say something to your sister?  Ain't you glad she's got
+the place?"
+
+"Sure, I'm glad," said Lise, and began to unscrew the top of the salt shaker.
+"I don't see why I couldn't get a raise, too.  I work just as hard as she
+does."
+
+Edward, who had never got a "raise" in his life, was smitten with compunction
+and sympathy.
+
+"Give 'em time, Lise," he said consolingly.  "You ain't so old as Janet."
+
+"Time!" she cried, flaring up and suddenly losing her control.  "I've got a
+picture of Waiters giving me a raise I know the girls that get raises from
+him."
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Hannah declared.  "There--you've spilled
+the salt!"
+
+But Lise, suddenly bursting into tears, got up and left the room.  Edward
+picked up the Banner and pretended to read it, while Janet collected the salt
+and put it back into the shaker.  Hannah, gathering up the rest of the dishes,
+disappeared into the kitchen, but presently returned, as though she had
+forgotten something.
+
+"Hadn't you better go after her?" she said to Janet.
+
+"I'm afraid it won't be any use.  She's got sort of queer, lately--she thinks
+they're down on her."
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke so sharp.  But then--" Hannah shook her head, and her
+sentence remained unfinished.
+
+Janet sought her sister, but returned after a brief interval, with the news
+that Lise had gone out.
+
+One of the delights of friendship, as is well known, is the exchange of
+confidences of joy or sorrow, but there was, in Janet's promotion, something
+intensely personal to increase her natural reserve.  Her feelings toward Ditmar
+were so mingled as to defy analysis, and several days went by before she could
+bring herself to inform Eda Rawle of the new business relationship in which she
+stood to the agent of the Chippering Mill.  The sky was still bright as they
+walked out Warren Street after supper, Eda bewailing the trials of the day just
+ended: Mr. Frye, the cashier of the bank, had had one of his cantankerous fits,
+had found fault with her punctuation, nothing she had done had pleased him.
+But presently, when they had come to what the Banner called the "residential
+district," she was cheered by the sight of the green lawns, the flowerbeds and
+shrubbery, the mansions of those inhabitants of Hampton unfamiliar with
+boardinghouses and tenements.  Before one of these she paused, retaining Janet
+by the arm, exclaiming wistfully:
+
+"Wouldn't you like to live there?  That belongs to your boss."
+
+Janet, who had been dreaming as she gazed at the fagade of rough stucco that
+once had sufficed to fill the ambitions of the late Mrs. Ditmar, recognized it
+as soon as Eda spoke, and dragged her friend hastily, almost roughly along the
+sidewalk until they had reached the end of the block.  Janet was red.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Eda, as soon as she had recovered from her
+surprise.
+
+"Nothing," said Janet.  "Only--I'm in his office."
+
+"But what of it?  You've got a right to look at his house, haven't you?"
+
+"Why yes,--a right," Janet assented.  Knowing Eda's ambitions for her were not
+those of a business career, she was in terror lest her friend should scent a
+romance, and for this reason she had never spoken of the symptoms Ditmar had
+betrayed.  She attempted to convey to Eda the doubtful taste of staring point-
+blank at the house of one's employer, especially when he might be concealed
+behind a curtain.
+
+"You see," she added, "Miss Ottway's recommended me for her place--she's going
+away."
+
+"Janet!"  cried Eda.  "Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Well," said Janet guiltily, "it's only a trial.  I don't know whether he'll
+keep me or not."
+
+"Of course he'll keep you," said Eda, warmly.  "If that isn't just like you,
+not saying a word about it.  Gee, if I'd had a raise like that I just couldn't
+wait to tell you.  But then, I'm not smart like you."
+
+"Don't be silly," said Janet, out of humour with herself, and annoyed because
+she could not then appreciate Eda's generosity.
+
+"We've just got to celebrate!" declared Eda, who had the gift, which Janet
+lacked, of taking her joys vicariously; and her romantic and somewhat medieval
+proclivities would permit no such momentous occasion to pass without an
+appropriate festal symbol.  "We'll have a spree on Saturday--the circus is
+coming then."
+
+"It'll be my spree," insisted Janet, her heart warming.  "I've got the
+raise...."
+
+On Saturday, accordingly, they met at Grady's for lunch, Eda attired in her
+best blouse of pale blue, and when they emerged from the restaurant, despite
+the torrid heat, she beheld Faber Street as in holiday garb as they made their
+way to the cool recesses of Winterhalter's to complete the feast.  That
+glorified drug-store with the five bays included in its manifold functions a
+department rivalling Delmonico's, with electric fans and marble-topped tables
+and white-clad waiters who took one's order and filled it at the soda fountain.
+It mattered little to Eda that the young man awaiting their commands had
+pimples and long hair and grinned affectionately as he greeted them.
+
+"Hello, girls!" he said.  "What strikes you to-day?"
+
+"Me for a raspberry nut sundae," announced Eda, and Janet, being unable to
+imagine any more delectable confection, assented.  The penetrating odour
+peculiar to drugstores, dominated by menthol and some unnamable but ancient
+remedy for catarrh, was powerless to interfere with their enjoyment.
+
+The circus began at two.  Rather than cling to the straps of a crowded car they
+chose to walk, following the familiar route of the trolley past the car barns
+and the base-ball park to the bare field under the seared face of Torrey's
+Hill, where circuses were wont to settle.  A sirocco-like breeze from the
+southwest whirled into eddies the clouds of germladen dust stirred up by the
+automobiles, blowing their skirts against their legs, and sometimes they were
+forced to turn, clinging to their hats, confused and giggling, conscious of
+male glances.  The crowd, increasing as they proceeded, was in holiday mood;
+young men with a newly-washed aspect, in Faber Street suits, chaffed
+boisterously groups of girls, who retorted with shrill cries and shrieks of
+laughter; amorous couples strolled, arm in arm, oblivious, as though the place
+were as empty as Eden; lady-killers with exaggerated square shoulders, wearing
+bright neckties, their predatory instincts alert, hovered about in eager search
+of adventure.  There were men-killers, too, usually to be found in pairs, in
+startling costumes they had been persuaded were the latest Paris models,--
+imitations of French cocottes in Hampton, proof of the smallness of our modern
+world.  Eda regarded them superciliously.
+
+"They'd like you to think they'd never been near a loom or a bobbin!"  she
+exclaimed.
+
+In addition to these more conspicuous elements, the crowd contained sober
+operatives of the skilled sort possessed of sufficient means to bring hither
+their families, including the baby; there were section-hands and foremen,
+slashers, mule spinners, beamers, French-Canadians, Irish, Scotch, Welsh and
+English, Germans, with only an occasional Italian, Lithuanian, or Jew.  Peanut
+and popcorn men, venders of tamales and Chile-con-carne hoarsely shouted their
+wares, while from afar could be heard the muffled booming of a band.  Janet's
+heart beat faster.  She regarded with a tinge of awe the vast expanse of tent
+that rose before her eyes, the wind sending ripples along the heavy canvas from
+circumference to tent pole.  She bought the tickets; they entered the circular
+enclosure where the animals were kept; where the strong beams of the sun, in
+trying to force their way through the canvas roof, created an unnatural,
+jaundiced twilight, the weirdness of which was somehow enhanced by the hoarse,
+amazingly penetrating growls of beasts.  Suddenly a lion near them raised a
+shaggy head, emitting a series of undulating, soul-shaking roars.
+
+"Ah, what's eatin' you?" demanded a thick-necked youth, pretending not to be
+awestricken by this demonstration.
+
+"Suppose he'd get out!" cried Eda, drawing Janet away.
+
+"I wouldn't let him hurt you, dearie," the young man assured her.
+
+"You!" she retorted contemptuously, but grinned in spite of herself, showing
+her gums.
+
+The vague feeling of terror inspired by this tent was a part of its
+fascination, for it seemed pregnant with potential tragedies suggested by the
+juxtaposition of helpless babies and wild beasts, the babies crying or staring
+in blank amazement at padding tigers whose phosphorescent eyes never left these
+morsels beyond the bars.  The two girls wandered about, their arms closely
+locked, but the strange atmosphere, the roars of the beasts, the ineffable,
+pungent odour of the circus, of sawdust mingled with the effluvia of animals,
+had aroused an excitement that was slow in subsiding.  Some time elapsed before
+they were capable of taking a normal interest in the various exhibits.
+
+"`Adjutant Bird,'" Janet read presently from a legend on one of the
+compartments of a cage devoted to birds, and surveying the somewhat dissolute
+occupant.  "Why, he's just like one of those tall mashers who stay at the
+Wilmot and stand on the sidewalk,--travelling men, you know."
+
+"Say-isn't he?" Eda agreed.  "Isn't he pleased with himself, and his feet
+crossed!"
+
+"And see this one, Eda--he's a 'Harpy Eagle.'  There's somebody we know looks
+just like that.  Wait a minute--I'll tell you--it's the woman who sits in the
+cashier's cage at Grady's."
+
+"If it sure isn't!" said Eda.
+
+"She has the same fluffy, light hair--hairpins can't keep it down, and she
+looks at you in that same sort of surprised way with her head on one side when
+you hand in your check."
+
+"Why, it's true to the life!" cried Eda enthusiastically.  "She thinks she's
+got all the men cinched,--she does and she's forty if she's a day."
+
+These comparisons brought them to a pitch of risible enjoyment amply sustained
+by the spectacle in the monkey cage, to which presently they turned.  A
+chimpanzee, with a solicitation more than human, was solemnly searching a
+friend for fleas in the midst of a pandemonium of chattering and screeching and
+chasing, of rattling of bars and trapezes carried on by their companions.
+
+"Well, young ladies," said a voice, "come to pay a call on your relations--have
+ye?"
+
+Eda giggled hysterically.  An elderly man was standing beside them.  He was
+shabbily dressed, his own features were wizened, almost simian, and by his
+friendly and fatuous smile Janet recognized one of the harmless obsessed in
+which Hampton abounded.
+
+"Relations!" Eda exclaimed.
+
+"You and me, yes, and her," he answered, looking at Janet, though at first he
+had apparently entertained some doubt as to this inclusion, "we're all
+descended from them."  His gesture triumphantly indicated the denizens of the
+cage.
+
+"What are you giving us?" said Eda.
+
+"Ain't you never read Darwin?"  he demanded.  "If you had, you'd know they're
+our ancestors, you'd know we came from them instead of Adam and Eve.  That
+there's a fable."
+
+"I'll never believe I came from them," cried Eda, vehement in her disgust.
+
+But Janet laughed.  "What's the difference?  Some of us aren't any better than
+monkeys, anyway."
+
+"That's so," said the man approvingly.  "That's so."  He wanted to continue the
+conversation, but they left him rather ruthlessly.  And when, from the entrance
+to the performance tent, they glanced back over their shoulders, he was still
+gazing at his cousins behind the bars, seemingly deriving an acute pleasure
+from his consciousness of the connection....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Modern business, by reason of the mingling of the sexes it involves, for the
+playwright and the novelist and the sociologist is full of interesting and
+dramatic situations, and in it may be studied, undoubtedly, one phase of the
+evolution tending to transform if not disintegrate certain institutions
+hitherto the corner-stones of society.  Our stage is set.  A young woman,
+conscious of ability, owes her promotion primarily to certain dynamic feminine
+qualities with which she is endowed.  And though she may make an elaborate
+pretense of ignoring the fact, in her heart she knows and resents it, while at
+the same time, paradoxically, she gets a thrill from it,--a sustaining and
+inspiring thrill of power!  On its face it is a business arrangement;
+secretly,--attempt to repudiate this as one may,--it is tinged with the colours
+of high adventure.  When Janet entered into the intimate relationship with Mr.
+Claude Ditmar necessitated by her new duties as his private stenographer her
+attitude, slightly defiant, was the irreproachable one of a strict attention to
+duty.  All unconsciously she was a true daughter of the twentieth century, and
+probably a feminist at heart, which is to say that her conduct was determined
+by no preconceived or handed-down notions of what was proper and lady-like.
+For feminism, in a sense, is a return to atavism, and sex antagonism and sex
+attraction are functions of the same thing.  There were moments when she
+believed herself to hate Mr. Ditmar, when she treated him with an aloofness, an
+impersonality unsurpassed; moments when he paused in his dictation to stare at
+her in astonishment.  He, who flattered himself that he understood women!
+
+She would show him!--such was her dominating determination.  Her promotion
+assumed the guise of a challenge, of a gauntlet flung down at the feet of her
+sex.  In a certain way, an insult, though incredibly stimulating.  If he
+flattered himself that he had done her a favour, if he entertained the notion
+that he could presently take advantage of the contact with her now achieved to
+make unbusinesslike advances--well, he would find out.  He had proclaimed his
+desire for an able assistant in Miss Ottway's place--he would get one, and
+nothing more.  She watched narrowly, a l'affut, as the French say, for any
+signs of sentiment, and indeed this awareness of her being on guard may have
+had some influence on Mr. Ditmar's own attitude, likewise irreproachable....  A
+rather anaemic young woman, a Miss Annie James, was hired for Janet's old
+place.
+
+In spite of this aloofness and alertness, for the first time in her life Janet
+felt the exuberance of being in touch with affairs of import.  Hitherto the
+mill had been merely a greedy monster claiming her freedom and draining her
+energies in tasks routine, such as the copying of meaningless documents and
+rows of figures; now, supplied with stimulus and a motive, the Corporation
+began to take on significance, and she flung herself into the work with an
+ardour hitherto unknown, determined to make herself so valuable to Ditmar that
+the time would come when he could not do without her.  She strove to memorize
+certain names and addresses, lest time be lost in looking them up, to
+familiarize herself with the ordinary run of his correspondence, to recall what
+letters were to be marked "personal," to anticipate matters of routine, in
+order that he might not have the tedium of repeating instructions; she acquired
+the faculty of keeping his engagements in her head; she came early to the
+office, remaining after hours, going through the files, becoming familiar with
+his system; and she learned to sort out his correspondence, sifting the
+important from the unimportant, to protect him, more and more, from numerous
+visitors who called only to waste his time.  Her instinct for the detection of
+book-agents, no matter how brisk and businesslike they might appear, was
+unerring--she remembered faces and the names belonging to them: an individual
+once observed to be persona non grata never succeeded in passing her twice.  On
+one occasion Ditmar came out of his office to see the back of one of these
+visitors disappearing into the corridor.
+
+"Who was that?" he asked.
+
+"His name is McCalla," she said.  "I thought you didn't want to be bothered."
+
+"But how in thunder did you get rid of him?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh, I just wouldn't let him in," she replied demurely.
+
+And Ditmar went away, wondering....  Thus she gtudied him, without permitting
+him to suspect it, learning his idiosyncrasies, his attitude toward all those
+with whom daily he came in contact, only to find herself approving.  She was
+forced to admit that he was a judge of men, compelled to admire his adroitness
+in dealing with them.  He could be democratic or autocratic as occasion
+demanded; he knew when to yield, and when to remain inflexible.  One morning,
+for instance, there arrived from New York a dapper salesman whose jauntily tied
+bow, whose thin hair--carefully parted to conceal an incipient baldness--whose
+wary and slightly weary eyes all impressively suggested the metropolitan
+atmosphere of high pressure and sophistication from which he had emerged.  He
+had a machine to sell; an amazing machine, endowed with human intelligence and
+more than human infallibility; for when it made a mistake it stopped.  It was
+designed for the express purpose of eliminating from the payroll the skilled
+and sharp-eyed women who are known as "drawers-in," who sit all day long under
+a north light patiently threading the ends of the warp through the heddles of
+the loom harness.  Janet's imagination was gradually fired as she listened to
+the visitor's eloquence; and the textile industry, which hitherto had seemed to
+her uninteresting and sordid, took on the colours of romance.
+
+"Now I've made up my mind we'll place one with you, Mr. Ditmar," the salesman
+concluded.  "I don't object to telling you we'd rather have one in the
+Chippering than in any mill in New England."
+
+Janet was surprised, almost shocked to see Ditmar shake his head, yet she felt
+a certain reluctant admiration because he had not been swayed by blandishments.
+At such moments, when he was bent on refusing a request, he seemed physically
+to acquire massiveness,--and he had a dogged way of chewing his cigar.
+
+"I don't want it, yet," he replied, "not until you improve it."  And she was
+impressed by the fact that he seemed to know as much about the machine as the
+salesman himself.  In spite of protests, denials, appeals, he remained firm.
+"When you get rid of the defects I've mentioned come back, Mr. Hicks--but don't
+come back until then."
+
+And Mr. Hicks departed, discomfited....
+
+Ditmar knew what he wanted.  Of the mill he was the absolute master, familiar
+with every process, carrying constantly in his mind how many spindles, how many
+looms were at work; and if anything untoward happened, becoming aware of it by
+what seemed to Janet a subconscious process, sending for the superintendent of
+the department: for Mr. Orcutt, perhaps, whose office was across the hall--a
+tall, lean, spectacled man of fifty who looked like a schoolmaster.
+
+"Orcutt, what's the matter with the opener in Cooney's room?"
+
+"Why, the blower's out of order."
+
+"Well, whose fault is it?"....
+
+He knew every watchman and foreman in the mill, and many of the second hands.
+The old workers, men and women who had been in the Chippering employ through
+good and bad times for years, had a place in his affections, but toward the
+labour force in general his attitude was impersonal.  The mill had to be run,
+and people to be got to run it.  With him, first and last and always it was the
+mill, and little by little what had been for Janet a heterogeneous mass of
+machinery and human beings became unified and personified in Claude Ditmar.  It
+was odd how the essence and quality of that great building had changed for her;
+how the very roaring of the looms, as she drew near the canal in the mornings,
+had ceased to be sinister and depressing, but bore now a burden like a great
+battle song to excite and inspire, to remind her that she had been snatched as
+by a miracle from the commonplace.  And all this was a function of Ditmar.
+
+Life had become portentous.  And she was troubled by no qualms of logic, but
+gloried, womanlike, in her lack of it.  She did not ask herself why she had
+deliberately enlarged upon Miss Ottway's duties, invaded debatable ground in
+part inevitably personal, flung herself with such abandon into the enterprise
+of his life's passion, at the same time maintaining a deceptive attitude of
+detachment, half deceiving herself that it was zeal for the work by which she
+was actuated.  In her soul she knew better.  She was really pouring fuel on the
+flames.  She read him, up to a certain point--as far as was necessary; and
+beneath his attempts at self-control she was conscious of a dynamic desire that
+betrayed itself in many acts and signs,--as when he brushed against her; and
+occasionally when he gave evidence with his subordinates of a certain shortness
+of temper unusual with him she experienced a vaguely alarming but delicious
+thrill of power.  And this, of all men, was the great Mr. Ditmar!  Was she in
+love with him?  That question did not trouble her either.  She continued to
+experience in his presence waves of antagonism and attraction, revealing to her
+depths and possibilities of her nature that frightened while they fascinated.
+It never occurred to her to desist.  That craving in her for high adventure was
+not to be denied.
+
+On summer evenings it had been Ditmar's habit when in Hampton to stroll about
+his lawn, from time to time changing the position of the sprinkler, smoking a
+cigar, and reflecting pleasantly upon his existence.  His house, as he gazed at
+it against the whitening sky, was an eminently satisfactory abode, his wife was
+dead, his children gave him no trouble; he felt a glow of paternal pride in his
+son as the boy raced up and down the sidewalk on a bicycle; George was manly,
+large and strong for his age, and had a domineering way with other boys that
+gave Ditmar secret pleasure.  Of Amy, who was showing a tendency to stoutness,
+and who had inherited her mother's liking for candy and romances, Ditmar
+thought scarcely at all: he would glance at her as she lounged, reading, in a
+chair on the porch, but she did not come within his range of problems.  He had,
+in short, everything to make a reasonable man content, a life nicely compounded
+of sustenance, pleasure, and business,--business naturally being the greatest
+of these.  He was--though he did not know it--ethically and philosophically
+right in squaring his morals with his occupation, and his had been the good
+fortune to live in a world whose codes and conventions had been carefully
+adjusted to the pursuit of that particular brand of happiness he had made his
+own.  Why, then, in the name of that happiness, of the peace and sanity and
+pleasurable effort it had brought him, had he allowed and even encouraged the
+advent of a new element that threatened to destroy the equilibrium achieved? an
+element refusing to be classified under the head of property, since it involved
+something he desired and could not buy?  A woman who was not property, who
+resisted the attempt to be turned into property, was an anomaly in Ditmar's
+universe.  He had not, of course, existed for more than forty years without
+having heard and read of and even encountered in an acquaintance or two the
+species of sex attraction sentimentally called love that sometimes made fools
+of men and played havoc with more important affairs, but in his experience it
+had never interfered with his sanity or his appetite or the Chippering Mill: it
+had never made his cigars taste bitter; it had never caused a deterioration in
+the appreciation of what he had achieved and held.  But now he was experiencing
+strange symptoms of an intensity out of all proportion to that of former
+relations with the other sex.  What was most unusual for him, he was alarmed
+and depressed, at moments irritable.  He regretted the capricious and
+apparently accidental impulse that had made him pretend to tinker with his
+automobile that day by the canal, that had led him to the incomparable idiocy
+of getting rid of Miss Ottway and installing the disturber of his peace as his
+private stenographer.
+
+What the devil was it in her that made him so uncomfortable?  When in his
+office he had difficulty in keeping his mind on matters of import; he would
+watch her furtively as she went about the room with the lithe and noiseless
+movements that excited him the more because he suspected beneath her outward
+and restrained demeanour a fierceness he craved yet feared.  He thought of her
+continually as a panther, a panther he had caught and could not tame; he hadn't
+even caught her, since she might escape at any time.  He took precautions not
+to alarm her.  When she brushed against him he trembled.  Continually she
+baffled and puzzled him, and he never could tell of what she was thinking.  She
+represented a whole set of new and undetermined values for which he had no
+precedents, and unlike every woman he had known--including his wife--she had an
+integrity of her own, seemingly beyond the reach of all influences economic and
+social.  All the more exasperating, therefore, was a propinquity creating an
+intimacy without substance, or without the substance he craved for she had
+magically become for him a sort of enveloping, protecting atmosphere.  In an
+astonishingly brief time he had fallen into the habit of talking things over
+with her; naturally not affairs of the first importance, but matters such as
+the economy of his time: when, for instance, it was most convenient for him to
+go to Boston; and he would find that she had telephoned, without being told, to
+the office there when to expect him, to his chauffeur to be on hand.  He never
+had to tell her a thing twice, nor did she interrupt--as Miss Ottway sometimes
+had done--the processes of his thought.  Without realizing it he fell into the
+habit of listening for the inflections of her voice, and though he had never
+lacked the power of making decisions, she somehow made these easier for him
+especially if, a human equation were involved.
+
+He had, at least, the consolation--if it were one--of reflecting that his
+reputation was safe, that there would be no scandal, since two are necessary to
+make the kind of scandal he had always feared, and Miss Bumpus, apparently, had
+no intention of being the second party.  Yet she was not virtuous, as he had
+hitherto defined the word.  Of this he was sure.  No woman who moved about as
+she did, who had such an effect on him, who had on occasions, though
+inadvertently, returned the lightning of his glances, whose rare laughter
+resembled grace notes, and in whose hair was that almost imperceptible kink,
+could be virtuous.  This instinctive conviction inflamed him.  For the first
+time in his life he began to doubt the universal conquering quality of his own
+charms,--and when such a thing happens to a man like Ditmar he is in danger of
+hell-fire.  He indulged less and less in the convivial meetings and excursions
+that hitherto had given him relaxation and enjoyment, and if his cronies
+inquired as to the reasons for his neglect of them he failed to answer with his
+usual geniality.
+
+"Everything going all right up at the mills, Colonel?" he was asked one day by
+Mr. Madden, the treasurer of a large shoe company, when they met on the marble
+tiles of the hall in their Boston club.
+
+"All right.  Why?"
+
+"Well," replied Madden, conciliatingly, "you seem kind of preoccupied, that's
+all.  I didn't know but what the fifty-four hour bill the legislature's just
+put through might be worrying you."
+
+"We'll handle that situation when the time comes," said Ditmar.  He accepted a
+gin rickey, but declined rather curtly the suggestion of a little spree over
+Sunday to a resort on the Cape which formerly he would have found enticing.  On
+another occasion he encountered in the lobby of the Parker House a more
+intimate friend, Chester Sprole, sallow, self-made, somewhat corpulent, one of
+those lawyers hail fellows well met in business circles and looked upon askance
+by the Brahmins of their profession; more than half politician, he had been in
+Congress, and from time to time was retained by large business interests
+because of his persuasive gifts with committees of the legislature--though
+these had been powerless to avert the recent calamity of the women and
+children's fifty-four hour bill.  Mr. Sprole's hair was prematurely white, and
+the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes were not the result of legal
+worries.
+
+"Hullo, Dit," he said jovially.
+
+"Hullo, Ches," said Ditmar.
+
+"Now you're the very chap I wanted to see.  Where have you been keeping
+yourself lately?  Come out to the farm to-night,--same of the boys'll be
+there."  Mr. Sprole, like many a self-made man, was proud of his farm, though
+he did not lead a wholly bucolic existence.
+
+"I can't, Ches," answered Ditmar.  "I've got to go back to Hampton."
+
+This statement Mr. Sprole unwisely accepted as a fiction.  He took hold of
+Ditmar's arm.
+
+"A lady--eh--what?"
+
+"I've got to go back to Hampton," repeated Ditmar, with a suggestion of
+truculence that took his friend aback.  Not for worlds would Mr. Sprole have
+offended the agent of the Chippering Mill.
+
+"I was only joking, Claude," he hastened to explain.  Ditmar, somewhat
+mollified but still dejected, sought the dining-room when the lawyer had gone.
+
+"All alone to-night, Colonel?" asked the coloured head waiter, obsequiously.
+
+Ditmar demanded a table in the corner, and consumed a solitary meal.
+
+Very naturally Janet was aware of the change in Ditmar, and knew the cause of
+it.  Her feelings were complicated.  He, the most important man in Hampton, the
+self-sufficient, the powerful, the hitherto distant and unattainable head of
+the vast organization known as the Chippering Mill, of which she was an
+insignificant unit, at times became for her just a man--a man for whom she had
+achieved a delicious contempt.  And the knowledge that she, if she chose, could
+sway and dominate him by the mere exercise of that strange feminine force
+within her was intoxicating and terrifying.  She read this in a thousand signs;
+in his glances; in his movements revealing a desire to touch her; in little
+things he said, apparently insignificant, yet fraught with meaning; in a
+constant recurrence of the apologetic attitude--so alien to the Ditmar formerly
+conceived--of which he had given evidence that day by the canal: and from this
+attitude emanated, paradoxically, a virile and galvanic current profoundly
+disturbing.  Sometimes when he bent over her she experienced a commingled
+ecstasy and fear that he would seize her in his arms.  Yet the tension was not
+constant, rising and falling with his moods and struggles, all of which she
+read--unguessed by him--as easily as a printed page by the gift that dispenses
+with laborious processes of the intellect.  On the other hand, a resentment
+boiled within her his masculine mind failed to fathom.  Stevenson said of John
+Knox that many women had come to learn from him, but he had never condescended
+to become a learner in return--a remark more or less applicable to Ditmar.  She
+was, perforce, thrilled that he was virile and wanted her, but because he
+wanted her clandestinely her pride revolted,divining his fear of scandal and
+hating him for it like a thoroughbred.  To do her justice, marriage never
+occurred to her.  She was not so commonplace.
+
+There were times, however, when the tension between them would relax, when some
+incident occurred to focus Ditmar's interest on the enterprise that had
+absorbed and unified his life, the Chippering Mill.  One day in September, for
+instance, after an absence in New York, he returned to the office late in the
+afternoon, and she was quick to sense his elation, to recognize in him the
+restored presence of the quality of elan, of command, of singleness of purpose
+that had characterized him before she had become his stenographer.  At first,
+as he read his mail, he seemed scarcely conscious of her presence.  She stood
+by the window, awaiting his pleasure, watching the white mist as it rolled over
+the floor of the river, catching glimpses in vivid, saffron blurs of the lights
+of the Arundel Mill on the farther shore.  Autumn was at hand.  Suddenly she
+heard Ditmar speaking.
+
+"Would you mind staying a little while longer this evening, Miss Bumpus?"
+
+"Not at all," she replied, turning.
+
+On his face was a smile, almost boyish.
+
+"The fact is, I think I've got hold of the biggest single order that ever came
+into any mill in New England," he declared.
+
+"Oh, I'm glad," she said quickly.
+
+"The cotton cards--?" he demanded.
+
+She knew he referred to the schedules, based on the current prices of cotton,
+made out in the agent's office and sent in duplicate to the selling house, in
+Boston.  She got them from the shelf; and as he went over them she heard him
+repeating the names of various goods now become familiar, pongees, poplins,
+percales and voiles, garbardines and galateas, lawns, organdies, crepes, and
+Madras shirtings, while he wrote down figures on a sheet of paper.  So complete
+was his absorption in this task that Janet, although she had resented the
+insinuating pressure of his former attitude toward her, felt a paradoxical
+sensation of jealousy.  Presently, without looking up, he told her to call up
+the Boston office and ask for Mr. Fraile, the cotton buyer; and she learned
+from the talk over the telephone though it was mostly about "futures"--that
+Ditmar had lingered for a conference in Boston on his way back from New York.
+Afterwards, having dictated two telegrams which she wrote out on her machine,
+he leaned back in his chair; and though the business for the day was ended,
+showed a desire to detain her.  His mood became communicative.
+
+
+"I've been on the trail of that order for a month," he declared.  "Of course it
+isn't my business to get orders, but to manage this mill, and that's enough for
+one man, God knows.  But I heard the Bradlaughs were in the market for these
+goods, and I told the selling house to lie low, that I'd go after it.  I knew I
+could get away with it, if anybody could.  I went to the Bradlaughs and sat
+down on 'em, I lived with 'em, ate with 'em, brought 'em home at night.  I
+didn't let 'em alone a minute until they handed it over.  I wasn't going to
+give any other mill in New England or any of those southern concerns a chance
+to walk off with it--not on your life!  Why, we have the facilities.  There
+isn't another mill in the country can turn it out in the time they ask, and
+even we will have to go some to do it.  But we'll do it, by George, unless I'm
+struck by lightning."
+
+He leaned forward, hitting the desk with his fist, and Janet, standing beside
+him, smiled.  She had the tempting gift of silence.  Forgetting her twinge of
+jealousy, she was drawn toward him now, and in this mood of boyish exuberance,
+of self-confidence and pride in his powers and success she liked him better
+than ever before.  She had, for the first time, the curious feeling of being
+years older than he, yet this did not detract from a new-born admiration.
+
+"I made this mill, and I'm proud of it," he went on.  "When old Stephen
+Chippering put me in charge he was losing money, he'd had three agents in four
+years.  The old man knew I had it in me, and I knew it, if I do say it myself.
+All this union labour talk about shorter hours makes me sick--why, there was a
+time when I worked ten and twelve hours a day, and I'm man enough to do it yet,
+if I have to.  When the last agent--that was Cort--was sacked I went to Boston
+on my own hook and tackled the old gentleman--that's the only way to get
+anywhere.  I couldn't bear to see the mill going to scrap, and I told him a
+thing or two,--I had the facts and the figures.  Stephen Chippering was a big
+man, but he had a streak of obstinacy in him, he was conservative, you bet.  I
+had to get it across to him there was a lot of dead wood in this plant, I had
+to wake him up to the fact that the twentieth century was here.  He had to be
+shown--he was from Boston, you know--" Ditmar laughed--"but he was all wool and
+a yard wide, and he liked me and trusted me.
+
+"That was in nineteen hundred.  I can remember the interview as well as if it
+had happened last night--we sat up until two o'clock in the morning in that
+library of his with the marble busts and the leather-bound books and the double
+windows looking out over the Charles, where the wind was blowing a gale.  And
+at last he said, `All right, Claude, go ahead.  I'll put you in as agent, and
+stand behind you.' And by thunder, he did stand behind me.  He was quiet, the
+finest looking old man I ever saw in my life, straight as a ramrod, with a
+little white goatee and a red, weathered face full of creases, and a skin that
+looked as if it had been pricked all over with needles--the old Boston sort.
+They don't seem to turn 'em out any more.  Why, I have a picture of him here."
+
+He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a photograph.  Janet gazed at it
+sympathetically.
+
+"It doesn't give you any notion of those eyes of his," Ditmar said,
+reminiscently.  "They looked right through a man's skull, no matter how thick
+it was.  If anything went wrong, I never wasted any time in telling him about
+it, and I guess it was one reason he liked me.  Some of the people up here
+didn't understand him, kow-towed to him, they were scared of him, and if he
+thought they had something up their sleeves he looked as if he were going to
+eat 'em alive.  Regular fighting eyes, the kind that get inside of a man and
+turn the light on.  And he sat so still--made you ashamed of yourself.  Well,
+he was a born fighter, went from Harvard into the Rebellion and was left for
+dead at Seven Oaks, where one of the company found him and saved him.  He set
+that may up for life, and never talked about it, either.  See what he wrote on
+the bottom--'To my friend, Claude Ditmar, Stephen Chippering.' And believe me,
+when he once called a man a friend he never took it back.  I know one thing,
+I'll never get another friend like him."
+
+With a gesture that gave her a new insight into Ditmar, reverently he took the
+picture from her hand and placed it back in the drawer.  She was stirred,
+almost to tears, and moved away from him a little, as though to lessen by
+distance the sudden attraction he had begun to exert: yet she lingered, half
+leaning, half sitting on the corner of the big desk, her head bent toward him,
+her eyes filled with light.  She was wondering whether he could ever love a
+woman as he loved this man of whom he had spoken, whether he could be as true
+to a woman.  His own attitude seemed never to have been more impersonal, but
+she had ceased to resent it; something within her whispered that she was the
+conductor, the inspirer..  ..
+
+"I wish Stephen Chippering could have lived to see this order," he exclaimed,
+"to see the Chippering Mill to-day!  I guess he'd be proud of it, I guess he
+wouldn't regret having put me in as agent."
+
+Janet did not reply.  She could not.  She sat regarding him intently, and when
+he raised his eyes and caught her luminous glance, his expression changed, she
+knew Stephen Chippering had passed from his mind.
+
+"I hope you like it here," he said.  His voice had become vibrant,
+ingratiating, he had changed from the master to the suppliant--and yet she was
+not displeased.  Power had suddenly flowed back into her, and with it an
+exhilarating self-command.
+
+"I do like it," she answered.
+
+"But you said, when I asked you to be my stenographer, that you didn't care for
+your work."
+
+"Oh, this is different."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I'm interested, the mill means something to me now you see, I'm not just
+copying things I don't know anything about."
+
+"I'm glad you're interested," he said, in the same odd, awkward tone.  "I've
+never had any one in the office who did my work as well.  Now Miss Ottway was a
+good stenographer, she was capable, and a fine woman, but she never got the
+idea, the spirit of the mill in her as you've got it, and she wasn't able to
+save me trouble, as you do.  It's remarkable how you've come to understand, and
+in such a short time."
+
+Janet coloured.  She did not look at him, but had risen and begun to straighten
+out the papers beside her.
+
+"There are lots of other things I'd like to understand," she said.
+
+"What?" he demanded.
+
+"Well--about the mill.  I never thought much about it before, I always hated
+it," she cried, dropping the papers and suddenly facing him.  "It was just
+drudgery.  But now I want to learn everything, all I can, I'd like to see the
+machinery."
+
+"I'll take you through myself--to-morrow," he declared.
+
+His evident agitation made her pause.  They were alone, the outer office
+deserted, and the Ditmar she saw now, whom she had summoned up with ridiculous
+ease by virtue of that mysterious power within her, was no longer the agent of
+the Chippering Mill, a boy filled with enthusiasm by a business achievement,
+but a man, the incarnation and expression of masculine desire desire for her.
+She knew she could compel him, if she chose, to throw caution to the winds.
+
+"Oh no!" she exclaimed.  She was afraid of him, she shrank from such a
+conspicuous sign of his favour.
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Because I don't want you to," she said, and realized, as soon as she had
+spoken, that her words might imply the existence of a something between them
+never before hinted at by her.  "I'll get Mr. Caldwell to take me through."
+She moved toward the door, and turned; though still on fire within, her manner
+had become demure, repressed.  "Did you wish anything more this evening?" she
+inquired.
+
+"That's all," he said, and she saw that he was gripping the arms of his
+chair....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Autumn was at hand.  All day it had rained, but now, as night fell and Janet
+went homeward, the white mist from the river was creeping stealthily over the
+city, disguising the familiar and sordid landmarks.  These had become
+beautiful, mysterious, somehow appealing.  The electric arcs, splotches in the
+veil, revealed on the Common phantom trees; and in the distance, against the
+blurred lights from the Warren Street stores skirting the park could be seen
+phantom vehicles, phantom people moving to and fro.  Thus, it seemed to Janet,
+invaded by a pearly mist was her own soul, in which she walked in wonder,--a
+mist shot through and through with soft, exhilarating lights half disclosing
+yet transforming and etherealizing certain landmark's there on which, formerly,
+she had not cared to gaze.  She was thinking of Ditmar as she had left him
+gripping his chair, as he had dismissed her for the day, curtly, almost
+savagely.  She had wounded and repelled him, and lingering in her was that
+exquisite touch of fear--a fear now not so much inspired by Ditmar as by the
+semi-acknowledged recognition of certain tendencies and capacities within
+herself.  Yet she rejoiced in them, she was glad she had hurt Ditmar, she would
+hurt him again.  Still palpitating, she reached the house in Fillmore Street,
+halting a moment with her hand on the door, knowing her face was flushed,
+anxious lest her mother or Lise might notice something unusual in her manner.
+But, when she had slowly mounted the stairs and lighted the gas in the bedroom
+the sight of her sister's clothes cast over the chairs was proof that Lise had
+already donned her evening finery and departed.  The room was filled with the
+stale smell of clothes, which Janet detested.  She flung open the windows.  She
+took off her hat and swiftly tidied herself, yet the relief she felt at Lise's
+absence was modified by a sudden, vehement protest against sordidness.  Why
+should she not live by herself amidst clean and tidy surroundings?  She had
+begun to earn enough, and somehow a vista had been opened up--a vista whose end
+she could not see, alluring, enticing....  In the dining-room, by the cleared
+table, her father was reading the Banner; her mother appeared in the kitchen
+door.
+
+"What in the world happened to you, Janet?" she exclaimed.
+
+
+"Nothing," said Janet.  "Mr. Ditmar asked me to stay--that was all.  He'd been
+away."
+
+"I was worried, I was going to make your father go down to the mill.  I've
+saved you some supper."
+
+"I don't want much," Janet told her, "I'm not hungry."
+
+"I guess you have to work too hard in that new place," said Hannah, as she
+brought in the filled plate from the oven.
+
+"Well, it seems to agree with her, mother," declared Edward, who could always
+be counted on to say the wrong thing with the best of intentions.  "I never saw
+her looking as well--why, I swan, she's getting real pretty!"
+
+Hannah darted at him a glance, but restrained herself, and Janet reddened as
+she tried to eat the beans placed before her.  The pork had browned and
+hardened at the edges, the gravy had spread, a crust covered the potatoes.
+When her father resumed his reading of the Banner and her mother went back into
+the kitchen she began to speculate rather resentfully and yet excitedly why it
+was that this adventure with a man, with Ditmar, made her look better, feel
+better,--more alive.  She was too honest to disguise from herself that it was
+an adventure, a high one, fraught with all sorts of possibilities, dangers, and
+delights.  Her promotion had been merely incidental.  Both her mother and
+father, did they know the true circumstances,--that Mr. Ditmar desired her, was
+perhaps in love with her--would be disturbed.  Undoubtedly they would have
+believed that she could "take care" of herself.  She knew that matters could
+not go on as they were, that she would either have to leave Mr. Ditmar or--and
+here she baulked at being logical.  She had no intention of leaving him: to
+remain, according to the notions of her parents, would be wrong.  Why was it
+that doing wrong agreed with her, energized her, made her more alert, cleverer,
+keying up her faculties?  turned life from a dull affair into a momentous one?
+To abandon Ditmar would be to slump back into the humdrum, into something from
+which she had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she
+sat; by the red-checked tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, the cherry chairs with
+the frayed seats, the horsehair sofa from which the stuffing protruded, the
+tawdry pillow with its colours, once gay, that Lise had bought at a bargain at
+the Bagatelle....  The wooden clock with the round face and quaint landscape
+below--the family's most cherished heirloom--though long familiar, was not so
+bad; but the two yellowed engravings on the wall offended her.  They had been
+wedding presents to Edward's father.  One represented a stupid German peasant
+woman holding a baby, and standing in front of a thatched cottage; its
+companion was a sylvan scene in which certain wooden rustics were supposed to
+be enjoying themselves.  Between the two, and dotted with flyspecks, hung an
+insurance calendar on which was a huge head of a lady, florid, fluffy-haired,
+flirtatious.  Lise thought her beautiful.
+
+The room was ugly.  She had long known that, but tonight the realization came
+to her that what she chiefly resented in it was the note it proclaimed--the
+note of a mute acquiescence, without protest or struggle, in what life might
+send.  It reflected accurately the attitude of her parents, particularly of her
+father.  With an odd sense of detachment, of critical remoteness and contempt
+she glanced at him as he sat stupidly absorbed in his newspaper, his face
+puckered, his lips pursed, and Ditmar rose before her--Ditmar, the embodiment
+of an indomitableness that refused to be beaten and crushed.  She thought of
+the story he had told her, how by self-assertion and persistence he had become
+agent of the Chippering Mill, how he had convinced Mr. Stephen Chippering of
+his ability.  She could not think of the mill as belonging to the Chipperings
+and the other stockholders, but to Ditmar, who had shaped it into an expression
+of himself, since it was his ideal.  And now it seemed that he had made it hers
+also.  She regretted having repulsed him, pushed her plate away from her, and
+rose.
+
+"You haven't eaten anything," said Hannah, who had come into the room.  "Where
+are you going?"
+
+"Out--to Eda's," Janet answered....
+
+"It's late," Hannah objected.  But Janet departed.  Instead of going to Eda's
+she walked alone, seeking the quieter streets that her thoughts might flow
+undisturbed.  At ten o'clock, when she returned, the light was out in the
+diningroom, her sister had not come in, and she began slowly to undress,
+pausing every now and then to sit on the bed and dream; once she surprised
+herself gazing into the glass with a rapt expression that was almost a smile.
+What was it about her that had attracted Ditmar?  No other man had ever noticed
+it.  She had never thought herself good looking, and now--it was astonishing!--
+she seemed to have changed,and she saw with pride that her arms and neck were
+shapely, that her dark hair fell down in a cascade over her white shoulders to
+her waist.  She caressed it; it was fine.  When she looked again, a radiancy
+seemed to envelop her.  She braided her hair slowly, in two long plaits,
+looking shyly in the mirror and always seeing that radiancy....
+
+Suddenly it occurred to her with a shock that she was doing exactly what she
+had despised Lise for doing, and leaving the mirror she hurried her toilet, put
+out the light, and got into bed.  For a long time, however, she remained
+wakeful, turning first on one side and then on the other, trying to banish from
+her mind the episode that had excited her.  But always it came back again.  She
+saw Ditmar before her, virile, vital, electric with desire.  At last she fell
+asleep.
+
+Gradually she was awakened by something penetrating her consciousness,
+something insistent, pervasive, unescapable, which in drowsiness she could not
+define.  The gas was burning, Lise had come in, and was moving peculiarly about
+the room.  Janet watched her.  She stood in front of the bureau, just as Janet
+herself had done, her hands at her throat.  At last she let them fall, her head
+turning slowly, as though drawn, by some irresistible, hypnotic power, and
+their eyes met.  Lise's were filmed, like those of a dog whose head is being
+stroked, expressing a luxuriant dreaminess uncomprehending, passionate.
+
+"Say, did I wake you?" she asked.  "I did my best not to make any noise--honest
+to God."
+
+"It wasn't the noise that woke me up," said Janet.
+
+"It couldn't have been."
+
+"You've been drinking!" said Janet, slowly.
+
+Lise giggled.
+
+"What's it to you, angel face!"  she inquired.  "Quiet down, now, and go bye-
+bye."
+
+Janet sprang from the bed, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her.  She was
+limp.  She began to whimper.
+
+"Cut it out--leave me go.  It ain't nothing to you what I do--I just had a
+highball."
+
+Janet released her and drew back.
+
+"I just had a highball--honest to God!"
+
+"Don't say that again!" whispered Janet, fiercely.
+
+"Oh, very well.  For God's sake, go to bed and leave me alone--I can take care
+of myself, I guess--I ain't nutty enough to hit the booze.  But I ain't like
+you--I've got to have a little fun to keep alive."
+
+"A little fun!" Janet exclaimed.  The phrase struck her sharply.  A little fun
+to keep alive!
+
+With that same peculiar, cautious movement she had observed, Lise approached a
+chair, and sank into it,--jerking her head in the direction of the room where
+Hannah and Edward slept.
+
+"D'you want to wake 'em up?  Is that your game?" she asked, and began to fumble
+at her belt.  Overcoming with an effort a disgust amounting to nausea, Janet
+approached her sister again, little by little undressing her, and finally
+getting her into bed, when she immediately fell into a profound slumber.
+Janet, too, got into bed, but sleep was impossible: the odour lurked like a
+foul spirit in the darkness, mingling with the stagnant, damp air that came in
+at the open window, fairly saturating her with horror: it seemed the very
+essence of degradation.  But as she lay on the edge of the bed, shrinking from
+contamination, in the throes of excitement inspired by an unnamed fear, she
+grew hot, she could feel and almost hear the pounding of her heart.  She rose,
+felt around in the clammy darkness for her wrapper and slippers, gained the
+door, crept through the dark hall to the dining-room, where she stealthily lit
+the lamp; darkness had become a terror.  A cockroach scurried across the
+linoleum.  The room was warm and close, it reeked with the smell of stale food,
+but at least she found relief from that other odour.  She sank down on the
+sofa.
+
+Her sister was drunk.  That in itself was terrible enough, yet it was not the
+drunkenness alone that had sickened Janet, but the suggestion of something
+else.  Where had Lise been?  In whose company had she become drunk?  Of late,
+in contrast to a former communicativeness, Lise had been singuarly secretive as
+to her companions, and the manner in which her evenings were spent; and she,
+Janet, had grown too self-absorbed to be curious.  Lise, with her shopgirl's
+cynical knowledge of life and its pitfalls and the high valuation at which she
+held her charms, had seemed secure from danger; but Janet recalled her
+discouragement, her threat to leave the Bagatelle.  Since then there had been
+something furtive about her.  Now, because that odour of alcohol Lise exhaled
+had destroyed in Janet the sense of exhilaration, of life on a higher plane she
+had begun to feel, and filled her with degradation, she hated Lise, felt for
+her sister no strain of pity.  A proof, had she recognized it, that immorality
+is not a matter of laws and decrees, but of individual emotions.  A few hours
+before she had seen nothing wrong in her relationship with Ditmar: now she
+beheld him selfish, ruthless, pursuing her for one end, his own gratification.
+As a man, he had become an enemy.  Ditmar was like all other men who exploited
+her sex without compunction, but the thought that she was like Lise, asleep in
+a drunken stupor, that their cases differed only in degree, was insupportable.
+
+At last she fell asleep from sheer weariness, to dream she was with Ditmar at
+some place in the country under spreading trees, Silliston, perhaps--Silliston
+Common, cleverly disguised: nor was she quite sure, always, that the man was
+Ditmar; he had a way of changing, of resembling the man she had met in
+Silliston whom she had mistaken for a carpenter.  He was pleading with her, in
+his voice was the peculiar vibrancy that thrilled her, that summoned some
+answering thing out of the depths of her, and she felt herself yielding with a
+strange ecstasy in which were mingled joy and terror.  The terror was
+conquering the joy, and suddenly he stood transformed before her eyes,
+caricatured, become a shrieking monster from whom she sought in agony to
+escape....  In this paralysis of fear she awoke, staring with wide eyes at the
+flickering flame of the lamp, to a world filled with excruciating sound--the
+siren of the Chippering Mill!  She lay trembling with the horror of the
+dreamspell upon her, still more than half convinced that the siren was Ditmar's
+voice, his true expression.  He was waiting to devour her.  Would the sound
+never end?...
+
+Then, remembering where she was, alarmed lest her mother might come in and find
+her there, she left the sofa, turned out the sputtering lamp, and ran into the
+bedroom.  Rain was splashing on the bricks of the passage-way outside, the
+shadows of the night still lurked in the corners; by the grey light she gazed
+at Lise, who breathed loudly and stirred uneasily, her mouth open, her lips
+parched.  Janet touched her.
+
+"Lise--get up!" she said.  "It's time to get up."  She shook her.
+
+"Leave me alone--can't you?"
+
+"It's time to get up.  The whistle has sounded."
+
+Lise heavily opened her eyes.  They were bloodshot.
+
+"I don't want to get up.  I won't get up."
+
+"But you must," insisted Janet, tightening her hold.  "You've got to--you've
+got to eat breakfast and go to work."
+
+"I don't want any breakfast, I ain't going to work any more."
+
+A gust of wind blew inward the cheap lace curtains, and the physical effect of
+it emphasized the chill that struck Janet's heart.  She got up and closed the
+window, lit the gas, and returning to the bed, shook Lise again.
+
+"Listen," she said, "if you don't get up I'll tell mother what happened last
+night."
+
+"Say, you wouldn't--!" exclaimed Lise, angrily.
+
+"Get up!" Janet commanded, and watched her rather anxiously, uncertain as to
+the after effects of drunkenness.  But Lise got up.  She sat on the edge of the
+bed and yawned, putting her hand to her forehead.
+
+"I've sure got a head on me," she remarked.
+
+Janet was silent, angrier than ever, shocked that tragedy, degradation, could
+be accepted thus circumstantially.  Lise proceeded to put up her hair.  She
+seemed to be mistress of herself; only tired, gaping frequently.  Once she
+remarked:--
+
+"I don't see the good of getting nutty over a highball."
+
+Seeing that Janet was not to be led into controversy, she grew morose.
+
+Breakfast in Fillmore Street, never a lively meal, was more dismal than usual
+that morning, eaten to the accompaniment of slopping water from the roofs on
+the pavement of the passage.  The indisposition of Lise passed unobserved by
+both Hannah and Edward; and at twenty minutes to eight the two girls, with
+rubbers and umbrellas, left the house together, though it was Janet's custom to
+depart earlier, since she had farther to go.  Lise, suspicious, maintained an
+obstinate silence, keeping close to the curb.  They reached the corner by the
+provision shop with the pink and orange chromos of jellies in the window.
+
+"Lise, has anything happened to you?" demanded Janet suddenly.  "I want you to
+tell me."
+
+"Anything happened--what do you mean?  Anything happened?"
+
+"You know very well what I mean."
+
+"Well, suppose something has happened?"  Lise's reply was pert, defiant.
+"What's it to you?  If anything's happened, it's happened to me--hasn't it?"
+
+Janet approached her.
+
+"What are you trying to do?" said Lise.  "Push me into the gutter?"
+
+"I guess you're there already," said Janet.
+
+Lise was roused to a sudden pitch of fury.  She turned on Janet and thrust her
+back.
+
+"Well, if I am who's going to blame me?" she cried.  "If you had to work all
+day in that hole, standing on your feet, picked on by yaps for six a week, I
+guess you wouldn't talk virtuous, either.  It's easy for you to shoot off your
+mouth, you've got a soft snap with Ditmar."
+
+Janet was outraged.  She could not restrain her anger.
+
+"How dare you say that?" she demanded.
+
+Lise was cowed.
+
+"Well, you drove me to it--you make me mad enough to say anything.  Just
+because I went to Gruber's with Neva Lorrie and a couple of gentlemen--they
+were gentlemen all right, as much gentlemen as Ditmar--you come at me and tell
+me I'm all to the bad."  She began to sob.  "I'm as straight as you are.  How
+was I to know the highball was stiff?  Maybe I was tired--anyhow, it put me on
+the queer, and everything in the joint began to tango 'round me--and Neva came
+home with me."
+
+Janet felt a surge of relief, in which were mingled anxiety and resentment:
+relief because she was convinced that Lise was telling the truth, anxiety
+because she feared for Lise's future, resentment because Ditmar had been
+mentioned.  Still, what she had feared most had not come to pass.  Lise left
+her abruptly, darting down a street that led to a back entrance of the
+Bagatelle, and Janet pursued her way.  Where, she wondered, would it all end?
+Lise had escaped so far, but drunkenness was an ominous sign.  And "gentlemen"?
+What kind of gentlemen had taken her sister to Gruber's?  Would Ditmar do that
+sort of thing if he had a chance?
+
+The pavement in front of the company boarding-houses by the canal was plastered
+with sodden leaves whipped from the maples by the driving rain in the night.
+The sky above the mills was sepia.  White lights were burning in the loom
+rooms.  When she reached the vestibule Simmons, the watchman, informed her that
+Mr. Ditmar had already been there, and left for Boston.
+
+Janet did not like to acknowledge to herself her disappointment on learning
+that Ditmar had gone to Boston.  She knew he had had no such intention the
+night before; an accumulated mail and many matters demanding decisions were
+awaiting him; and his sudden departure seemed an act directed personally
+against her, in the nature of a retaliation, since she had offended and
+repulsed him.  Through Lise's degrading act she had arrived at the conclusion
+that all adventure and consequent suffering had to do with Man--a conviction
+peculiarly maddening to such temperaments as Janet's.  Therefore she
+interpreted her suffering in terms of Ditmar, she had looked forward to
+tormenting him again, and by departing he had deliberately balked and cheated
+her.  The rain fell ceaselessly out of black skies, night seemed ever ready to
+descend on the river, a darkness--according to young Mr. Caldwell--due not to
+the clouds alone, but to forest fires many hundreds of miles away, in Canada.
+As the day wore on, however, her anger gradually gave place to an extreme
+weariness and depression, and yet she dreaded going home, inventing things for
+herself to do; arranging and rearranging Ditmar's papers that he might have
+less trouble in sorting them, putting those uppermost which she thought he
+would deem the most important.  Perhaps he would come in, late!  In a world of
+impending chaos the brilliantly lighted office was a tiny refuge to which she
+clung.  At last she put on her coat and rubbers, faring forth reluctantly into
+the wet.
+
+At first when she entered the bedroom she thought it empty, though the gas was
+burning, and them she saw Lise lying face downward on the bed.  For a moment
+she stood still, then closed the door softly.
+
+"Lise," she said.
+
+"What?"
+
+Janet sat down on the bed, putting out her hand.  Unconsciously she began to
+stroke Lise's hand, and presently it turned and tightened on her own.
+
+"Lise," she said, "I understand why you--" she could not bring herself to
+pronounce the words "got drunk,"--"I understand why you did it.  I oughtn't to
+have talked to you that way.  But it was terrible to wake up and see you."
+
+For awhile Lise did not reply.  Then she raised herself, feeling her hair with
+an involuntary gesture, regarding her sister with a bewildered look, her face
+puckered.  Her eyes burned, and under them were black shadows.
+
+"How do you mean--you understand?"  she asked slowly.  "You never hit the
+booze."
+
+Even Lise's language, which ordinarily offended her, failed to change her
+sudden impassioned and repentant mood.  She was astonished at herself for this
+sudden softening, since she did not really love Lise, and all day she had hated
+her, wished never to see her again.
+
+"No, but I can understand how it would be to want to," Janet said.  "Lise, I
+guess we're searching--both of us for something we'll never find."
+
+Lise stared at her with a contracted, puzzled expression, as of a person
+awaking from sleep, all of whose faculties are being strained toward
+comprehension.
+
+"What do you mean?" she demanded.  "You and me?  You're all right--you've got
+no kick coming."
+
+"Life is hard, it's hard on girls like us--we want things we can't have."
+Janet was at a loss to express herself.
+
+
+"Well, it ain't any pipe dream," Lise agreed.  Her glance turned involuntarily
+toward the picture of the Olympian dinner party pinned on the wall.  "Swells
+have a good time," she added.
+
+"Maybe they pay for it, too," said Janet.
+
+"I wouldn't holler about paying--it's paying and not getting the goods,"
+declared Lise.
+
+"You'll pay, and you won't get it.  That kind of life is--hell," Janet cried.
+
+Self-centered as Lise was, absorbed in her own trouble and present physical
+discomfort, this unaccustomed word from her sister and the vehemence with which
+it was spoken surprised and frightened her, brought home to her some hint of
+the terror in Janet's soul.
+
+"Me for the water wagon," she said.
+
+Janet was not convinced.  She had hoped to discover the identity of the man who
+had taken Lise to Gruber's, but she did not attempt to continue the
+conversation.  She rose and took off her hat.
+
+"Why don't you go to bed?"  she asked.  "I'll tell mother you have a headache
+and bring in your supper."
+
+"Well, I don't care if I do," replied Lise, gratefully.
+
+Perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of that complex affair, the human
+organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods.  The soul, so called, is as
+sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected by lack of sleep, by
+smells and sounds, by food, by the weather--whether a day be sapphire or
+obsidian.  And the resolutions arising from one mood are thwarted by the
+actions of the next.  Janet had observed this phenomenon, and sometimes, when
+it troubled her, she thought herself the most inconsistent and vacillating of
+creatures.  She had resolved, far instance, before she fell asleep, to leave
+the Chippering Mill, to banish Ditmar from her life, to get a position in Boston,
+whence she could send some of her wages home: and in the morning, as she made her
+way to the office, the determination gave her a sense of peace and unity.  But the
+northwest wind was blowing.  It had chased away the mist and the clouds, the smoke
+from Canada.  The sun shone with a high brilliancy, the elms of the Common cast
+sharp, black shadow-patterns on the pavements, and when she reached the office
+and looked out of his window she saw the blue river covered with quicksilver
+waves chasing one another across the current.  Ditmar had not yet returned to
+Hampton.  About ten o'clock, as she was copying out some figures for Mr. Price,
+young Mr. Caldwell approached her.  He had a Boston newspaper in his hand.
+
+"Have you seen this article about Mr. Ditmar?" he asked.
+
+"About Mr. Ditmar?  No."
+
+"It's quite a send-off for the Colonel," said Caldwell, who was wont at times
+to use the title facetiously.  "Listen; `One of the most notable figures in the
+Textile industry of the United States, Claude Ditmar, Agent of the Chippering
+Mill.'" Caldwell spread out the page and pointed to a picture.  "There he is,
+as large as life."
+
+A little larger than life, Janet thought.  Ditmar was one of those men who, as
+the expression goes, "take" well, a valuable asset in semi-public careers; and
+as he stood in the sunlight on the steps of the building where they had "snap-
+shotted" him he appeared even more massive, forceful, and preponderant than she
+had known him.  Beholding him thus set forth and praised in a public print, he
+seemed suddenly to have been distantly removed from her, to have reacquired at
+a bound the dizzy importance he had possessed for her before she became his
+stenographer.  She found it impossible to realize that this was the Ditmar who
+had pursued and desired her; at times supplicating, apologetic, abject; and
+again revealed by the light in his eyes and the trembling of his hand as the
+sinister and ruthless predatory male from whom--since the revelation in her
+sister Lise she had determined to flee, and whom she had persuaded herself she
+despised.  He was a bigger man than she had thought, and as she read rapidly
+down the column the fascination that crept over her was mingled with
+disquieting doubt of her own powers: it was now difficult to believe she had
+dominated or could ever dominate this self-sufficient, successful person, the
+list of whose achievements and qualities was so alluringly set forth by an
+interviewer who himself had fallen a victim.
+
+The article carried the implication that the modern, practical, American
+business man was the highest type as yet evolved by civilization: and Ditmar,
+referred to as "a wizard of the textile industry," was emphatically one who had
+earned the gratitude of the grand old Commonwealth.  By the efforts of such
+sons she continued to maintain her commanding position among her sister states.
+Prominent among the qualities contributing to his success was openmindedness,
+"a willingness to be shown," to scrap machinery when his competitors still
+clung to older methods.  The Chippering Mill had never had a serious strike,--
+indication of an ability to deal with labour; and Mr. Ditmar's views on labour
+followed: if his people had a grievance, let them come to him, and settle it
+between them.  No unions.  He had consistently refused to recognize them.
+There was mention of the Bradlaugh order as being the largest commission ever
+given to a single mill, a reference to the excitement and speculation it had
+aroused in trade circles.  Claude Ditmar's ability to put it through was
+unquestioned; one had only to look at him,--tenacity, forcefulness,
+executiveness were written all over him....  In addition, the article contained
+much material of an autobiographical nature that must--Janet thought--have been
+supplied by Ditmar himself, whose modesty had evidently shrunk from the cruder
+self-eulogy of an interview.  But she recognized several characteristic
+phrases.
+
+Caldwell, watching her as she read, was suddenly fascinated.  During a trip
+abroad, while still an undergraduate, he had once seen the face of an actress,
+a really good Parisian actress, light up in that way; and it had revealed to
+him, in a flash, the meaning of enthusiasm.  Now Janet became vivid for him.
+There must be something unusual in a person whose feelings could be so intense,
+whose emotions rang so true.  He was not unsophisticated.  He had sometimes
+wondered why Ditmar had promoted her, though acknowledging her ability.  He
+admired Ditmar, but had no illusions about him.  Harvard, and birth in a social
+stratum where emphasis is superfluous, enabled him to smile at the reporter's
+exuberance; and he was the more drawn toward her to see on Janet's flushed face
+the hint of a smile as she looked up at him when she had finished.
+
+"The Colonel hypnotized that reporter," he said, as he took the paper; and her
+laugh, despite its little tremor, betrayed in her an unsuspected, humorous
+sense of proportion.  "Well, I'll take off my hat to him," Caldwell went on.
+"He is a wonder, he's got the mill right up to capacity in a week.  He's agreed
+to deliver those goods to the Bradlaughs by the first of April, you know, and
+Holster, of the Clarendon, swears it can't be done, he says Ditmar's crazy.
+Well, I stand to lose twenty-five dollars on him."
+
+This loyalty pleased Janet, it had the strange effect of reviving loyalty in
+her.  She liked this evidence of Dick Caldwell's confidence.  He was a self-
+contained and industrious young man, with crisp curly hair, cordial and
+friendly yet never intimate with the other employer; liked by them--but it was
+tacitly understood his footing differed from theirs.  He was a cousin of the
+Chipperings, and destined for rapid promotion.  He went away every Saturday, it
+was known that he spent Sundays and holidays in delightful places, to return
+reddened and tanned; and though he never spoke about these excursions, and put
+on no airs of superiority, there was that in his manner and even in the cut of
+his well-worn suits proclaiming him as belonging to a sphere not theirs, to a
+category of fortunate beings whose stumbles are not fatal, who are sustained
+from above.  Even Ditmar was not of these.
+
+"I've just been showing a lot of highbrows through the mill," he told Janet.
+"They asked questions enough to swamp a professor of economics."
+
+And Janet was suddenly impelled to ask:--
+
+"Will you take me through sometime, Mr. Caldwell?"
+
+"You've never been through?" he exclaimed.  "Why, we'll go now, if you can
+spare the time."
+
+Her face had become scarlet.
+
+"Don't tell Mr. Ditmar," she begged.  "You see--he wanted to take me himself."
+
+"Not a word," Caldwell promised as they left the office together and went
+downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton Department.  The
+showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather tiresome; but now his
+curiosity and interest were aroused, he was conscious of a keen stimulation
+when he glanced at Janet's face.  Its illumination perplexed him.  The effect
+was that of a picture obscurely hung and hitherto scarcely noticed on which the
+light had suddenly been turned.  It glowed with a strange and disturbing
+radiance....
+
+As for Janet, she was as one brought suddenly to the realization of a miracle
+in whose presence she had lived for many years and never before suspected; the
+miracle of machinery, of the triumph of man over nature.  In the brief space of
+an hour she beheld the dirty bales flung off the freight cars on the sidings
+transformed into delicate fabrics wound from the looms; cotton that only last
+summer, perhaps, while she sat typewriting at her window, had been growing in
+the fields of the South.  She had seen it torn by the balebreakers, blown into
+the openers, loosened, cleansed, and dried; taken up by the lappers, pressed
+into batting, and passed on to the carding machines, to emerge like a wisp of
+white smoke in a sliver and coil automatically in a can.  Once more it was
+flattened into a lap, given to a comber that felt out its fibres, removing with
+superhuman precision those for the finer fabric too short, thrusting it forth
+again in another filmy sliver ready for the drawing frames.  Six of these
+gossamer ropes were taken up, and again six.  Then came the Blubbers and the
+roving frames, twisting and winding, the while maintaining the most delicate of
+tensions lest the rope break, running the strands together into a thread
+constantly growing stronger and finer, until it was ready for spinning.
+
+Caldwell stood close to her, shouting his explanations in her ear, while she
+strained to follow them.  But she was bewildered and entranced by the
+marvellous swiftness, accuracy and ease with which each of the complex
+machines, fed by human hands, performed its function.  These human hands were
+swift, too, as when they thrust the bobbins of roving on the ringspinning
+frames to be twisted into yarn.  She saw a woman, in the space of an instant,
+mend a broken thread.  Women and boys were here, doffer boys to lift off the
+full bobbins of yarn with one hand and set on the empty bobbins with the other:
+while skilled workmen, alert for the first sign of trouble, followed up and
+down in its travels the long frame of the mule-spinner.  After the spinning,
+the heavy spools of yarn were carried to a beam-warper, standing alone like a
+huge spider's web, where hundreds of threads were stretched symmetrically and
+wound evenly, side by side, on a large cylinder, forming the warp of the fabric
+to be woven on the loom.  First, however, this warp must be stiffened or
+"slashed" in starch and tallow, dried over heated drums, and finally wound
+around one great beam from which the multitude of threads are taken up, one by
+one, and slipped through the eyes of the loom harnesses by women who sit all
+day under the north windows overlooking the canal--the "drawers-in" of whom
+Ditmar had spoken.  Then the harnesses are put on the loom, the threads
+attached to the cylinder on which the cloth is to be wound.  The looms absorbed
+and fascinated Janet above all else.  It seemed as if she would never tire of
+watching the rhythmic rise and fall of the harnesses,--each rapid movement
+making a V in the warp, within the angle of which the tiny shuttles darted to
+and fro, to and fro, carrying the thread that filled the cloth with a swiftness
+so great the eye could scarcely follow it; to be caught on the other side when
+the angle closed, and flung back, and back again!  And in the elaborate
+patterns not one, but several harnesses were used, each awaiting its turn for
+the impulse bidding it rise and fall!...  Abruptly, as she gazed, one of the
+machines halted, a weaver hurried up, searched the warp for the broken thread,
+tied it, and started the loom again.
+
+"That's intelligent of it," said Caldwell, in her ear.  But she could only nod
+in reply.
+
+The noise in the weaving rooms was deafening, the heat oppressive.  She began
+to wonder how these men and women, boys and girls bore the strain all day long.
+She had never thought much about them before save to compare vaguely their
+drudgery with that from which now she had been emancipated; but she began to
+feel a new respect, a new concern, a new curiosity and interest as she watched
+them passing from place to place with indifference between the whirling belts,
+up and down the narrow aisles, flanked on either side by that bewildering,
+clattering machinery whose polished surfaces continually caught and flung back
+the light of the electric bulbs on the ceiling.  How was it possible to live
+for hours at a time in this bedlam without losing presence of mind and
+thrusting hand or body in the wrong place, or becoming deaf?  She had never
+before realized what mill work meant, though she had read of the accidents.
+But these people--even the children--seemed oblivious to the din and the
+danger, intent on their tasks, unconscious of the presence of a visitor, save
+occasionally when she caught a swift glance from a woman or girl a glance,
+perhaps, of envy or even of hostility.  The dark, foreign faces glowed, and
+instantly grew dull again, and then she was aware of lurking terrors, despite
+her exaltation, her sense now of belonging to another world, a world somehow
+associated with Ditmar.  Was it not he who had lifted her farther above all
+this?  Was it not by grace of her association with him she was there, a
+spectator of the toil beneath?  Yet the terror persisted.  She, presently,
+would step out of the noise, the oppressive moist heat of the drawing and
+spinning rooms, the constant, remorseless menace of whirling wheels and cogs
+and belts.  But they?...  She drew closer to Caldwell's side.
+
+"I never knew--" she said.  "It must be hard to work here."
+
+He smiled at her, reassuringly.
+
+"Oh, they don't mind it," he replied.  "It's like a health resort compared to
+the conditions most of them live in at home.  Why, there's plenty of
+ventilation here, and you've got to have a certain amount of heat and moisture,
+because when cotton is cold and dry it can't be drawn or spin, and when it's
+hot and dry the electricity is troublesome.  If you think this moisture is bad
+you ought to see a mill with the old vapour-pot system with the steam shooting
+out into the room.  Look here!"  He led Janet to the apparatus in which the
+pure air is forced through wet cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the
+ventilation and humidity were regulated automatically, how the temperature of
+the room was controlled by a thermostat.
+
+"There isn't an agent in the country who's more concerned about the welfare of
+his operatives than Mr. Ditmar.  He's made a study of it, he's spent thousands
+of dollars, and as soon as these machines became practical he put 'em in.  The
+other day when I was going through the room one of these shuttles flew off, as
+they sometimes do when the looms are running at high speed.  A woman was pretty
+badly hurt.  Ditmar came right down."
+
+"He really cares about them," said Janet.  She liked Caldwell's praise of
+Ditmar, yet she spoke a little doubtfully.
+
+"Of course he cares.  But it's common sense to make 'em as comfortable and
+happy as possible--isn't it?  He won't stand for being held up, and he'd be
+stiff enough if it came to a strike.  I don't blame him for that.  Do you?"
+
+Janet was wondering how ruthless Ditmar could be if his will were crossed....
+They had left the room with its noise and heat behind them and were descending
+the worn, oaken treads of the spiral stairway of a neighbouring tower.  Janet
+shivered a little, and her face seemed almost feverish as she turned to
+Caldwell and thanked him.
+
+"Oh, it was a pleasure, Miss Bumpus," he declared.  "And sometime, when you
+want to see the Print Works or the Worsted Department, let me know--I'm your
+man.  And--I won't mention it."
+
+She did not answer.  As they made their way back to the office he glanced at
+her covertly, astonished at the emotional effect in her their tour had
+produced.  Though not of an inflammable temperament, he himself was stirred,
+and it was she who, unaccountably, had stirred him: suggested, in these
+processes he saw every day, and in which he was indeed interested, something
+deeper, more significant and human than he had guessed, and which he was unable
+to define....
+
+Janet herself did not know why this intimate view of the mills, of the people
+who worked in them had so greatly moved her.  All day she thought of them.  And
+the distant throb of the machinery she felt when her typewriter was silent
+meant something to her now--she could not say what.  When she found herself
+listening for it, her heart beat faster.  She had lived and worked beside it,
+and it had not existed for her, it had had no meaning, the mills might have
+been empty.  She had, indeed, many, many times seen these men and women, boys
+and girls trooping away from work, she had strolled through the quarters in
+which they lived, speculated on the lands from which they had come; but she had
+never really thought of them as human beings, individuals, with problems and
+joys and sorrows and hopes and fears like her own.  Some such discovery was
+borne in upon her.  And always an essential function of this revelation,
+looming larger than ever in her consciousness, was Ditmar.  It was for Ditmar
+they toiled, in Ditmar's hands were their very existences, his was the
+stupendous responsibility and power.
+
+As the afternoon wore, desire to see these toilers once more took possession of
+her.  From the white cupola perched above the huge mass of the Clarendon Mill
+across the water sounded the single stroke of a bell, and suddenly the air was
+pulsing with sounds flung back and forth by the walls lining the river.
+Seizing her hat and coat, she ran down the stairs and through the vestibule and
+along the track by the canal to the great gates, which her father was in the
+act of unbarring.  She took a stand beside him, by the gatehouse.  Edward
+showed a mild surprise.
+
+"There ain't anything troubling you--is there, Janet?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I wanted to see the hands come out," she said.
+
+Sometimes, as at present, he found Janet's whims unaccountable.
+
+"Well, I should have presumed you'd know what they look like by this time.
+You'd better stay right close to me, they're a rough lot, with no respect or
+consideration for decent folks--these foreigners.  I never could see why the
+government lets 'em all come over here."  He put on the word "foreigners" an
+emphasis of contempt and indignation, pathetic because of its peculiar note of
+futility.  Janet paid no attention to him.  Her ears were strained to catch the
+rumble of feet descending the tower stairs, her eyes to see the vanguard as it
+came from the doorway--the first tricklings of a flood that instantly filled
+the yard and swept onward and outward, irresistibly, through the narrow gorge
+of the gates.  Impossible to realize this as the force which, when distributed
+over the great spaces of the mills, performed an orderly and useful task! for
+it was now a turbid and lawless torrent unconscious of its swollen powers,
+menacing, breathlessly exciting to behold.  It seemed to Janet indeed a torrent
+as she clung to the side of the gatehouse as one might cling to the steep bank
+of a mountain brook after a cloud-burst.  And suddenly she had plunged into it.
+The desire was absurd, perhaps, but not to be denied,--the desire to mix with
+it, feel it, be submerged and swept away by it, losing all sense of identity.
+She heard her father call after her, faintly--the thought crossed her mind that
+his appeals were always faint,--and then she was being carried along the canal,
+eastward, the pressure relaxing somewhat when the draining of the side streets
+began.
+
+She remembered, oddly, the Stanley Street bridge where the many streams met and
+mingled, streams from the Arundel, the Patuxent, the Arlington and the
+Clarendon; and, eager to prolong and intensify her sensations, hurried thither,
+reaching it at last and thrusting her way outward until she had gained the
+middle, where she stood grasping the rail.  The great structure was a-tremble
+from the assault, its footpaths and its roadway overrun with workers, dodging
+between trolleys and trucks,--some darting nimbly, dinner pails in hand, along
+the steel girders.  Doffer boys romped and whistled, young girls in jaunty,
+Faber Street clothes and flowered hats, linked to one another for protection,
+chewed gum and joked, but for the most part these workers were silent, the
+apathy of their faces making a strange contrast with the hurry, hurry of their
+feet and set intentness of their bodies as they sped homeward to the tenements.
+And the clothes of these were drab, save when the occasional colour of a hooded
+peasant's shawl, like the slightly faded tints of an old master, lit up a group
+of women.  Here, going home to their children, were Italian mothers bred
+through centuries to endurance and patience; sallow Jewesses, gaunt, bearded
+Jews with shadowy, half-closed eyes and wrinkled brows, broad-faced
+Lithuanians, flat-headed Russians; swarthy Italian men and pale, blond Germans
+mingled with muddy Syrians and nondescript Canadians.  And suddenly the bridge
+was empty, the army vanished as swiftly as it came!
+
+Janet turned.  Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball of
+fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent.  The delicate lines of the upper
+bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an instant the cupola of
+the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above floated in the azure a cloud of
+pink jeweller's cotton.  Even as she strove to fix these colours in her mind
+they vanished, the western sky faded to magenta, to purple-mauve; the corridor
+of the river darkened, on either side pale lights sparkled from the windows of
+the mills, while down the deepened blue of the waters came floating iridescent
+suds from the washing of the wools.  It was given to her to know that which an
+artist of living memory has called the incommunicable thrill of things....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The after-effects of this experience of Janet's were not what ordinarily are
+called "spiritual," though we may some day arrive at a saner meaning of the
+term, include within it the impulses and needs of the entire organism.  It left
+her with a renewed sense of energy and restlessness, brought her nearer to high
+discoveries of mysterious joys which a voice out of the past called upon her to
+forego, a voice somehow identified with her father!  It was faint, ineffectual.
+In obeying it, would she not lose all life had to give?  When she came in to
+supper her father was concerned about her because, instead of walking home with
+him she had left him without explanation to plunge into the crowd of workers.
+Her evident state of excitement had worried him, her caprice was beyond his
+comprehension.  And how could she explain the motives that led to it?  She was
+sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions the something
+within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and more rebellious,
+more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a nature timorous and less
+vitalized.
+
+After supper, unable to sit still, she went out, and, filled with the spirit of
+adventure, hurried toward Faber Street, which was already thronging with
+people.  It was bright here and gay, the shops glittered, and she wandered from
+window to window until she found herself staring at a suit of blue cloth hung
+on a form, beneath which was a card that read, "Marked down to $20."  And
+suddenly the suggestion flashed into her mind, why shouldn't she buy it?  She
+had the money, she needed a new suit for the winter, the one she possessed was
+getting shabby...but behind the excuse of necessity was the real reason
+triumphantly proclaiming itself--she would look pretty in it, she would be
+transformed, she would be buying a new character to which she would have to
+live up.  The old Janet would be cast off with the old raiment; the new suit
+would announce to herself and to the world a Janet in whom were released all
+those longings hitherto disguised and suppressed, and now become insupportable!
+This was what the purchase meant, a change of existence as complete as that
+between the moth and the butterfly; and the realization of this fact, of the
+audacity she was resolved to commit made her hot as she gazed at the suit.  It
+was modest enough, yet it had a certain distinction of cut, it looked
+expensive: twenty dollars was not cheap, to be sure, but as the placard
+announced, it had the air of being much more costly--even more costly than
+thirty dollars, which seemed fabulous.  Though she strove to remain outwardly
+calm, her heart beat rapidly as she entered the store and asked for the
+costume, and was somewhat reassured by the comportment of the saleswoman, who
+did not appear to think the request preposterous, to regard her as a
+spendthrift and a profligate.  She took down the suit from the form and led
+Janet to a cabinet in the back of the shop, where it was tried on.
+
+"It's worth every bit of thirty dollars," she heard the woman say, "but we've
+had it here for some time, and it's no use for our trade.  You can't sell
+anything like that in Hampton, there's no taste here, it's too good, it ain't
+showy enough.  My, it fits you like it was made for you, and it's just your
+style--and you can see it wants a lady to wear it.  Your old suit is too tight-
+-I guess you've filled out some since you bought it."
+
+She turned Janet around and around, patting the skirt here and there, and then
+stood off a little way, with clasped hands, her expression almost rapturous.
+Janet's breath came fast as she gazed into the mirror and buttoned up the coat.
+Was the woman's admiration cleverly feigned? this image she beheld an illusion?
+or did she really look different, distinguished? and if not beautiful--
+alluring?  She had had a momentary apprehension, almost sickening, that she
+would be too conspicuous, but the saleswoman had anticipated that objection
+with the magical word "lady."
+
+"I'll take it," she announced.
+
+"Well, you couldn't have done better if you'd gone to Boston," declared the
+woman.  "It's one chance in a thousand.  Will you wear it?"
+
+"Yes," said Janet faintly....  "Just put my old suit in a box, and I'll call
+for it in an hour."
+
+The woman's sympathetic smile followed her as she left the shop.  She had an
+instant of hesitation, of an almost panicky desire to go back and repair her
+folly, ere it was too late.  Why had she taken her money with her that evening,
+if not with some deliberate though undefined purpose?  But she was ashamed to
+face the saleswoman again, and her elation was not to be repressed--an elation
+optically presented by a huge electric sign on the farther side of the street
+that flashed through all the colours of the spectrum, surrounded by running
+fire like the running fire in her soul.  Deliciously self-conscious, her gaze
+fixed ahead, she pressed through the Wednesday night crowds, young mill men and
+women in their best clothes, housewives and fathers of families with children
+and bundles.  In front of the Banner office a group blocked the pavement
+staring up at the news bulletin, which she paused to read.  "Five Millionaire
+Directors Indicted in New York," "State Treasurer Accused of Graft," "Murdock
+Fortune Contested by Heirs."  The phrases seemed meaningless, and she hurried
+on again....  She was being noticed!  A man looked at her, twice, the first
+glance accidental, the second arresting, appealing, subtly flattering,
+agitating--she was sure he had turned and was following her.  She hastened her
+steps.  It was wicked, what she was doing, but she gloried in it; and even the
+sight, in burning red letters, of Gruber's Cafe failed to bring on a revulsion
+by its association with her sister Lise.  The fact that Lise had got drunk
+there meant nothing to her now.  She gazed curiously at the illuminated,
+orange-coloured panes separated by curving leads, at the design of a harp in
+green, at the sign "Ladies' Entrance"; listened eagerly to the sounds of voices
+and laughter that came from within.  She looked cautiously over her shoulder, a
+shadow appeared, she heard a voice, low, insinuating....
+
+Four blocks farther down she stopped.  The man was no longer following her.
+She had been almost self-convinced of an intention to go to Eda's--not quite.
+Of late her conscience had reproached her about Eda, Janet had neglected her.
+She told herself she was afraid of Eda's uncanny and somewhat nauseating flair
+for romance; and to show Eda the new suit, though she would relish her friend's
+praise, would be the equivalent of announcing an affair of the heart which she,
+Janet, would have indignantly to deny.  She was not going to Eda's.  She knew
+now where she was going.  A prepared but hitherto undisclosed decree of fate
+had bade her put money in her bag that evening, directed her to the shop to buy
+the dress, and would presently impel her to go to West Street--nay, was even
+now so impelling her.  Ahead of her were the lights of the Chippering Mill, in
+her ears was the rhythmic sound of the looms working of nights on the Bradlaugh
+order.  She reached the canal.  The white arc above the end of the bridge cast
+sharp, black shadows of the branches of the trees on the granite, the thousand
+windows of the mill shone yellow, reflected in the black water.  Twice she
+started to go, twice she paused, held by the presage of a coming event, a
+presage that robbed her of complete surprise when she heard footsteps on the
+bridge, saw the figure of a man halting at the crown of the arch to look back
+at the building he had left, his shoulders squared, his hand firmly clasping
+the rail.  Her heart was throbbing with the looms, and yet she stood
+motionless, until he turned and came rapidly down the slope of the arch and
+stopped in front of her.  Under the arc lamp it was almost as bright as day.
+
+"Miss Bumpus!"  he exclaimed.
+
+"Mr. Ditmar" she said.
+
+"Were you--were you coming to the office?"
+
+"I was just out walking," she told him.  "I thought you were in Boston."
+
+"I came home," he informed her, somewhat superfluously, his eyes never leaving
+her, wandering hungrily from her face to her new suit, and back again to her
+face.  "I got here on the seven o'clock train, I wanted to see about those new
+Blubbers."
+
+"They finished setting them up this afternoon," she said.
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"I asked Mr. Orcutt about it--I thought you might telephone."
+
+"You're a wonder," was his comment.  "Well, we've got a running start on that
+order," and he threw a glance over his shoulder at the mill.  "Everything going
+full speed ahead.  When we put it through I guess I'll have to give you some of
+the credit."
+
+"Oh, I haven't done anything," she protested.
+
+"More than you think.  You've taken so much off my shoulders I couldn't get
+along without you."  His voice vibrated, reminding her of the voices of those
+who made sentimental recitations for the graphophone.  It sounded absurd, yet
+it did not repel her: something within her responded to it.  "Which way were
+you going?" he inquired.
+
+"Home," she said.
+
+"Where do you live?"
+
+"In Fillmore Street."  And she added with a touch of defiance: "It's a little
+street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street."
+
+"Oh yes," he said vaguely, as though he had not understood.  "I'll come with
+you as far as the bridge--along the canal.  I've got so much to say to you."
+
+"Can't you say it to-morrow?"
+
+"No, I can't; there are so many people in the office--so many interruptions, I
+mean.  And then, you never give me a chance."
+
+She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her.  He had proposed the
+route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize them, and her
+pride resented this.  On the other hand, there was the sweet allurement of the
+adventure she craved, which indeed she had come out to seek and by a strange
+fatality found--since he had appeared on the bridge almost as soon as she
+reached it.  The sense of fate was strong upon her.  Curiosity urged her, and,
+thanks to the eulogy she had read of him that day, to the added impression of
+his power conveyed by the trip through the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than
+ever in her consciousness.
+
+"What do you want to say?"  she asked.
+
+"Oh, lots of things."
+
+She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently but
+firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a power stronger
+than herself, a masculine power, was delicious.  Her arm seemed to burn where
+he touched her.
+
+"Have I done something to offend you?"  she heard him say.  "Or is it because
+you don't like me?"
+
+"I'm not sure whether I like you or not," she told him.  "I don't like seeing
+you--this way.  And why should you want to know me and see me outside of the
+office?  I'm only your stenographer."
+
+"Because you're you--because you're different from any woman I ever met.  You
+don't understand what you are--you don't see yourself."
+
+"I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any longer," she
+informed him.
+
+"For God's sake, why?" he exclaimed.  "I've been afraid of that.  Don't go--I
+don't know what I'd do.  I'll be careful--I won't get you talked about."
+
+"Talked about!"  She tore herself away from him.  "Why should you get me talked
+about?" she cried.
+
+He was frightened.  "No, no," he stammered, "I didn't mean--"
+
+"What did you mean?"
+
+"Well--as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we
+shouldn't be friends.  I only meant--I wouldn't do anything to make our
+friendship the subject of gossip."
+
+Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and penitence,
+she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over him.
+
+"Why should you want me?  I don't know anything, I've never had any advantages-
+-and you have so much.  I read an article in the newspaper about you today--Mr.
+Caldwell gave it to me--"
+
+"Did you like it?" he interrupted, naively.
+
+"Well, in some places it was rather funny."
+
+"Funny?  How?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know."  She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic lack of
+restraint hinted at by Caldwell.  "I liked it, but I thought it praised you too
+much, it didn't criticize you enough."
+
+He laughed.  In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing.  From
+the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got anything but
+flattery.
+
+"I want you to criticize me," he said.
+
+But she went on relentlessly:--
+
+"When I read in that article how successful you were, and how you'd got
+everything you'd started out to get, and how some day you might be treasurer
+and president of the Chippering Mill, well--"  Despairing of giving adequate
+expression to her meaning, she added, "I didn't see how we could be friends."
+
+"You wanted me for a friend?" he interrupted eagerly.
+
+
+"I couldn't help knowing you wanted me--you've shown it so plainly.  But I
+didn't see how it could be.  You asked me where I lived--in a little flat
+that's no better than a tenement.  I suppose you would call it a tenement.
+It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of cooking.  You
+couldn't come there--don't you see how impossible it is?  And you wouldn't care
+to be talked about yourself, either," she added vehemently.
+
+This defiant sincerity took him aback.  He groped for words.
+
+"Listen!" he urged.  "I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and
+honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me.  I've come to depend on you.
+And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I thought of
+you, I said to myself 'She'll be pleased, she'll help me to put it over.'"
+
+She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to
+herself, to take her arm again.
+
+"How could I help you?"
+
+"Oh, in a thousand ways--you ought to know, you do a good deal of thinking for
+me, and you can help me by just being there.  I can't explain it, but I feel
+somehow that things will go right.  I've come to depend on you."
+
+He was a little surprised to find himself saying these things he had not
+intended to say, and the lighter touch he had always possessed in dealing with
+the other sex, making him the envied of his friends, had apparently abandoned
+him.  He was appalled at the possibility of losing her.
+
+"I've never met a woman like you," he went on, as she remained silent.  "You're
+different--I don't know what it is about you, but you are."  His voice was low,
+caressing, his head was bent down to her, his shoulder pressed against her
+shoulder.  "I've never had a woman friend before, I've never wanted one until
+now."
+
+She wondered about his wife.
+
+"You've got brains--I've never met a woman with brains."
+
+"Oh, is that why?" she exclaimed.
+
+"You're beautiful," he whispered.  "It's queer, but I didn't know it at first.
+You're more beautiful to-night than I've ever seen you."
+
+They had come almost to Warren Street.  Suddenly realizing that they were
+standing in the light, that people were passing to and fro over the end of the
+bridge, she drew away from him once more, this time more gently.
+
+"Let's walk back a little way," he proposed.
+
+"I must go home--it's late."
+
+"It's only nine o'clock."
+
+"I have an errand to do, and they'll expect me.  Good night."
+
+"Just one more turn!" he pleaded.
+
+But she shook her head, backing away from him.
+
+"You'll see me to-morrow," she told him.  She didn't know why she said that.
+She hurried along Warren Street without once looking over her shoulder; her
+feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the sound of music was in her ears,
+the lights sparkled.  She had had an adventure, at last, an adventure that
+magically had transformed her life!  She was beautiful!  No one had ever told
+her that before.  And he had said that he needed her.  She smiled as, with an
+access of tenderness, in spite of his experience and power she suddenly felt
+years older than Ditmar.  She could help him!...
+
+She was breathless when she reached the shop in Faber Street.
+
+"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said.
+
+
+"Oh no, we don't close until ten," answered the saleswoman.  She was seated
+quietly sewing under the lamp.
+
+"I wonder whether you'd mind if I put on my old suit again, and carried this?"
+Janet asked.
+
+The expression of sympathy and understanding in the woman's eyes, as she rose,
+brought the blood swiftly to Janet's face.  She felt that her secret had been
+guessed.  The change effected, Janet went homeward swiftly, to encounter, on
+the corner of Faber Street, her sister Lise, whose attention was immediately
+attracted by the bundle.
+
+"What have you got there, angel face?" she demanded.
+
+"A new suit," said Janet.
+
+"You don't tell me--where'd you get it? at the Paris?"
+
+"No, at Dowling's."
+
+"Say, I'll bet it was that plain blue thing marked down to twenty!"
+
+"Well, what if it was?"
+
+Lise, when surprised or scornful, had a peculiarly irritating way of whistling
+through her teeth.
+
+"Twenty bucks!  Gee, you'll be getting your clothes in Boston next.  Well, as
+sure as I live when I went by that window the other day when they first knocked
+it down I said to Sadie, `those are the rags Janet would buy if she had the
+ready.'  Have you got another raise out of Ditmar?"
+
+"If I have, it isn't any business of yours," Janet retorted.  "I've got a right
+to do as I please with my own money."
+
+"Oh sure," said Lise, and added darkly: "I guess Ditmar likes to see you look
+well."
+
+After this Janet refused obstinately to speak to Lise, to answer, when they
+reached home, her pleadings and complaints to their mother that Janet had
+bought a new suit and refused to exhibit it.  And finally, when they had got to
+bed, Janet lay long awake in passionate revolt against this new expression of
+the sordidness and lack of privacy in which she was forced to live, made the
+more intolerable by the close, sultry darkness of the room and the snoring of
+Lise.
+
+In the morning, however, after a groping period of semiconsciousness during the
+ringing of the bells, the siren startled her into awareness and alertness.  It
+had not wholly lost its note of terror, but the note had somehow become
+exhilarating, an invitation to adventure and to life; and Lise's sarcastic
+comments as to the probable reasons why she did not put on the new suit had
+host their power of exasperation.  Janet compromised, wearing a blouse of china
+silk hitherto reserved for "best."  The day was bright, and she went rapidly
+toward the mill, glorying in the sunshine and the autumn sharpness of the air;
+and her thoughts were not so much of Ditmar as of something beyond him, of
+which he was the medium.  She was going, not to meet him, but to meet that.
+When she reached the office she felt weak, her fingers trembled as she took off
+her hat and jacket and began to sort out the mail.  And she had to calm herself
+with the assurance that her relationship with Ditmar had undergone no change.
+She had merely met him by the canal, and he had talked to her.  That was all.
+He had, of course, taken her arm: it tingled when she remembered it.  But when
+he suddenly entered the room her heart gave a bound.  He closed the door, he
+took off his hat, and stood gazing at her--while she continued arranging
+letters.  Presently she was forced to glance at him.  His bearing, his look,
+his confident smile all proclaimed that he, at least, believed things to be
+changed.  He glowed with health and vigour, with an aggressiveness from which
+she shrank, yet found delicious.
+
+"How are you this morning?"  he said at last--this morning as distinguished
+from all other mornings.
+
+"I'm well, as usual," she answered.  She herself was sometimes surprised by her
+ability to remain outwardly calm.
+
+"Why did you run away from me last night?"
+
+"I didn't run away, I had to go home," she said, still arranging the letters.
+
+"We could have had a little walk.  I don't believe you had to go home at all.
+You just wanted an excuse to get away from me."
+
+"I didn't need an excuse," she told him.  He moved toward her, but she took a
+paper from the desk and carried it to a file across the room.
+
+"I thought we were going to be friends," he said.
+
+"Being friends doesn't mean being foolish," she retorted.  "And Mr. Orcutt's
+waiting to see you."
+
+"Let him wait."
+
+He sat down at his desk, but his blood was warm, and he read the typewritten
+words of the topmost letter of the pile without so much as grasping the meaning
+of them.  From time to time he glanced up at Janet as she flitted about the
+room.  By George, she was more desirable than he had ever dared to imagine!  He
+felt temporarily balked, but hopeful.  On his way to the mill he had dwelt with
+Epicurean indulgence on this sight of her, and he had not been disappointed.
+He had also thought that he might venture upon more than the mere feasting of
+his eyes, yet found an inspiring alleviation in the fact that she by no means
+absolutely repulsed him.  Her attitude toward him had undergone a subtle
+transformation.  There could be no doubt of that.  She was almost coquettish.
+His eyes lingered.  The china silk blouse was slightly open at the neck,
+suggesting the fullness of her throat; it clung to the outline of her
+shoulders.  Overcome by an impulse he could not control, he got up and went
+toward her, but she avoided him.
+
+"I'll tell Mr. Orcutt you've come," she said, rather breathlessly, as she
+reached the door and opened it.  Ditmar halted in his steps at the sight of the
+tall, spectacled figure of the superintendent on the threshold.
+
+Orcutt hesitated, looking from one to the other.
+
+"I've been waiting for you," he said, after a moment, "the rest of that lot
+didn't come in this morning.  I've telephoned to the freight agent."
+
+Ditmar stared at him uncomprehendingly.  Orcutt repeated the information.
+
+"Oh well, keep after him, get him to trace them."
+
+"I'm doing that," replied the conscientious Orcutt.
+
+"How's everything else going?" Ditmar demanded, with unlooked-for geniality.
+"You mustn't take things too hard, Orcutt, don't wear yourself out."
+
+Mr. Orcutt was relieved.  He had expected an outburst of the exasperation that
+lately had characterized his superior.  They began to chat.  Janet had escaped.
+
+"Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me.  I was just going to ring you up,"
+Ditmar informed him.
+
+"She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things," Orcutt
+observed.  "And she's always on the job.  Only yesterday I saw her going
+through the mill with young Caldwell."
+
+Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held.
+
+"Oh, she went through, did she?"
+
+After Orcutt departed he sat for awhile whistling a tune, from a popular
+musical play, keeping time by drumming with his fingers on the desk.
+
+That Mr. Semple, the mill treasurer, came down from Boston that morning to
+confer with Ditmar was for Janet in the nature of a reprieve.  She sat by her
+window, and as her fingers flew over the typewriter keys she was swept by
+surges of heat in which ecstasy and shame and terror were strangely commingled.
+A voice within her said, "This can't go on, this can't go on!  It's too
+terrible!  Everyone in the office will notice it--there will be a scandal.  I
+ought to go away while there is yet time--to-day."  Though the instinct of
+flight was strong within her, she was filled with rebellion at the thought of
+leaving when Adventure was flooding her drab world with light, even as the mill
+across the waters was transfigured by the heavy golden wash of the autumn sun.
+She had made at length the discovery that Adventure had to do with Man, was
+inconceivable without him.
+
+Racked by these conflicting impulses of self-preservation on the one hand and
+what seemed self-realization on the other, she started when, toward the middle
+of the afternoon, she heard Ditmar's voice summoning her to take his letters;
+and went palpitating, leaving the door open behind her, seating herself on the
+far side of the desk, her head bent over her book.  Her neck, where her hair
+grew in wisps behind her ear, seemed to burn: Ditmar's glance was focussed
+there.  Her hands were cold as she wrote....  Then, like a deliverer, she saw
+young Caldwell coming in from the outer office, holding a card in his hand
+which he gave to Ditmar, who sat staring at it.
+
+"Siddons?" he said.  "Who's Siddons?"
+
+Janet, who had risen, spoke up.
+
+"Why, he's been making the Hampton `survey.'  You wrote him you'd see him--
+don't you remember, Mr. Ditmar?"
+
+"Don't go!" exclaimed Ditmar.  "You can't tell what those confounded reformers
+will accuse you of if you don't have a witness."
+
+Janet sat down again.  The sharpness of Ditmar's tone was an exhilarating
+reminder of the fact that, in dealing with strangers, he had come more or less
+to rely on her instinctive judgment; while the implied appeal of his manner on
+such occasions emphasized the pleasurable sense of his dependence, of her own
+usefulness.  Besides, she had been curious about the `survey' at the time it
+was first mentioned, she wished to hear Ditmar's views concerning it.  Mr.
+Siddons proved to be a small and sallow young man with a pointed nose and
+bright, bulbous brown eyes like a chipmunk's.  Indeed, he reminded one of a
+chipmunk.  As he whisked himself in and seized Ditmar's hand he gave a confused
+impression of polite self-effacement as well as of dignity and self-assertion;
+he had the air of one who expects opposition, and though by no means desiring
+it, is prepared to deal with it.  Janet smiled.  She had a sudden impulse to
+drop the heavy book that lay on the corner of the desk to see if he would jump.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Ditmar?" he said.  "I've been hoping to have this
+pleasure."
+
+"My secretary, Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar.
+
+Mr. Siddons quivered and bowed.  Ditmar, sinking ponderously into his chair,
+seemed suddenly, ironically amused, grinning at Janet as he opened a drawer of
+his desk and offered the visitor a cigar.
+
+"Thanks, I don't smoke," said Mr. Siddons.
+
+Ditmar lit one for himself.
+
+"Now, what can I do for you?" he asked.
+
+"Well, as I wrote you in my letter, I was engaged to make as thorough an
+examination as possible of the living conditions and housing of the operatives
+in the city of Hampton.  I'm sure you'd be interested in hearing something of
+the situation we found."
+
+"I suppose you've been through our mills," said Ditmar.
+
+"No, the fact is--"
+
+"You ought to go through.  I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a slight
+emphasis on the pronoun.  "We rather pride ourselves on making things
+comfortable and healthy for our people."
+
+"I've no doubt of it--in fact, I've been so informed.  It's because of your
+concern for the welfare of your workers in the mills that I ventured to come
+and talk to you of how most of them live when they're at home," replied
+Siddons, as Janet thought, rather neatly.  "Perhaps, though living in Hampton,
+you don't quite realize what the conditions are.  I know a man who has lived in
+Boston ten years and who hasn't ever seen the Bunker Hill monument."
+
+"The Bunker Hill monument's a public affair," retorted Ditmar, "anybody can go
+there who has enough curiosity and interest.  But I don't see how you can
+expect me to follow these people home and make them clean up their garbage and
+wash their babies.  I shouldn't want anybody to interfere with my private
+affairs."
+
+"But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace?"
+Siddons objected.  "Mr. Ditmar, I've seen block after block of tenements ready
+to crumble.  There are no provisions for foundations, thickness of walls, size
+of timbers and columns, and if these houses had been deliberately erected to
+make a bonfire they couldn't have answered the purpose better.  If it were not
+for the danger to life and the pity of making thousands of families homeless, a
+conflagration would be a blessing, although I believe the entire north or south
+side of the city would go under certain conditions.  The best thing you could
+do would be to burn whole rows of these tenements, they are ideal breeding
+grounds for disease.  In the older sections of the city you've got hundreds of
+rear houses here, houses moved back on the lots, in some extreme cases with
+only four-foot courts littered with refuse,--houses without light, without
+ventilation, and many of the rooms where these people are cooking and eating
+and sleeping are so damp and foul they're not fit to put dogs in.  You've got
+some blocks with a density of over five hundred to the acre, and your average
+density is considerably over a hundred."
+
+"Are things any worse than in any other manufacturing city?" asked Ditmar.
+
+"That isn't the point," said Siddons.  "The point is that they're bad, they're
+dangerous, they're inhuman.  If you could go into these tenements as I have
+done and see the way some of these people live, it would make you sick the
+Poles and Lithuanians and Italians especially.  You wouldn't treat cattle that
+way.  In some households of five rooms, including the kitchen, I found as many
+as fourteen, fifteen, and once seventeen people living.  You've got an alarming
+infant death-rate."
+
+"Isn't it because these people want to live that way?" Ditmar inquired.  "They
+actually like it, they wouldn't be happy in anything but a pig-sty--they had
+'em in Europe.  And what do you expect us to do?  Buy land and build flats for
+them?  Inside of a month they'd have all the woodwork stripped off for
+kindling, the drainage stopped up, the bathtubs filled with ashes.  I know,
+because it's been tried."
+
+Tilted back in his chair, he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and his
+eyes sought Janet's.  She avoided them, resenting a little the assumption of
+approval she read in them.  Her mind, sensitive to new ideas, had been keenly
+stimulated as she listened to Siddons, who began patiently to dwell once more
+on the ill effect of the conditions he had discovered on the welfare of the
+entire community.  She had never thought of this.  She was surprised that
+Ditmar should seem to belittle it.  Siddons was a new type in her experience.
+She could understand and to a certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing
+exasperation with him; he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he
+spent most of his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off
+Ditmar's objections he was forever indulging in such maddening phrases as,
+"Before we come to that, let me say a word just here."  Ditmar hated words.
+His outbursts, his efforts to stop the flow of them were not unlike the futile
+charges of a large and powerful animal harassed by a smaller and more agile
+one.  With nimble politeness, with an exasperating air of deference to Ditmar's
+opinions, Mr. Siddons gave ground, only to return to the charge; yet, despite a
+manner and method which, when contrasted to Ditmar's, verged on the ludicrous,
+Mr. Siddons had a force and fire of his own, nervous, almost fanatical: when he
+dwelt on the misery he had seen, and his voice trembled from the intensity of
+his feeling, Janet began to be moved.  It was odd, considering the struggle for
+existence of her own family, that these foreigners had remained outside the
+range of her sympathy.
+
+"I guess you'll find," Ditmar had interrupted peremptorily, "I guess you'll
+find, if you look up the savings banks statistics, these people have got
+millions tucked away.  And they send a lot of it to the other side, they go
+back themselves, and though they live like cattle, they manage to buy land.
+Ask the real estate men.  Why, I could show you a dozen who worked in the mills
+a few years ago and are capitalists to-day."
+
+"I don't doubt it, Mr. Ditmar," Siddons gracefully conceded.  "But what does it
+prove?  Merely the cruelty of an economic system based on ruthless competition.
+The great majority who are unable to survive the test pay the price.  And the
+community also pays the price, the state and nation pay it.  And we have this
+misery on our consciences.  I've no doubt you could show me some who have grown
+rich, but if you would let me I could take you to families in desperate want,
+living in rooms too dark to read in at midday in clear weather, where the
+husband doesn't get more than seven dollars a week when the mills are running
+full time, where the woman has to look out for the children and work for the
+lodgers, and even with lodgers they get into debt, and the woman has to go into
+the mills to earn money for winter clothing.  I've seen enough instances of
+this kind to offset the savings bank argument.  And even then, when you have a
+family where the wife and older children work, where the babies are put out to
+board, where there are three and four lodgers in a room, why do you suppose
+they live that way?  Isn't it in the hope of freeing themselves ultimately from
+these very conditions?  And aren't these conditions a disgrace to Hampton and
+America?"
+
+"Well, what am I to do about it?" Ditmar demanded.
+
+"I see that these operatives have comfortable and healthful surroundings in the
+mill, I've spent money to put in the latest appliances.  That's more than a
+good many mills I could mention attempt."
+
+"You are a person of influence, Mr. Ditmar, you have more influence than any
+man in Hampton.  You can bring pressure to bear on the city council to enforce
+and improve the building ordinances, you can organize a campaign of public
+opinion against certain property owners."
+
+"Yes," retorted Ditmar, "and what then?  You raise the rents, and you won't get
+anybody to live in the houses.  They'll move out to settlements like Glendale
+full of dirt and vermin and disease and live as they're accustomed to.  What
+you reformers are actually driving at is that we should raise wages--isn't it?
+If we raised wages they'd live like rats anyway.  I give you credit for
+sincerity, Mr. Siddons, but I don't want you to think I'm not as much
+interested in the welfare of these people as you and the men behind you.  The
+trouble is, you only see one side of this question.  When you're in my
+position, you're up against hard facts.  We can't pay a dubber or a drawing
+tender any more than he's worth, whether he has a wife or children in the mills
+or whether he hasn't.  We're in competition with other mills, we're in
+competition with the South.  We can't regulate the cost of living.  We do our
+best to make things right in the mills, and that's all we can do.  We can't
+afford to be sentimental about life.  Competition's got to be the rule, the
+world's made that way.  Some are efficient and some aren't.  Good God, any man
+who's had anything to do with hiring labour and running a plant has that
+drummed into him hard.  You talk about ordinances, laws--there are enough laws
+and ordinances in this city and in this state right now.  If we have any more
+the mills will have to shut down, and these people will starve--all of 'em."
+Ditmar's chair came down on its four legs, and he flung his cigar away.  "Send
+me a copy of your survey when it's published.  I'll look it over."
+
+"Well, what do you think of the nerve of a man like that?"  Ditmar exploded,
+when Mr. Siddons had bowed himself out.  "Comes in here to advise me that it's
+my business to look out for the whole city of Hampton.  I'd like to see him up
+against this low-class European labour trying to run a mill with them.  They're
+here one day and there the next, they don't know what loyalty is.  You've got
+to drive 'em--if you give 'em an inch they'll jump at your throat, dynamite
+your property.  Why, there's nothing I wouldn't do for them if I could depend
+on them, I'd build 'em houses, I'd have automobiles to take 'em home.  As it
+is, I do my best, though they don't deserve it,--in slack seasons I run half
+time when I oughtn't to be running at all."
+
+His tone betrayed an effort of self-justification, and his irritation had been
+increased by the suspicion in Janet of a certain lack of the sympathy on which
+he had counted.  She sat silent, gazing searchingly at his face.
+
+"What's the matter?"  he demanded.  "You don't mean to say you agree with that
+kind of talk?"
+
+"I was wondering--" she began.
+
+"What?"
+
+"If you were--if you could really understand those who are driven to work in
+order to keep alive?"
+
+"Understand them!  Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Because--because you're on top, you've always been successful, you're pretty
+much your own master--and that makes it different.  I'm not blaming you--in
+your place I'd be the same, I'm sure.  But this man, Siddons, made me think.
+I've lived like that, you see, I know what it is, in a way."
+
+"Not like these foreigners!" he protested.
+
+"Oh, almost as bad," she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped suddenly in
+his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the startled air of the
+male who has inadvertently touched off one of the many hidden springs in the
+feminine emotional mechanism.  "How do you know what it is to live in a
+squalid, ugly street, in dark little rooms that smell of cooking, and not be
+able to have any of the finer, beautiful things in life?  Unless you'd wanted
+these things as I've wanted them, you couldn't know.  Oh, I can understand what
+it would feel like to strike, to wish to dynamite men like you!"
+
+"You can!" he exclaimed in amazement.  "You!"
+
+"Yes, me.  You don't understand these people, you couldn't feel sorry for them
+any more than you could feel sorry for me.  You want them to run your mills for
+you, you don't want to know how they feel or how they live, and you just want
+me--for your pleasure."
+
+He was indeed momentarily taken aback by this taunt, which no woman in his
+experience had had the wit and spirit to fling at him, but he was not the type
+of man to be shocked by it.  On the contrary, it swept away his irritation, and
+as a revelation of her inner moltenness stirred him to a fever heat as he
+approached and stood over her.
+
+"You little--panther!" he whispered.  "You want beautiful things, do you?
+Well, I'll give 'em to you.  I'll take care of you."
+
+"Do you think I want them from you?" she retorted, almost in tears.  "Do you
+think I want anybody to take care of me?  That shows how little you know me.  I
+want to be independent, to do my work and pay for what I get."
+
+Janet herself was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings.
+Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would indeed
+have despised him.  The ruthlessness of his laugh--the laugh of the red-blooded
+man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook her with a wild appeal.
+"What do I care about any others--I want you!"  such was its message.  And
+against this paradoxical wish to be conquered, intensified by the magnetic
+field of his passion, battled her self-assertion, her pride, her innate desire
+to be free, to escape now from a domination the thought of which filled her
+with terror.  She felt his cheek brushing against her hair, his fingers
+straying along her arm; for the moment she was hideously yet deliciously
+powerless.  Then the emotion of terror conquered--terror of the unknown--and
+she sprang away, dropping her note-book and running to the window, where she
+stood swaying.
+
+"Janet, you're killing me," she heard him say.  "For God's sake, why can't you
+trust me?"
+
+She did not answer, but gazed out at the primrose lights beginning to twinkle
+fantastically in the distant mills.  Presently she turned.  Ditmar was in his
+chair.  She crossed the room to the electric switch, turning on the flood of
+light, picked up her tote-book and sat down again.
+
+"Don't you intend to answer your letters?"  she asked.
+
+He reached out gropingly toward the pile of his correspondence, seized the
+topmost letter, and began to dictate, savagely.  She experienced a certain
+exultation, a renewed and pleasurable sense of power as she took down his
+words.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V1
+by Winston Churchill
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Dwelling Place of Light, V1, by Churchill
+#2 in our series by this Winston Churchill
+
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+Title: The Dwelling Place of Light, V1
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: January, 2003  [Etext #3646]
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+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+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
+
+1917
+
+
+
+VOLUME 1.
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+In this modern industrial civilization of which we are sometimes wont to
+boast, a certain glacier-like process may be observed.  The bewildered,
+the helpless-- and there are many--are torn from the parent rock,
+crushed, rolled smooth, and left stranded in strange places.  Thus was
+Edward Bumpus severed and rolled from the ancestral ledge, from the firm
+granite of seemingly stable and lasting things, into shifting shale;
+surrounded by fragments of cliffs from distant lands he had never seen.
+Thus, at five and fifty, he found himself gate-keeper of the leviathan
+Chippering Mill in the city of Hampton.
+
+That the polyglot, smoky settlement sprawling on both sides of an
+historic river should be a part of his native New England seemed at times
+to be a hideous dream; nor could he comprehend what had happened to him,
+and to the world of order and standards and religious sanctions into
+which he had been born.  His had been a life of relinquishments.  For a
+long time he had clung to the institution he had been taught to believe
+was the rock of ages, the Congregational Church, finally to abandon it;
+even that assuming a form fantastic and unreal, as embodied in the
+edifice three blocks distant from Fillmore Street which he had attended
+for a brief time, some ten years before, after his arrival in Hampton.
+The building, indeed, was symbolic of a decadent and bewildered
+Puritanism in its pathetic attempt to keep abreast with the age, to
+compromise with anarchy, merely achieving a nondescript medley of
+rounded, knob-like towers covered with mulberry-stained shingles.  And
+the minister was sensational and dramatic.  He looked like an actor, he
+aroused in Edward Bumpus an inherent prejudice that condemned the stage.
+Half a block from this tabernacle stood a Roman Catholic Church,
+prosperous, brazen, serene, flaunting an eternal permanence amidst the
+chaos which had succeeded permanence!
+
+There were, to be sure, other Protestant churches where Edward Bumpus and
+his wife might have gone.  One in particular, which he passed on his way
+to the mill, with its terraced steeple and classic facade, preserved all
+the outward semblance of the old Order that once had seemed so enduring
+and secure.  He hesitated to join the decorous and dwindling
+congregation,--the remains of a social stratum from which he had been
+pried loose; and--more irony--this street, called Warren, of arching elms
+and white-gabled houses, was now the abiding place of those prosperous
+Irish who had moved thither from the tenements and ruled the city.
+
+On just such a street in the once thriving New England village of Dolton
+had Edward been born.  In Dolton Bumpus was once a name of names, rooted
+there since the seventeenth century, and if you had cared to listen he
+would have told you, in a dialect precise but colloquial, the history of
+a family that by right of priority and service should have been destined
+to inherit the land, but whose descendants were preserved to see it
+delivered to the alien.  The God of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards
+had been tried in the balance and found wanting.  Edward could never
+understand this; or why the Universe, so long static and immutable, had
+suddenly begun to move.  He had always been prudent, but in spite of
+youthful "advantages," of an education, so called, from a sectarian
+college on a hill, he had never been taught that, while prudence may
+prosper in a static world, it is a futile virtue in a dynamic one.
+Experience even had been powerless to impress this upon him.  For more
+than twenty years after leaving college he had clung to a clerkship in a
+Dolton mercantile establishment before he felt justified in marrying
+Hannah, the daughter of Elmer Wench, when the mercantile establishment
+amalgamated with a rival--and Edward's services were no longer required.
+During the succession of precarious places with decreasing salaries he
+had subsequently held a terrified sense of economic pressure had
+gradually crept over him, presently growing strong enough, after two
+girls had arrived, to compel the abridgment of the family ....It would be
+painful to record in detail the cracking-off process, the slipping into
+shale, the rolling, the ending up in Hampton, where Edward had now for
+some dozen years been keeper of one of the gates in the frowning brick
+wall bordering the canal,--a position obtained for him by a compassionate
+but not too prudent childhood friend who had risen in life and knew the
+agent of the Chippering Mill, Mr. Claude Ditmar.  Thus had virtue failed
+to hold its own.
+
+One might have thought in all these years he had sat within the gates
+staring at the brick row of the company's boarding houses on the opposite
+bank of the canal that reflection might have brought a certain degree of
+enlightenment.  It was not so.  The fog of Edward's bewilderment never
+cleared, and the unformed question was ever clamouring for an answer--how
+had it happened?  Job's cry. How had it happened to an honest and
+virtuous man, the days of whose forebears had been long in the land which
+the Lord their God had given them?  Inherently American, though lacking
+the saving quality of push that had been the making of men like Ditmar,
+he never ceased to regard with resentment and distrust the hordes of
+foreigners trooping between the pillars, though he refrained from
+expressing these sentiments in public; a bent, broad shouldered, silent
+man of that unmistakable physiognomy which, in the seventeenth century,
+almost wholly deserted the old England for the new.  The ancestral
+features were there, the lips--covered by a grizzled moustache moulded
+for the precise formation that emphasizes such syllables as el, the
+hooked nose and sallow cheeks, the grizzled brows and grey eyes drawn
+down at the corners.  But for all its ancestral strength of feature, it
+was a face from which will had been extracted, and lacked the fire and
+fanaticism, the indomitable hardness it should have proclaimed, and which
+have been so characteristically embodied in Mr. St. Gaudens's statue of
+the Puritan.  His clothes were slightly shabby, but always neat.
+
+Little as one might have guessed it, however, what may be called a
+certain transmuted enthusiasm was alive in him.  He had a hobby almost
+amounting to an obsession, not uncommon amongst Americans who have
+slipped downward in the social scale.  It was the Bumpus Family in
+America.  He collected documents about his ancestors and relations, he
+wrote letters with a fine, painful penmanship on a ruled block he bought
+at Hartshorne's drug store to distant Bumpuses in Kansas and Illinois and
+Michigan, common descendants of Ebenezer, the original immigrant, of
+Dolton.  Many of these western kinsmen answered: not so the magisterial
+Bumpus who lived in Boston on the water side of Beacon, whom likewise he
+had ventured to address,--to the indignation and disgust of his elder
+daughter, Janet.
+
+"Why are you so proud of Ebenezer?" she demanded once, scornfully.
+
+"Why?  Aren't we descended from him?"
+
+"How many generations?"
+
+"Seven," said Edward, promptly, emphasizing the last syllable.
+
+Janet was quick at figures.  She made a mental calculation.
+
+"Well, you've got one hundred and twenty-seven other ancestors of
+Ebenezer's time, haven't you?"
+
+Edward was a little surprised.  He had never thought of this, but his
+ardour for Ebenezer remained undampened.  Genealogy--his own--had become
+his religion, and instead of going to church he spent his Sunday mornings
+poring over papers of various degrees of discolouration, making careful
+notes on the ruled block.
+
+This consciousness of his descent from good American stock that had
+somehow been deprived of its heritage, while a grievance to him, was also
+a comfort. It had a compensating side, in spite of the lack of sympathy
+of his daughters and his wife.  Hannah Bumpus took the situation more
+grimly: she was a logical projection in a new environment of the
+religious fatalism of ancestors whose God was a God of vengeance.  She
+did not concern herself as to what all this vengeance was about; life was
+a trap into which all mortals walked sooner or later, and her particular
+trap had a treadmill,--a round of household duties she kept whirling with
+an energy that might have made their fortunes if she had been the head of
+the family.  It is bad to be a fatalist unless one has an
+incontrovertible belief in one's destiny,--which Hannah had not.  But she
+kept the little flat with its worn furniture,--which had known so many
+journeys--as clean as a merchant ship of old Salem, and when it was
+scoured and dusted to her satisfaction she would sally forth to
+Bonnaccossi's grocery and provision store on the corner to do her
+bargaining in competition with the Italian housewives of the
+neighborhood.  She was wont, indeed, to pause outside for a moment, her
+quick eye encompassing the coloured prints of red and yellow jellies cast
+in rounded moulds, decked with slices of orange, the gaudy boxes of
+cereals and buckwheat flour, the "Brookfield" eggs in packages.
+Significant, this modern package system, of an era of flats with little
+storage space.  She took in at a glance the blue lettered placard
+announcing the current price of butterine, and walked around to the other
+side of the store, on Holmes Street, where the beef and bacon hung, where
+the sidewalk stands were filled, in the autumn, with cranberries, apples,
+cabbages, and spinach.
+
+With little outer complaint she had adapted herself to the constantly
+lowering levels to which her husband had dropped, and if she hoped that
+in Fillmore Street they had reached bottom, she did not say so.  Her
+unbetrayed regret was for the loss of what she would have called
+"respectability"; and the giving up, long ago, in the little city which
+had been their home, of the servant girl had been the first wrench.
+Until they came to Hampton they had always lived in houses, and her
+adaptation to a flat had been hard--a flat without a parlour. Hannah
+Bumpus regarded a parlour as necessary to a respectable family as a
+wedding ring to a virtuous woman.  Janet and Lise would be growing up,
+there would be young men, and no place to see them save the sidewalks.
+The fear that haunted her came true, and she never was reconciled.  The
+two girls went to the public schools, and afterwards, inevitably, to
+work, and it seemed to be a part of her punishment for the sins of her
+forefathers that she had no more control over them than if they had been
+boarders; while she looked on helplessly, they did what they pleased;
+Janet, whom she never understood, was almost as much a source of
+apprehension as Lise, who became part and parcel of all Hannah deemed
+reprehensible in this new America which she refused to recognize and
+acknowledge as her own country.
+
+To send them through the public schools had been a struggle.  Hannah used
+to lie awake nights wondering what would happen if Edward became sick.
+It worried her that they never saved any money: try as she would to cut
+the expenses down, there was a limit of decency; New England thrift,
+hitherto justly celebrated, was put to shame by that which the foreigners
+displayed, and which would have delighted the souls of gentlemen of the
+Manchester school.  Every once in a while there rose up before her
+fabulous instances of this thrift, of Italians and Jews who, ignorant
+emigrants, had entered the mills only a few years before they, the
+Bumpuses, had come to Hampton, and were now independent property owners.
+Still rankling in Hannah's memory was a day when Lise had returned from
+school, dark and mutinous, with a tale of such a family.  One of the
+younger children was a classmate.
+
+"They live on Jordan Street in a house, and Laura has roller skates.  I
+don't see why I can't."
+
+This was one of the occasions on which Hannah had given vent to her
+indignation.  Lise was fourteen.  Her open rebellion was less annoying
+than Janet's silent reproach, but at least she had something to take hold
+of.
+
+"Well, Lise," she said, shifting the saucepan to another part of the
+stove, "I guess if your father and I had put both you girls in the mills
+and crowded into one room and cooked in a corner, and lived on onions and
+macaroni, and put four boarders each in the other rooms, I guess we could
+have had a house, too.  We can start in right now, if you're willing."
+
+But Lise had only looked darker.
+
+"I don't see why father can't make money--other men do."
+
+"Isn't he working as hard as he can to send you to school, and give you a
+chance?"
+
+"I don't want that kind of a chance.  There's Sadie Howard at school--she
+don't have to work.  She liked me before she found out where I lived..."
+
+There was an element of selfishness in Hannah's mania for keeping busy,
+for doing all their housework and cooking herself.  She could not bear to
+have her daughters interfere; perhaps she did not want to give herself
+time to think. Her affection for Edward, such as it was, her loyalty to
+him, was the logical result of a conviction ingrained in early youth that
+marriage was an indissoluble bond; a point of views once having a
+religious sanction, no less powerful now that--all unconsciously--it had
+deteriorated into a superstition. Hannah, being a fatalist, was not
+religious.  The beliefs of other days, when she had donned her best dress
+and gone to church on Sundays, had simply lapsed and left--habits.  No
+new beliefs had taken their place....
+
+Even after Janet and Lise had gone to work the household never seemed to
+gain that margin of safety for which Hannah yearned.  Always, when they
+were on the verge of putting something by, some untoward need or accident
+seemed to arise on purpose to swallow it up: Edward, for instance, had
+been forced to buy a new overcoat, the linoleum on the dining-room floor
+must be renewed, and Lise had had a spell of sickness, losing her
+position in a flower shop.  Afterwards, when she became a saleslady in
+the Bagatelle, that flamboyant department store in Faber Street, she
+earned four dollars and a half a week.  Two of these were supposed to go
+into the common fund, but there were clothes to buy; Lise loved finery,
+and Hannah had not every week the heart to insist.  Even when, on an
+occasional Saturday night the girl somewhat consciously and defiantly
+flung down the money on the dining-room table she pretended not to notice
+it.  But Janet, who was earning six dollars as a stenographer in the
+office of the Chippering Mill, regularly gave half of hers.
+
+The girls could have made more money as operatives, but strangely enough
+in the Bumpus family social hopes were not yet extinct.
+
+Sharply, rudely, the cold stillness of the winter mornings was broken by
+agitating waves of sound, penetrating the souls of sleepers.  Janet would
+stir, her mind still lingering on some dream, soon to fade into the
+inexpressible, in which she had been near to the fulfilment of a heart's
+desire.  Each morning, as the clamour grew louder, there was an interval
+of bewilderment, of revulsion, until the realization came of mill bells
+swinging in high cupolas above the river,--one rousing another.  She
+could even distinguish the bells: the deep-toned, penetrating one
+belonged to the Patuxent Mill, over on the west side, while the Arundel
+had a high, ominous reverberation like a fire bell. When at last the
+clangings had ceased she would lie listening to the overtones throbbing
+in the air, high and low, high and low; lie shrinking, awaiting the
+second summons that never failed to terrify, the siren of the Chippering
+Mill,--to her the cry of an insistent, hungry monster demanding its
+daily food, the symbol of a stern, ugly, and unrelenting necessity.
+
+Beside her in the bed she could feel the soft body of her younger sister
+cuddling up to her in fright.  In such rare moments as this her heart
+melted towards Lise, and she would fling a protecting arm about her.  A
+sense of Lise's need of protection invaded her, a sharp conviction, like
+a pang, that Lise was destined to wander: Janet was never so conscious of
+the feeling as in this dark hour, though it came to her at other times,
+when they were not quarreling.  Quarreling seemed to be the normal
+reaction between them.
+
+It was Janet, presently, who would get up, shivering, close the window,
+and light the gas, revealing the room which the two girls shared
+together.  Against the middle of one wall was the bed, opposite this a
+travel-dented walnut bureau with a marble top, with an oval mirror into
+which were stuck numerous magazine portraits of the masculine and
+feminine talent adorning the American stage, a preponderance of the music
+hall variety.  There were pictures of other artists whom the recondite
+would have recognized as "movie" stars, amazing yet veridic stories of
+whose wealth Lise read in the daily press: all possessed limousines--an
+infallible proof, to Lise, of the measure of artistic greatness.  Between
+one of these movie millionaires and an ex-legitimate lady who now found
+vaudeville profitable was wedged the likeness of a popular idol whose
+connection with the footlights would doubtless be contingent upon a
+triumphant acquittal at the hands of a jury of her countrymen, and whose
+trial for murder, in Chicago, was chronicled daily in thousands of
+newspapers and followed by Lise with breathless interest and sympathy.
+She was wont to stare at this lady while dressing and exclaim:--
+
+"Say, I hope they put it all over that district attorney!"
+
+To such sentiments, though deeply felt by her sister, Janet remained
+cold, though she was, as will be seen, capable of enthusiasms.  Lise was
+a truer daughter of her time and country in that she had the national
+contempt for law, was imbued with the American hero-worship of criminals
+that caused the bombardment of Cora Wellman's jail with candy, fruit and
+flowers and impassioned letters.  Janet recalled there had been others
+before Mrs. Wellman, caught within the meshes of the law, who had incited
+in her sister a similar partisanship.
+
+It was Lise who had given the note of ornamentation to the bedroom.
+Against the cheap faded lilac and gold wall-paper were tacked
+photo-engravings that had taken the younger sister's fancy: a young man
+and woman, clad in scanty bathing suits, seated side by side in a
+careening sail boat,--the work of a popular illustrator whose manly and
+womanly "types" had become national ideals.
+
+There were other drawings, if not all by the same hand, at least by the
+same school; one, sketched in bold strokes, of a dinner party in a
+stately neo-classic dining-room, the table laden with flowers and silver,
+the bare-throated women with jewels.  A more critical eye than Lise's,
+gazing upon this portrayal of the Valhalla of success, might have
+detected in the young men, immaculate in evening dress, a certain effort
+to feel at home, to converse naturally, which their square jaws and
+square shoulders belied. This was no doubt the fault of the artist's
+models, who had failed to live up to the part.  At any rate, the sight of
+these young gods of leisure, the contemplation of the stolid butler and
+plush footmen in the background never failed to make Lise's heart beat
+faster.
+
+On the marble of the bureau amidst a litter of toilet articles, and
+bought by Lise for a quarter at the Bagatelle bargain counter, was an
+oval photograph frame from which the silver wash had begun to rub off,
+and the band of purple velvet inside the metal had whitened.  The frame
+always contained the current object of Lise's affections, though the
+exhibits--as Janet said--were subject to change without notice.  The
+Adonis who now reigned had black hair cut in the prevailing Hampton
+fashion, very long in front and hanging down over his eyes like a
+Scottish terrier's; very long behind, too, but ending suddenly, shaved in
+a careful curve at the neck and around the ears.  It had almost the
+appearance of a Japanese wig.  The manly beauty of Mr. Max Wylie was of
+the lantern-jawed order, and in his photograph he conveyed the astonished
+and pained air of one who has been suddenly seized by an invisible
+officer of the law from behind.  This effect, one presently perceived,
+was due to the high, stiff collar, the "Torture Brand," Janet called it,
+when she and her sister were engaged in one of their frequent
+controversies about life in general: the obvious retort to this remark,
+which Lise never failed to make, was that Janet could boast of no beaux
+at all.
+
+It is only fair to add that the photograph scarcely did Mr. Wylie
+justice.  In real life he did not wear the collar, he was free and easy
+in his manners, sure of his powers of conquest.  As Lise observed, he had
+made a home-run with her at Slattery's Riverside Park.  "Sadie Hartmann
+was sure sore when I tangoed off with him," she would observe
+reminiscently....
+
+It was Lise's habit to slight her morning toilet, to linger until the
+last minute in bed, which she left in reluctant haste to stand before the
+bureau frantically combing out kinks of the brown hair falling over her
+shoulders before jamming it down across her forehead in the latest mode.
+Thus occupied, she revealed a certain petulant beauty.  Like the majority
+of shop-girls, she was small, but her figure was good, her skin white;
+her discontented mouth gave her the touch of piquancy apt to play havoc
+with the work of the world.  In winter breakfast was eaten by the light
+of a rococo metal lamp set in the centre of the table.  This was to save
+gas.  There was usually a rump steak and potatoes, bread and "creamery"
+butterine, and the inevitable New England doughnuts.  At six thirty the
+whistles screeched again,--a warning note, the signal for Edward's
+departure; and presently, after a brief respite, the heavy bells once
+more began their clamour, not to die down until ten minutes of seven,
+when the last of the stragglers had hurried through the mill gates.
+
+The Bumpus flat included the second floor of a small wooden house whose
+owner had once been evilly inspired to paint it a livid clay-yellow--as
+though insisting that ugliness were an essential attribute of
+domesticity.  A bay ran up the two stories, and at the left were two
+narrow doorways, one for each flat.  On the right the house was separated
+from its neighbour by a narrow interval, giving but a precarious light to
+the two middle rooms, the diningroom and kitchen.  The very
+unattractiveness of such a home, however, had certain compensations for
+Janet, after the effort of early rising had been surmounted, felt a real
+relief in leaving it; a relief, too, in leaving Fillmore Street, every
+feature of which was indelibly fixed in her mind, opposite was the blind
+brick face of a warehouse, and next to that the converted dwelling house
+that held the shop of A. Bauer, with the familiar replica of a green
+ten-cent trading stamp painted above it and the somewhat ironical
+announcement--when boar frost whitened the pavement--that ice-cold soda
+was to be had within, as well as cigars and tobacco, fruit and candy.
+Then came a tenement, under which two enterprising Greeks by the name of
+Pappas--spelled Papas lower down-- conducted a business called "The
+Gentleman," a tailoring, pressing, and dyeing establishment.  Janet could
+see the brilliantined black heads of the two proprietors bending over
+their boards, and sometimes they would be lifted to smile at her as she
+passed.  The Pappas Brothers were evidently as happy in this drab
+environment as they had ever been on the sunny mountain slopes of Hellas,
+and Janet sometimes wondered at this, for she had gathered from her
+education in the Charming public school that Greece was beautiful.
+
+She was one of the unfortunate who love beauty, who are condemned to
+dwell in exile, unacquainted with what they love.  Desire was
+incandescent within her breast.  Desire for what?  It would have been
+some relief to know.  She could not, like Lise, find joy and
+forgetfulness at dance halls, at the "movies," at Slattery's Riverside
+Park in summer, in "joy rides" with the Max Wylies of Hampton.  And
+beside, the Max Wylies were afraid of her.  If at times she wished for
+wealth, it was because wealth held the magic of emancipation from
+surroundings against which her soul revolted.  Vividly idealized but
+unconfided was the memory of a seaside village, the scene of one of the
+brief sojourns of her childhood, where the air was fragrant with the
+breath of salt marshes, where she recalled, through the vines of a porch,
+a shining glimpse of the sea at the end of a little street....
+
+Next to Pappas Brothers was the grey wooden building of Mule Spinners'
+Hall, that elite organization of skilled labour, and underneath it the
+store of Johnny Tiernan, its windows piled up with stoves and stovepipes,
+sheet iron and cooking utensils.  Mr. Tiernan, like the Greeks, was
+happy, too: unlike the Greeks, he never appeared to be busy, and yet he
+throve.  He was very proud of the business in which he had invested his
+savings, but he seemed to have other affairs lying blithely on his mind,
+affairs of moment to the community, as the frequent presence of the huge
+policemen, aldermen, and other important looking persons bore witness.
+He hailed by name Italians, Greeks, Belgians, Syrians, and "French"; he
+hailed Janet, too, with respectful cheerfulness, taking off his hat.  He
+possessed the rare, warm vitality that is irresistible.  A native of
+Hampton, still in his thirties, his sharp little nose and twinkling blue
+eyes proclaimed the wisdom that is born and not made; his stiff hair had
+a twist like the bristles in the cleaning rod of a gun.
+
+He gave Janet the odd impression that he understood her.  And she did not
+understand herself!
+
+By the time she reached the Common the winter sun, as though red from
+exertion, had begun to dispel the smoke and heavy morning mists.  She
+disliked winter, the lumpy brown turf mildewed by the frost, but one day
+she was moved by a quality, hitherto unsuspected, in the delicate tracery
+against the sky made by the slender branches of the great elms and
+maples.  She halted on the pavement, her eyes raised, heedless of
+passers-by, feeling within her a throb of the longing that could be so
+oddly and unexpectedly aroused.
+
+Her way lay along Faber Street, the main artery of Hampton, a wide strip
+of asphalt threaded with car tracks, lined on both sides with incongruous
+edifices indicative of a rapid, undiscriminating, and artless prosperity.
+There were long stretches of "ten foot" buildings, so called on account
+of the single story, their height deceptively enhanced by the
+superimposition of huge and gaudy signs, one on top of another,
+announcing the merits of "Stewart's Amberine Ale," of "Cooley's Oats, the
+Digestible Breakfast Food," of graphophones and "spring heeled" shoes,
+tobacco, and naphtha soaps.  "No, We don't give Trading Stamps, Our
+Products are Worth all You Pay."  These "ten foot" stores were the
+repositories of pianos, automobiles, hardware, and millinery, and
+interspersed amongst them were buildings of various heights; The
+Bagatelle, where Lise worked, the Wilmot Hotel, office buildings, and an
+occasional relic of old Hampton, like that housing the Banner.  Here,
+during those months when the sun made the asphalt soft, on a scaffolding
+spanning the window of the store, might be seen a perspiring young man in
+his shirt sleeves chalking up baseball scores for the benefit of a crowd
+below.  Then came the funereal, liver-coloured, long-windowed Hinckley
+Block (1872), and on the corner a modern, glorified drugstore thrusting
+forth plate glass bays--two on Faber Street and three on Stanley--filled
+with cameras and candy, hot water bags, throat sprays, catarrh and kidney
+cures, calendars, fountain pens, stationery, and handy alcohol lamps.
+Flanking the sidewalks, symbolizing and completing the heterogeneous and
+bewildering effect of the street were long rows of heavy hemlock trunks,
+unpainted and stripped of bark, with crosstrees bearing webs of wires.
+Trolley cars rattled along, banging their gongs, trucks rumbled across
+the tracks, automobiles uttered frenzied screeches behind startled
+pedestrians.  Janet was always galvanized into alertness here, Faber
+Street being no place to dream.  By night an endless procession moved up
+one sidewalk and down another, staring hypnotically at the flash-in and
+flash-out electric, signs that kept the breakfast foods and ales, the
+safety razors, soaps, and soups incessantly in the minds of a fickle
+public.
+
+Two blocks from Faber Street was the North Canal, with a granite-paved
+roadway between it and the monotonous row of company boarding houses.
+Even in bright weather Janet felt a sense of oppression here; on dark,
+misty mornings the stern, huge battlements of the mills lining the
+farther bank were menacing indeed, bristling with projections, towers,
+and chimneys, flanked by heavy walls.  Had her experience included
+Europe, her imagination might have seized the medieval parallel,--the
+arched bridges flung at intervals across the water, lacking only chains
+to raise them in case of siege.  The place was always ominously
+suggestive of impending strife.  Janet's soul was a sensitive instrument,
+but she suffered from an inability to find parallels, and thus to
+translate her impressions intellectually.  Her feeling about the mills
+was that they were at once fortress and prison, and she a slave driven
+thither day after day by an all-compelling power; as much a slave as
+those who trooped in through the gates in the winter dawn, and wore down,
+four times a day, the oak treads of the circular tower stairs.
+
+The sound of the looms was like heavy rain hissing on the waters of the
+canal.
+
+The administrative offices of a giant mill such as the Chippering in
+Hampton are labyrinthine.  Janet did not enter by the great gates her
+father kept, but walked through an open courtyard into a vestibule where,
+day and night, a watchman stood; she climbed iron-shod stairs, passed the
+doorway leading to the paymaster's suite, to catch a glimpse, behind the
+grill, of numerous young men settling down at those mysterious and
+complicated machines that kept so unerring a record, in dollars and
+cents, of the human labour of the operatives. There were other suites for
+the superintendents, for the purchasing agent; and at the end of the
+corridor, on the south side of the mill, she entered the outer of the two
+rooms reserved for Mr. Claude Ditmar, the Agent and general- in-chief
+himself of this vast establishment.  In this outer office, behind the
+rail that ran the length of it, Janet worked; from the window where her
+typewriter stood was a sheer drop of eighty feet or so to the river,
+which ran here swiftly through a wide canon whose sides were formed by
+miles and miles of mills, built on buttressed stone walls to retain the
+banks.  The prison-like buildings on the farther shore were also of
+colossal size, casting their shadows far out into the waters; while in
+the distance, up and down the stream, could be seen the delicate web of
+the Stanley and Warren Street bridges, with trolley cars like toys
+gliding over them, with insect pedestrians creeping along the footpaths.
+
+Mr. Ditmar's immediate staff consisted of Mr. Price, an elderly bachelor
+of tried efficiency whose peculiar genius lay in computation, of a young
+Mr. Caldwell who, during the four years since he had left Harvard, had
+been learning the textile industry, of Miss Ottway, and Janet.  Miss
+Ottway was the agent's private stenographer, a strongly built, capable
+woman with immense reserves seemingly inexhaustible.  She had a deep,
+masculine voice, not unmusical, the hint of a masculine moustache, a
+masculine manner of taking to any job that came to hand.  Nerves were
+things unknown to her: she was granite, Janet tempered steel.  Janet was
+the second stenographer, and performed, besides, any odd tasks that might
+be assigned.
+
+There were, in the various offices of the superintendents, the paymaster
+and purchasing agent, other young women stenographers whose companionship
+Janet, had she been differently organized, might have found congenial,
+but something in her refused to dissolve to their proffered friendship.
+She had but one friend,--if Eda Rawle, who worked in a bank, and whom she
+had met at a lunch counter by accident, may be called so.  As has been
+admirably said in another language, one kisses, the other offers a cheek:
+Janet offered the cheek.  All unconsciously she sought a relationship
+rarely to be found in banks and business offices; would yield herself to
+none other.  The young women stenographers in the Chippering Mill,
+respectable, industrious girls, were attracted by a certain indefinable
+quality, but finding they made no progress in their advances, presently
+desisted they were somewhat afraid of her; as one of them remarked, "You
+always knew she was there."  Miss Lottie Meyers, who worked in the office
+of Mr. Orcutt, the superintendent across the hall, experienced a brief
+infatuation that turned to hate.  She chewed gum incessantly, Janet found
+her cheap perfume insupportable; Miss Meyers, for her part, declared that
+Janet was "queer" and "stuck up," thought herself better than the rest of
+them.  Lottie Meyers was the leader of a group of four or five which
+gathered in the hallway at the end of the noon hour to enter animatedly
+into a discussion of waists, hats, and lingerie, to ogle and exchange
+persiflages with the young men of the paymaster's corps, to giggle, to
+relate, sotto voce, certain stories that ended invariably in hysterical
+laughter. Janet detested these conversations.  And the sex question,
+subtly suggested if not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over
+which she did not dare to ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be
+degraded.  Her feelings, concealed under an exterior of self-possession,
+deceptive to the casual observer, sometimes became molten, and she was
+frightened by a passion that made her tremble--a passion by no means
+always consciously identified with men, embodying all the fierce
+unexpressed and unsatisfied desires of her life.
+
+These emotions, often suggested by some hint of beauty, as of the sun
+glinting on the river on a bright blue day, had a sudden way of
+possessing her, and the longing they induced was pain.  Longing for what?
+For some unimagined existence where beauty dwelt, and light, where the
+ecstasy induced by these was neither moiled nor degraded; where shame, as
+now, might not assail her.  Why should she feel her body hot with shame,
+her cheeks afire?  At such moments she would turn to the typewriter, her
+fingers striking the keys with amazing rapidity, with extraordinary
+accuracy and force,--force vaguely disturbing to Mr. Claude Ditmar as he
+entered the office one morning and involuntarily paused to watch her.
+She was unaware of his gaze, but her colour was like a crimson signal
+that flashed to him and was gone.  Why had he never noticed her before?
+All these months, for more than a year, perhaps,--she had been in his
+office, and he had not so much as looked at her twice.  The unguessed
+answer was that he had never surprised her in a vivid moment.  He had a
+flair for women, though he had never encountered any possessing the
+higher values, and it was characteristic of the plane of his mental
+processes that this one should remind him now of a dark, lithe panther,
+tensely strung, capable of fierceness.  The pain of having her scratch
+him would be delectable.
+
+When he measured her it was to discover that she was not so little, and
+the shoulder-curve of her uplifted arms, as her fingers played over the
+keys, seemed to belie that apparent slimness.  And had he not been
+unacquainted with the subtleties of the French mind and language, he
+might have classed her as a fausse maigre.  Her head was small, her hair
+like a dark, blurred shadow clinging round it. He wanted to examine her
+hair, to see whether it would not betray, at closer range, an
+imperceptible wave,--but not daring to linger he went into his office,
+closed the door, and sat down with a sensation akin to weakness, somewhat
+appalled by his discovery, considerably amazed at his previous stupidity.
+He had thought of Janet--when she had entered his mind at all--as
+unobtrusive, demure; now he recognized this demureness as repression.
+Her qualities needed illumination, and he, Claude Ditmar, had seen them
+struck with fire.  He wondered whether any other man had been as
+fortunate.
+
+Later in the morning, quite casually, he made inquiries of Miss Ottway,
+who liked Janet and was willing to do her a good turn.
+
+"Why, she's a clever girl, Mr. Ditmar, a good stenographer, and
+conscientious in her work.  She's very quick, too.
+
+"Yes, I've noticed that," Ditmar replied, who was quite willing to have
+it thought that his inquiry was concerned with Janet's aptitude for
+business.
+
+"She keeps to herself and minds her own affairs.  You can see she comes
+of good stock."  Miss Ottway herself was proud of her New England blood.
+"Her father, you know, is the gatekeeper down there.  He's been
+unfortunate."
+
+"You don't say--I didn't connect her with him.  Fine looking old man.  A
+friend of mine who recommended him told me he'd seen better days ...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+In spite of the surprising discovery in his office of a young woman of
+such a disquieting, galvanic quality, it must not be supposed that Mr.
+Claude Ditmar intended to infringe upon a fixed principle.  He had
+principles.  For him, as for the patriarchs and householders of Israel,
+the seventh commandment was only relative, yet hitherto he had held
+rigidly to that relativity, laying down the sound doctrine that women and
+business would not mix: or, as he put it to his intimates, no sensible
+man would fool with a girl in his office.  Hence it may be implied that
+Mr. Ditmar's experiences with the opposite sex had been on a property
+basis.  He was one of those busy and successful persons who had never
+appreciated or acquired the art of quasi-platonic amenities, whose idea
+of a good time was limited to discreet excursions with cronies, likewise
+busy and successful persons who, by reason of having married early and
+unwisely, are strangers to the delights of that higher social intercourse
+chronicled in novels and the public prints.  If one may conveniently
+overlook the joys of a companionship of the soul, it is quite as possible
+to have a taste in women as in champagne or cigars.  Mr. Ditmar preferred
+blondes, and he liked them rather stout, a predilection that had led him
+into matrimony with a lady of this description: a somewhat sticky,
+candy-eating lady with a mania for card parties, who undoubtedly would
+have dyed her hair if she had lived.  He was not inconsolable, but he had
+had enough of marriage to learn that it demands a somewhat exorbitant
+price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained.
+
+He was left a widower with two children, a girl of thirteen and a boy of
+twelve, both somewhat large for their ages.  Amy attended the only
+private institution for the instruction of her sex of which Hampton could
+boast; George continued at a public school.  The late Mrs. Ditmar for
+some years before her demise had begun to give evidence of certain
+restless aspirations to which American ladies of her type and situation
+seem peculiarly liable, and with a view to their ultimate realization she
+had inaugurated a Jericho-like campaign. Death had released Ditmar from
+its increasing pressure.  For his wife had possessed that admirable
+substitute for character, persistence, had been expert in the use of
+importunity, often an efficient weapon in the hands of the female
+economically dependent.  The daughter of a defunct cashier of the Hampton
+National Bank, when she had married Ditmar, then one of the
+superintendents of the Chippering and already a marked man, she had
+deemed herself fortunate among women, looking forward to a life of ease
+and idleness and candy in great abundance,--a dream temporarily shattered
+by the unforeseen discomfort of bringing two children into the world,
+with an interval of scarcely a year between them.  Her parents from an
+excess of native modesty having failed to enlighten her on this subject,
+her feelings were those of outraged astonishment, and she was quite
+determined not to repeat the experience a third time.  Knowledge thus
+belatedly acquired, for a while she abandoned herself to the satisfaction
+afforded by the ability to take a commanding position in Hampton society,
+gradually to become aware of the need of a more commodious residence.  In
+a certain kind of intuition she was rich.  Her husband had meanwhile
+become Agent of the Chippering Mill, and she strongly suspected that his
+prudent reticence on the state of his finances was the best indication of
+an increasing prosperity.  He had indeed made money, been given many
+opportunities for profitable investments; but the argument for social
+pre- eminence did not appeal to him: tears and reproaches,
+recriminations, when frequently applied, succeeded better; like many
+married men, what he most desired was to be let alone; but in some
+unaccountable way she had come to suspect that his preference for blondes
+was of a more liberal nature than at first, in her innocence, she had
+realized.  She was jealous, too, of his cronies, in spite of the fact
+that these gentlemen, when they met her, treated her with an elaborate
+politeness; and she accused him with entire justice of being more
+intimate with them than with her, with whom he was united in holy bonds.
+The inevitable result of these tactics was the modern mansion in the
+upper part of Warren Street, known as the "residential" district.  Built
+on a wide lot, with a garage on one side to the rear, with a cement
+driveway divided into squares, and a wall of democratic height separating
+its lawn from the sidewalk, the house may for the present be better
+imagined than described.
+
+A pious chronicler of a more orthodox age would doubtless have deemed it
+a judgment that Cora Ditmar survived but two years to enjoy the glories
+of the Warren Street house.  For a while her husband indulged in a
+foolish optimism, only to learn that the habit of matrimonial blackmail,
+once acquired, is not easily shed.  Scarcely had he settled down to the
+belief that by the gratification of her supreme desire he had achieved
+comparative peace, than he began to suspect her native self-confidence of
+cherishing visions of a career contemplating nothing less than the
+eventual abandonment of Hampton itself as a field too limited for her
+social talents and his business ability and bank account--at which she
+was pleased to hint.  Hampton suited Ditmar, his passion was the
+Chippering Mill; and he was in process of steeling himself to resist,
+whatever the costs, this preposterous plan when he was mercifully
+released by death.  Her intention of sending the children away to acquire
+a culture and finish Hampton did not afford,--George to Silliston
+Academy, Amy to a fashionable boarding school,--he had not opposed, yet
+he did not take the idea with sufficient seriousness to carry it out.
+The children remained at home, more or less--increasingly less--in the
+charge of an elderly woman who acted as housekeeper.
+
+Ditmar had miraculously regained his freedom.  And now, when he made
+trips to New York and Boston, combining business with pleasure, there
+were no questions asked, no troublesome fictions to be composed.  More
+frequently he was in Boston, where he belonged to a large and comfortable
+club, not too exacting in regard to membership, and here he met his
+cronies and sometimes planned excursions with them, automobile trips in
+summer to the White Mountains or choice little resorts to spend Sundays
+and holidays, generally taking with them a case of champagne and several
+bags of golf sticks.  He was fond of shooting, and belonged to a duck
+club on the Cape, where poker and bridge were not tabooed.  To his
+intimates he was known as "Dit."  Nor is it surprising that his attitude
+toward women had become in general one of resentment; matrimony he now
+regarded as unmitigated folly.  At five and forty he was a vital,
+dominating, dust-coloured man six feet and half an inch in height,
+weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, and thus a trifle fleshy.  When
+relaxed, and in congenial company, he looked rather boyish, an aspect
+characteristic of many American business men of to-day.
+
+His head was large, he wore his hair short, his features also proclaimed
+him as belonging to a modern American type in that they were not
+clear-cut, but rather indefinable; a bristling, short-cropped moustache
+gave him a certain efficient, military look which, when introduced to
+strangers as "Colonel," was apt to deceive them into thinking him an army
+officer.  The title he had once received as a member of the staff of the
+governor of the state, and was a tribute to a gregariousness and
+political influence rather than to a genius for the art of war.  Ex
+officio, as the agent of the Chippering Mill and a man of substance to
+boot, he was "in" politics, hail fellow well met with and an individual
+to be taken into account by politicians from the governor and member of
+congress down.  He was efficient, of course; he had efficient hands and
+shrewd, efficient eyes, and the military impression was deepened by his
+manner of dealing with people, his conversation being yea, yea and nay,
+nay,--save with his cronies and those of the other sex from whom he had
+something to gain.  His clothes always looked new, of pronounced patterns
+and light colours set aside for him by an obsequious tailor in Boston.
+
+If a human being in such an enviable position as that of agent of the
+Chippering Mill can be regarded as property, it might be said that Mr.
+Claude Ditmar belonged to the Chipperings of Boston, a family still
+owning a controlling interest in the company.  His loyalty to them and to
+the mill he so ably conducted was the great loyalty of his life.  For
+Ditmar, a Chippering could do no wrong.  It had been the keen eye of Mr.
+Stephen Chippering that first had marked him, questioned him, recognized
+his ability, and from the moment of that encounter his advance had been
+rapid.  When old Stephen had been called to his fathers, Ditmar's
+allegiance was automatically, as it were, transferred to the two sons,
+George and Worthington, already members of the board of directors.
+Sometimes Ditmar called on them at their homes, which stood overlooking
+the waters of the Charles River Basin.  The attitude toward him of the
+Chipperings and their wives was one of an interesting adjustment of
+feudalism to democracy.  They were fond of him, grateful to him, treating
+him with a frank camaraderie that had in it not the slightest touch of
+condescension, but Ditmar would have been the first to recognize that
+there were limits to the intimacy.  They did not, for instance--no doubt
+out of consideration--invite him to their dinner parties or take him to
+their club, which was not the same as that to which he himself belonged.
+He felt no animus.  Nor would he, surprising though it may seem, have
+changed places with the Chipperings.  At an early age, and quite
+unconsciously, he had accepted property as the ruling power of the
+universe, and when family was added thereto the combination was nothing
+less than divine.
+
+There were times, especially during the long winters, when life became
+almost unbearable for Janet, and she was seized by a desire to run away
+from Fillmore Street, from the mills, from Hampton itself.  Only she did
+not know where to go, or how to get away.  She was convinced of the
+existence in the world of delightful spots where might be found congenial
+people with whom it would be a joy to talk.  Fillmore Street, certainly,
+did not contain any such.  The office was not so bad.  It is true that in
+the mornings, as she entered West Street, the sight of the dark facade of
+the fortress-like structure, emblematic of the captivity in which she
+passed her days, rarely failed to arouse in her sensations of oppression
+and revolt; but here, at least, she discovered an outlet for her
+energies; she was often too busy to reflect, and at odd moments she could
+find a certain solace and companionship in the river, so intent, so
+purposeful, so beautiful, so undisturbed by the inconcinnity, the clatter
+and confusion of Hampton as it flowed serenely under the bridges and
+between the mills toward the sea.  Toward the sea!
+
+It was when, at night, she went back to Fillmore Street--when she thought
+of the monotony, yes, and the sordidness of home, when she let herself in
+at the door and climbed the dark and narrow stairway, that her feet grew
+leaden.  In spite of the fact that Hannah was a good housekeeper and
+prided herself on cleanliness, the tiny flat reeked with the smell of
+cooking, and Janet, from the upper hall, had a glimpse of a thin, angular
+woman with a scrawny neck, with scant grey hair tightly drawn into a
+knot, in a gingham apron covering an old dress bending over the kitchen
+stove.  And occasionally, despite a resentment that fate should have
+dealt thus inconsiderately with the family, Janet felt pity welling
+within her.  After supper, when Lise had departed with her best young
+man, Hannah would occasionally, though grudgingly, permit Janet to help
+her with the dishes.
+
+"You work all day, you have a right to rest."
+
+"But I don't want to rest," Janet would declare, and rub the dishes the
+harder. With the spirit underlying this protest, Hannah sympathized.
+Mother and daughter were alike in that both were inarticulate, but Janet
+had a secret contempt for Hannah's uncomplaining stoicism.  She loved her
+mother, in a way, especially at certain times,--though she often wondered
+why she was unable to realize more fully the filial affection of
+tradition; but in moments of softening, such as these, she was filled
+with rage at the thought of any woman endowed with energy permitting
+herself to be overtaken and overwhelmed by such a fate as Hannah's:
+divorce, desertion, anything, she thought, would have been
+better--anything but to be cheated out of life.  Feeling the fires of
+rebellion burning hotly within her,--rebellion against environment and
+driving necessity she would glance at her mother and ask herself whether
+it were possible that Hannah had ever known longings, had ever been wrung
+by inexpressible desires,-- desires in which the undiscovered spiritual
+was so alarmingly compounded with the undiscovered physical.  She would
+have died rather than speak to Hannah of these unfulfilled experiences,
+and the mere thought of confiding them to any person appalled her.  Even
+if there existed some wonderful, understanding being to whom she might be
+able thus to empty her soul, the thought of the ecstasy of that kenosis
+was too troubling to be dwelt upon.
+
+She had tried reading, with unfortunate results,--perhaps because no
+Virgil had as yet appeared to guide her through the mysteries of that
+realm.  Her schooling had failed to instil into her a discriminating
+taste for literature; and when, on occasions, she had entered the Public
+Library opposite the Common it had been to stare hopelessly at rows of
+books whose authors and titles offered no clue to their contents.  Her
+few choices had not been happy, they had failed to interest and thrill...
+
+Of the Bumpus family Lise alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement
+in the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose
+heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims.  Lise went out
+into it, became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,--a
+tendency Hannah found unaccountable, and against which even her stoicism
+was not wholly proof. Scarce an evening went by without an expression of
+uneasiness from Hannah.
+
+"She didn't happen to mention where she was going, did she, Janet?"
+Hannah would query, when she had finished her work and put on her
+spectacles to read the Banner.
+
+"To the movies, I suppose," Janet would reply.  Although well aware that
+her sister indulged in other distractions, she thought it useless to add
+to Hannah's disquietude.  And if she had little patience with Lise, she
+had less with the helpless attitude of her parents.
+
+"Well," Hannah would add, "I never can get used to her going out nights
+the way she does, and with young men and women I don't know anything
+about.  I wasn't brought up that way.  But as long as she's got to work
+for a living I guess there's no help for it."
+
+And she would glance at Edward.  It was obviously due to his inability
+adequately to cope with modern conditions that his daughters were forced
+to toil, but this was the nearest she ever came to reproaching him.  If
+he heard, he acquiesced humbly, and in silence: more often than not he
+was oblivious, buried in the mazes of the Bumpus family history, his
+papers spread out on the red cloth of the dining-room table, under the
+lamp.  Sometimes in his simplicity and with the enthusiasm that demands
+listeners he would read aloud to them a letter, recently received from a
+distant kinsman, an Alpheus Bumpus, let us say, who had migrated to
+California in search of wealth and fame, and who had found neither.  In
+spite of age and misfortunes, the liberal attitude of these western
+members of the family was always a matter of perplexity to Edward.
+
+"He tells me they're going to give women the ballot,--doesn't appear to
+be much concerned about his own womenfolks going to the polls."
+
+"Why shouldn't they, if they want to?"  Janet would exclaim, though she
+had given little thought to the question.
+
+Edward would mildly ignore this challenge.
+
+"He has a house on what they call Russian Hill, and he can watch the
+vessels as they come in from Japan," he would continue in his precise
+voice, emphasizing admirably the last syllables of the words "Russian,"
+"vessels," and "Japan." "Wouldn't you like to see the letter?"
+
+To do Hannah justice, although she was quite incapable of sharing his
+passion, she frequently feigned an interest, took the letter, presently
+handing it on to Janet who, in deciphering Alpheus's trembling
+calligraphy, pondered over his manifold woes.  Alpheus's son, who had had
+a good position in a sporting goods establishment on Market Street, was
+sick and in danger of losing it, the son's wife expecting an addition to
+the family, the house on Russian Hill mortgaged. Alpheus, a veteran of
+the Civil War, had been for many years preparing his reminiscences, but
+the newspapers nowadays seemed to care nothing for matters of solid
+worth, and so far had refused to publish them....  Janet, as she read,
+reflected that these letters invariably had to relate tales of failures,
+of disappointed hopes; she wondered at her father's perennial interest in
+failures,--provided they were those of his family; and the next evening,
+as he wrote painfully on his ruled paper, she knew that he in turn was
+pouring out his soul to Alpheus, recounting, with an emotion by no means
+unpleasurable, to this sympathetic but remote relative the story of his
+own failure!
+
+If the city of Hampton was emblematic of our modern world in which
+haphazardness has replaced order, Fillmore Street may be likened to a
+back eddy of the muddy and troubled waters, in which all sorts of flotsam
+and jetsam had collected.  Or, to find perhaps an even more striking
+illustration of the process that made Hampton in general and Fillmore
+Street in particular, one had only to take the trolley to Glendale, the
+Italian settlement on the road leading to the old New England village of
+Shrewsbury.  Janet sometimes walked there, alone or with her friend Eda
+Rawle.  Disintegration itself--in a paradoxically pathetic attempt at
+reconstruction--had built Glendale.  Human hands, Italian hands.  Nor,
+surprising though it may seem, were these descendants of the people of
+the Renaissance in the least offended by their handiwork.  When the
+southern European migration had begun and real estate became valuable,
+one by one the more decorous edifices of the old American order had been
+torn down and carried piecemeal by sons of Italy to the bare hills of
+Glendale, there to enter into new combinations representing, to an eye
+craving harmony, the last word of a chaos, of a mental indigestion, of a
+colour scheme crying aloud to heaven for retribution.  Standing alone and
+bare amidst its truck gardens, hideous, extreme, though typical of the
+entire settlement, composed of fragments ripped from once-appropriate
+settings, is a house with a tiny body painted strawberry-red, with
+scroll-work shutters a tender green; surmounting the structure and almost
+equalling it in size is a sky-blue cupola, once the white crown of the
+Sutter mansion, the pride of old Hampton.  The walls of this dwelling
+were wrested from the sides of Mackey's Tavern, while the shutters for
+many years adorned the parsonage of the old First Church. Similarly, in
+Hampton and in Fillmore Street, lived in enforced neighbourliness human
+fragments once having their places in crystallized communities where
+existence had been regarded as solved.  Here there was but one order,--if
+such it may be called,--one relationship, direct, or indirect, one
+necessity claiming them all--the mills.
+
+Like the boards forming the walls of the shacks at Glendale, these human
+planks torn from an earlier social structure were likewise warped, which
+is to say they were dominated by obsessions.  Edward's was the Bumpus
+family; and Chris Auermann, who lived in the flat below, was convinced
+that the history of mankind is a deplorable record of havoc caused by
+women.  Perhaps he was right, but the conviction was none the less an
+obsession.  He came from a little village near Wittenburg that has
+scarcely changed since Luther's time.  Like most residents of Hampton who
+did not work in the mills, he ministered to those who did, or to those
+who sold merchandise to the workers, cutting their hair in his barber
+shop on Faber Street.
+
+The Bumpuses, save Lise, clinging to a native individualism and pride,
+preferred isolation to companionship with the other pieces of driftwood
+by which they were surrounded, and with which the summer season compelled
+a certain enforced contact.  When the heat in the little dining-room grew
+unbearable, they were driven to take refuge on the front steps shared in
+common with the household of the barber.  It is true that the barber's
+wife was a mild hausfrau who had little to say, and that their lodgers,
+two young Germans who worked in the mills, spent most of their evenings
+at a bowling club; but Auermann himself, exhaling a strong odour of bay
+rum, would arrive promptly at quarter past eight, take off his coat, and
+thus, as it were stripped for action, would turn upon the defenceless
+Edward.
+
+"Vill you mention one great man--yoost one--who is not greater if the
+vimmen leave him alone?" he would demand.  "Is it Anthony, the conqueror
+of Egypt and the East?  I vill show you Cleopatra.  Und Burns, and
+Napoleon, the greatest man what ever lived--vimmen again.  I tell you
+there is no Elba, no St. Helena if it is not for the vimmen.  Und vat
+vill you say of Goethe?"
+
+Poor Edward could think of nothing to say of Goethe.
+
+"He is great, I grant you," Chris would admit, "but vat is he if the
+vimmen leave him alone?  Divine yoost that."  And he would proceed to
+cite endless examples of generals and statesmen whose wives or mistresses
+had been their bane.  Futile Edward's attempts to shift the conversation
+to the subject of his own obsession; the German was by far the more
+aggressive, he would have none of it.  Perhaps if Edward had been willing
+to concede that the Bumpuses had been brought to their present lowly
+estate by the sinister agency of the fair sex Chris might conditionally
+have accepted the theme.  Hannah, contemptuously waving a tattered palm
+leaf fan, was silent; but on one occasion Janet took away the barber's
+breath by suddenly observing:--
+
+"You never seem to think of the women whose lives are ruined by men, Mr.
+Auermann."
+
+It was unheard-of, this invasion of a man's argument by a woman, and by a
+young woman at that.  He glared at her through his spectacles, took them
+off, wiped them, replaced them, and glared at her again.  He did not like
+Janet; she was capable of what may be called a speaking silence, and he
+had never been wholly unaware of her disapproval and ridicule.  Perhaps
+he recognized in her, instinctively, the potential qualities of that
+emerging modern woman who to him was anathema.
+
+"It is somethings I don't think about," he said.
+
+He was a wizened little man with faience-blue eyes, and sat habitually
+hunched up with his hands folded across his shins.
+
+"Nam fuit ante Helenam"--as Darwin quotes.  Toward all the masculine
+residents of Fillmore Street, save one, the barber's attitude was one of
+unconcealed scorn for an inability to recognize female perfidy.  With
+Johnny Tiernan alone he refused to enter the lists.  When the popular
+proprietor of the tin shop came sauntering along the sidewalk with nose
+uptilted, waving genial greetings to the various groups on the steps,
+Chris Auermann's expression would suddenly change to one of fatuous
+playfulness.
+
+"What's this I hear about giving the girls the vote, Chris?"  Johnny
+would innocently inquire, winking at Janet, invariably running his hand
+through the wiry red hair that resumed its corkscrew twist as soon as he
+released it.  And Chris would as invariably reply:--
+
+"You have the dandruffs--yes?  You come to my shop, I give you
+somethings...."
+
+Sometimes the barber, in search of a more aggressive adversary than
+Edward, would pay visits, when as likely as not another neighbour with
+profound convictions and a craving for proselytes would swoop down on the
+defenceless Bumpuses: Joe Shivers, for instance, who lived in one of the
+tenements above the cleaning and dyeing establishment kept by the Pappas
+Bros., and known as "The Gentleman."  In the daytime Mr. Shivers was a
+model of acquiescence in a system he would have designated as one of
+industrial feudalism, his duty being to examine the rolls of cloth as
+they came from the looms of the Arundel Mill, in case of imperfections
+handing them over to the women menders: at night, to borrow a vivid
+expression from Lise, he was "batty in the belfry" on the subject of
+socialism.  Unlike the barber, whom he could not abide, for him the
+cleavage of the world was between labour and capital instead of man and
+woman; his philosophy was stern and naturalistic; the universe--the
+origin of which he did not discuss--just an accidental assemblage of
+capricious forces over which human intelligence was one day to triumph.
+Squatting on the lowest step, his face upturned, by the light of the arc
+sputtering above the street he looked like a yellow frog, his eager eyes
+directed toward Janet, whom he suspected of intelligence.
+
+"If there was a God, a nice, kind, all-powerful God, would he permit what
+happened in one of the loom-rooms last week?  A Polak girl gets her hair
+caught in the belt pfff!"  He had a marvellously realistic gift when it
+came to horrors: Janet felt her hair coming out by the roots.  Although
+she never went to church, she did not like to think that no God existed.
+Of this Mr. Shivers was very positive.  Edward, too, listened uneasily,
+hemmed and hawed, making ineffectual attempts to combat Mr. Shivers's
+socialism with a deeply-rooted native individualism that Shivers declared
+as defunct as Christianity.
+
+"If it is possible for the workingman to rise under a capitalistic
+system, why do you not rise, then?  Why do I not rise?  I'm as good as
+Ditmar, I'm better educated, but we're all slaves.  What right has a man
+to make you and me work for him just because he has capital?"
+
+"Why, the right of capital," Edward would reply.
+
+Mr. Shivers, with the manner of one dealing with an incurable romanticism
+and sentimentality, would lift his hands in despair.  And in spite of the
+fact that Janet detested him, he sometimes exercised over her a
+paradoxical fascination, suggesting as he did unexplored intellectual
+realms.  She despised her father for not being able to crush the little
+man.  Edward would make pathetic attempts to capture the role Shivers had
+appropriated, to be the practical party himself, to convict Shivers of
+idealism.  Socialism scandalized him, outraged, even more than atheism,
+something within him he held sacred, and he was greatly annoyed because
+he was unable adequately to express this feeling.
+
+"You can't change human nature, Mr. Shivers," Edward would insist in his
+precise but ineffectual manner.  "We all want property, you would accept
+a fortune if it was offered to you, and so should I.  Americans will
+never become socialists."
+
+"But look at me, wasn't I born in Meriden, Connecticut?  Ain't that
+Yankee enough for you?"  Thus Mr. Shivers sought blandly to confound him.
+
+A Yankee  Shades of the Pilgrim fathers, of seven, generations of
+Bumpuses!  A Yankee who used his hands in that way, a Yankee with a nose
+like that, a Yankee with a bald swathe down the middle of his crown and
+bunches of black, moth- eaten hair on either side!  But Edward, too
+polite to descend to personalities, was silent....
+
+In brief, this very politeness of Edward's, which his ancestors would
+have scorned, this consideration and lack of self-assertion made him the
+favourite prey of the many "characters" in Fillmore Street whose sanity
+had been disturbed by pressure from above, in whose systems had lodged
+the germs of those exotic social doctrines floating so freely in the air
+of our modern industrial communities ....  Chester Glenn remains for a
+passing mention.  A Yankee of Yankees, this, born on a New Hampshire
+farm, and to the ordinary traveller on the Wigmore branch of the railroad
+just a good-natured, round- faced, tobacco-chewing brakeman who would
+take a seat beside ladies of his acquaintance aid make himself agreeable
+until it was time to rise and bawl out, in the approved manner of his
+profession, the name of the next station. Fillmore Street knew that the
+flat visored cap which his corporation compelled him to wear covered a
+brain into which had penetrated the maggot of the Single Tax.  When he
+encountered Mr. Shivers or Auermann the talk became coruscating..
+
+Eda Rawle, Janet's solitary friend of these days, must also be mentioned,
+though the friendship was merely an episode in Janet's life.  Their first
+meeting was at Grady's quick-lunch counter in Faber Street, which they
+both frequented at one time, and the fact that each had ordered a ham
+sandwich, a cup of coffee, and a confection--new to Grady's--known as a
+Napoleon had led to conversation.
+
+Eda, of course, was the aggressor; she was irresistibly drawn, she would
+not be repulsed.  A stenographer in the Wessex National Bank, she boarded
+with a Welsh family in Spruce Street; matter-of-fact, plodding,
+commonplace, resembling--as Janet thought--a horse, possessing, indeed
+many of the noble qualities of that animal, she might have been thought
+the last person in the world to discern and appreciate in Janet the
+hidden elements of a mysterious fire.  In appearance Miss Rawle was of a
+type not infrequent in Anglo-Saxon lands, strikingly blonde, with high
+malar bones, white eyelashes, and eyes of a metallic blue, cheeks of an
+amazing elasticity that worked rather painfully as she talked or smiled,
+drawing back inadequate lips, revealing long, white teeth and vivid gums.
+It was the craving in her for romance Janet assuaged; Eda's was the love
+content to pour out, that demands little.  She was capable of immolation.
+Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though
+in moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was
+able to give such a meagre return for the wealth of its offering.
+
+In other moments, when the world seemed all disorder and chaos,--as Mr.
+Shivers described it,--or when she felt within her, like demons, those
+inexpressible longings and desires, leaping and straining, pulling her,
+almost irresistibly, she knew not whither, Eda shone forth like a light
+in the darkness, like the beacon of a refuge and a shelter.  Eda had
+faith in her, even when Janet had lost faith in herself: she went to Eda
+in the same spirit that Marguerite went to church; though she, Janet,
+more resembled Faust, being--save in these hours of lowered vitality--of
+the forth-faring kind ....  Unable to confess the need that drove her,
+she arrived in Eda's little bedroom to be taken into Eda's arms.  Janet
+was immeasurably the stronger of the two, but Eda possessed the masculine
+trait of protectiveness, the universe never bothered her, she was one of
+those persons--called fortunate--to whom the orthodox Christian virtues
+come as naturally as sun or air.  Passion, when sanctified by matrimony,
+was her ideal, and now it was always in terms of Janet she dreamed of it,
+having read about it in volumes her friend would not touch, and never
+having experienced deeply its discomforts.  Sanctified or unsanctified,
+Janet regarded it with terror, and whenever Eda innocently broached the
+subject she recoiled.  Once Eda exclaimed:--
+
+"When you do fall in love, Janet, you must tell me all about it, every
+word!"
+
+Janet blushed hotly, and was silent.  In Eda's mind such an affair was a
+kind of glorified fireworks ending in a cluster of stars, in Janet's a
+volcanic eruption to turn the world red.  Such was the difference between
+them.
+
+Their dissipations together consisted of "sundaes" at a drug-store, or
+sometimes of movie shows at the Star or the Alhambra.  Stereotyped on
+Eda's face during the legitimately tender passages of these dramas was an
+expression of rapture, a smile made peculiarly infatuate by that vertical
+line in her cheeks, that inadequacy of lip and preponderance of white
+teeth and red gums. It irritated, almost infuriated Janet, to whom it
+appeared as the logical reflection of what was passing on the screen; she
+averted her glance from both, staring into her lap, filled with shame
+that the relation between the sexes should be thus exposed to public
+gaze, parodied, sentimentalized, degraded.... There were, however,
+marvels to stir her, strange landscapes, cities, seas, and ships,--once a
+fire in the forest of a western reserve with gigantic tongues of orange
+flame leaping from tree to tree.  The movies brought the world to
+Hampton, the great world into which she longed to fare, brought the world
+to her!  Remote mountain hamlets from Japan, minarets and muezzins from
+the Orient, pyramids from Egypt, domes from Moscow resembling gilded
+beets turned upside down; grey houses of parliament by the Thames, the
+Tower of London, the Palaces of Potsdam, the Tai Mahal.  Strange lands
+indeed, and stranger peoples! booted Russians in blouses, naked
+Equatorial savages tattooed and amazingly adorned, soldiers and sailors,
+presidents, princes and emperors brought into such startling proximity
+one could easily imagine one's self exchanging the time of day!
+Incredible to Janet how the audiences, how even Eda accepted with
+American complacency what were to her never-ending miracles; the yearning
+to see more, to know more, became acute, like a pain, but even as she
+sought to devour these scenes, to drink in every detail, with tantalizing
+swiftness they were whisked away.  They were peepholes in the walls of
+her prison; and at night she often charmed herself to sleep with
+remembered visions of wide, empty, treeshaded terraces reserved for
+kings.
+
+But Eda, however complacent her interest in the scenes themselves, was
+thrilled to the marrow by their effect on Janet, who was her medium.
+Emerging from the vestibule of the theatre, Janet seemed not to see the
+slushy street, her eyes shone with a silver light like that of a mountain
+lake in a stormy sunset.  And they walked in silence until Janet would
+exclaim:
+
+"Oh Eda, wouldn't you love to travel!"
+
+Thus Eda Rawle was brought in contact with values she herself was
+powerless to detect, and which did not become values until they had
+passed through Janet. One "educative" reel they had seen had begun with
+scenes in a lumber camp high in the mountains of Galicia, where grow
+forests of the priceless pine that becomes, after years of drying and
+seasoning, the sounding board of the Stradivarius and the harp.  Even
+then it must respond to a Player.  Eda, though failing to apply this
+poetic parallel, when alone in her little room in the Welsh
+boarding-house often indulged in an ecstasy of speculation as to that
+man, hidden in the mists of the future, whose destiny it would be to
+awaken her friend.  Hampton did not contain him,--of this she was sure;
+and in her efforts to visualize him she had recourse to the movies,
+seeking him amongst that brilliant company of personages who stood so
+haughtily or walked so indifferently across the ephemeral brightness of
+the screen.
+
+By virtue of these marvels of the movies: Hampton ugly and sordid Hampton!
+--actually began for Janet to take on a romantic tinge.  Were not the
+strange peoples of the earth flocking to Hampton?  She saw them arriving
+at the station, straight from Ellis Island, bewildered, ticketed like
+dumb animals, the women draped in the soft, exotic colours many of them
+were presently to exchange for the cheap and gaudy apparel of Faber
+Street.  She sought to summon up in her mind the glimpses she had had of
+the wonderful lands from which they had come, to imagine their lives in
+that earlier environment. Sometimes she wandered, alone or with Eda,
+through the various quarters of the city.  Each quarter had a flavour of
+its own, a synthetic flavour belonging neither to the old nor to the new,
+yet partaking of both: a difference in atmosphere to which Janet was
+keenly sensitive.  In the German quarter, to the north, one felt a sort
+of ornamental bleakness--if the expression may be permitted: the
+tenements here were clean and not too crowded, the scroll-work on their
+superimposed porches, like that decorating the Turnverein and the stem
+Lutheran Church, was eloquent of a Teutonic inheritance: The Belgians
+were to the west, beyond the base-ball park and the car barns, their grey
+houses scattered among new streets beside the scarred and frowning face
+of Torrey's hill.  Almost under the hill itself, which threatened to roll
+down on it, and facing a bottomless, muddy street, was the quaint little
+building giving the note of foreign thrift, of socialism and shrewdness,
+of joie de vivre to the settlement, the Franco-Belgian co-operative store,
+with its salle de reunion above and a stage for amateur theatricals.
+Standing in the mud outside, Janet would gaze through the tiny windows in
+the stucco wall at the baskets prepared for each household laid in neat
+rows beside the counter; at the old man with the watery blue eyes and
+lacing of red in his withered cheeks who spoke no English, whose duty it
+was to distribute the baskets to the women and children as they called.
+
+Turning eastward again, one came to Dey Street, in the heart of Hampton,
+where Hibernian Hall stood alone and grim, sole testimony of the departed
+Hibernian glories of a district where the present Irish rulers of the
+city had once lived and gossiped and fought in the days when the mill
+bells had roused the boarding-house keepers at half past four of a winter
+morning.  Beside the hall was a corner lot, heaped high with hills of
+ashes and rubbish like the vomitings of some filthy volcano; the
+unsightliness of which was half concealed by huge signs announcing the
+merits of chewing gums, tobaccos, and cereals. But why had the departure
+of the Irish, the coming of the Syrians made Dey Street dark, narrow,
+mysterious, oriental? changed the very aspect of its architecture?  Was
+it the coffee-houses?  One of these, in front of which Janet liked to
+linger, was set weirdly into an old New England cottage, and had,
+apparently, fathomless depths.  In summer the whole front of it lay open
+to the street, and here all day long, beside the table where the charcoal
+squares were set to dry, could be seen saffron-coloured Armenians
+absorbed in a Turkish game played on a backgammon board, their gentleness
+and that of the loiterers looking on in strange contrast with their
+hawk-like profiles and burning eyes. Behind this group, in the half light
+of the middle interior, could be discerned an American soda-water
+fountain of a bygone fashion, on its marble counter oddly shaped bottles
+containing rose and violet syrups; there was a bottle- shaped stove, and
+on the walls, in gilt frames, pictures evidently dating from the period
+in American art that flourished when Franklin Pierce was President; and
+there was an array of marble topped tables extending far back into the
+shadows.  Behind the fountain was a sort of cupboard--suggestive of the
+Arabian Nights, which Janet had never read--from which, occasionally, the
+fat proprietor emerged bearing Turkish coffee or long Turkish pipes.
+
+When not thus occupied the proprietor carried a baby.  The street swarmed
+with babies, and mothers nursed them on the door-steps.  And in this
+teeming, prolific street one could scarcely move without stepping on a
+fat, almond eyed child, though some, indeed, were wheeled; wheeled in all
+sorts of queer contrivances by one another, by fathers with ragged black
+moustaches and eagle noses who, to the despair of mill superintendents,
+had decided in the morning that three days' wages would since to support
+their families for the week .... In the midst of the throng might be seen
+occasionally the stout and comfortable and not too immaculate figure of a
+shovel bearded Syrian priest, in a frock coat and square-topped "Derby"
+hat, sailing along serenely, heedless of the children who scattered out
+of his path.
+
+Nearby was the quarter of the Canadian French, scarcely now to be called
+foreigners, though still somewhat reminiscent of the cramped little towns
+in the northern wilderness of water and forest.  On one corner stood
+almost invariably a "Pharmacie Francaise"; the signs were in French, and
+the elders spoke the patois.  These, despite the mill pallor, retained in
+their faces, in their eyes, a suggestion of the outdoor look of their
+ancestors, the coureurs des bois, but the children spoke English, and the
+young men, as they played baseball in the street or in the corner lots
+might be heard shouting out derisively the cry of the section hands so
+familiar in mill cities, "Doff, you beggars you, doff!"
+
+Occasionally the two girls strayed into that wide thoroughfare not far
+from the canal, known by the classic name of Hawthorne, which the
+Italians had appropriated to themselves.  This street, too, in spite of
+the telegraph poles flaunting crude arms in front of its windows, in
+spite of the trolley running down its middle, had acquired a character, a
+unity all its own, a warmth and picturesqueness that in the lingering
+light of summer evenings assumed an indefinable significance.  It was not
+Italy, but it was something--something proclaimed in the ornate, leaning
+lines of the pillared balconies of the yellow tenement on the second
+block, in the stone-vaulted entrance of the low house next door, in
+fantastically coloured walls, in curtained windows out of which leaned
+swarthy, earringed women.  Blocking the end of the street, in stern
+contrast, was the huge Clarendon Mill with its sinister brick pillars
+running up the six stories between the glass.  Here likewise the
+sidewalks overflowed with children, large-headed, with great, lustrous
+eyes, mute, appealing, the eyes of cattle.  Unlike American children,
+they never seemed to be playing. Among the groups of elders gathered for
+gossip were piratical Calabrians in sombre clothes, descended from Greek
+ancestors, once the terrors of the Adriatic Sea.  The women, lingering in
+the doorways, hemmed in by more children, were for the most part squat
+and plump, but once in a while Janet's glance was caught and held by a
+strange, sharp beauty worthy of a cameo.
+
+Opposite the Clarendon Mill on the corner of East Street was a provision
+store with stands of fruit and vegetables encroaching on the pavement.
+Janet's eye was attracted by a box of olives.
+
+"Oh Eda," she cried, "do you remember, we saw them being picked--in the
+movies? All those old trees on the side of a hill?"
+
+"Why, that's so," said Eda.  "You never would have thought anything'd
+grow on those trees."
+
+The young Italian who kept the store gave them a friendly grin.
+
+"You lika the olives?" he asked, putting some of the shining black fruit
+into their hands.  Eda bit one dubiously with her long, white teeth, and
+giggled.
+
+"Don't they taste funny!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Good--very good," he asserted gravely, and it was to Janet he turned, as
+though recognizing a discrimination not to be found in her companion.
+She nodded affirmatively.  The strange taste of the fruit enhanced her
+sense of adventure, she tried to imagine herself among the gatherers in
+the grove; she glanced at the young man to perceive that he was tall and
+well formed, with remarkably expressive eyes almost the colour of the
+olives themselves.  It surprised her that she liked him, though he was an
+Italian and a foreigner: a certain debonnair dignity in him appealed to
+her--a quality lacking in many of her own countrymen.
+
+And she wanted to talk to him about Italy,--only she did not know how to
+begin,--when a customer appeared, an Italian woman who conversed with him
+in soft, liquid tones that moved her ....
+
+Sometimes on these walks--especially if the day were grey and
+sombre--Janet's sense of romance and adventure deepened, became more
+poignant, charged with presage.  These feelings, vague and unaccountable,
+she was utterly unable to confide to Eda, yet the very fear they inspired
+was fascinating; a fear and a hope that some day, in all this Babel of
+peoples, something would happen!  It was as though the conflicting soul
+of the city and her own soul were one....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Lise was the only member of the Bumpus family who did not find
+uncongenial such distractions and companionships as were offered by the
+civilization that surrounded them.  The Bagatelle she despised; that was
+slavery--but slavery out of which she might any day be snatched, like
+Leila Hawtrey, by a prince charming who had made a success in life.
+Success to Lise meant money. Although what some sentimental sociologists
+might call a victim of our civilization, Lise would not have changed it,
+since it produced not only Lise herself, but also those fabulous
+financiers with yachts and motors and town and country houses she read
+about in the supplements of the Sunday newspapers.  It contained her
+purgatory, which she regarded in good conventional fashion as a mere
+temporary place of detention, and likewise the heaven toward which she
+strained, the dwelling-place of light.  In short, her philosophy was that
+of the modern, orthodox American, tinged by a somewhat commercialized
+Sunday school tradition of an earlier day, and highly approved by the
+censors of the movies.  The peculiar kind of abstinence once
+euphemistically known as "virtue," particularly if it were combined with
+beauty, never failed of its reward.  Lise, in this sense, was indeed
+virtuous, and her mirror told her she was beautiful.  Almost anything
+could happen to such a lady: any day she might be carried up into heaven
+by that modern chariot of fire, the motor car, driven by a celestial
+chauffeur.
+
+One man's meat being another's poison, Lise absorbed from the movies an
+element by which her sister Janet was repelled.  A popular production
+known as "Leila of Hawtrey's" contained her creed,--Hawtrey's being a
+glittering metropolitan restaurant where men of the world are wont to
+gather and discuss the stock market, and Leila a beautiful, blonde and
+orphaned waitress upon whom several of the fashionable frequenters had
+exercised seductive powers in vain.  They lay in wait for her at the side
+entrance, followed her, while one dissipated and desperate person,
+married, and said to move in the most exclusive circles, sent her an
+offer of a yearly income in five figures, the note being reproduced on
+the screen, and Leila pictured reading it in her frigid hall-bedroom.
+There are complications; she is in debt, and the proprietor of Hawtrey's
+has threatened to discharge her and in order that the magnitude of the
+temptation may be most effectively realized the vision appears of Leila
+herself, wrapped in furs, stepping out of a limousine and into an
+elevator lifting her to an apartment containing silk curtains, a Canet
+bed, a French maid, and a Pomeranian.  Virtue totters, but triumphs,
+being reinforced by two more visions the first of these portrays Leila,
+prematurely old, dragging herself along pavements under the metallic
+Broadway lights accosting gentlemen in evening dress; and the second
+reveals her in the country, kneeling beside a dying mother's bed, giving
+her promise to remain true to the Christian teachings of her childhood.
+
+And virtue is rewarded, lavishly, as virtue should be, in dollars and
+cents, in stocks and bonds, in pearls and diamonds.  Popular fancy takes
+kindly to rough but honest westerners who have begun life in flannel
+shirts, who have struck gold and come to New York with a fortune but
+despising effeteness; such a one, tanned by the mountain sun, embarrassed
+in raiment supplied by a Fifth Avenue tailor, takes a table one evening
+at Hawtrey's and of course falls desperately in love.  He means marriage
+from the first, and his faith in Leila is great enough to survive what
+appears to be an almost total eclipse of her virtue. Through the
+machinations of the influential villain, and lured by the false pretence
+that one of her girl friends is ill, she is enticed into a mysterious
+house of a sinister elegance, and apparently irretrievably compromised.
+The westerner follows, forces his way through the portals, engages the
+villain, and vanquishes him.  Leila becomes a Bride.  We behold her, at
+the end, mistress of one of those magnificent stone mansions with grilled
+vestibules and negro butlers into whose sacred precincts we are
+occasionally, in the movies, somewhat breathlessly ushered--a long way
+from Hawtrey's restaurant and a hall- bedroom.  A long way, too, from the
+Bagatelle and Fillmore Street--but to Lise a way not impossible, nor even
+improbable.
+
+This work of art, conveying the moral that virtue is an economic asset,
+made a great impression on Lise.  Good Old Testament doctrine, set forth
+in the Book of Job itself.  And Leila, pictured as holding out for a
+higher price and getting it, encouraged Lise to hold out also.  Mr.
+Wiley, in whose company she had seen this play, and whose likeness filled
+the plush and silver-plated frame on her bureau, remained ironically
+ignorant of the fact that he had paid out his money to make definite an
+ambition, an ideal hitherto nebulous in the mind of the lady whom he
+adored.  Nor did Lise enlighten him, being gifted with a certain
+inserutableness.  As a matter of fact it had never been her intention to
+accept him, but now that she was able concretely to visualize her
+Lochinvar of the future, Mr. Whey's lack of qualifications became the
+more apparent.  In the first place, he had been born in Lowell and had
+never been west of Worcester; in the second, his salary was sixteen
+dollars a week: it is true she had once fancied the Scottish terrier
+style of hair-cut abruptly ending in the rounded line of the shaven neck,
+but Lochinvar had been close-cropped.  Mr. Wiley, close-cropped, would
+have resembled a convict.
+
+Mr. Wiley was in love, there could be no doubt about that, and if he had
+not always meant marriage, he meant it now, having reached a state where
+no folly seems preposterous.  The manner of their meeting had had just
+the adventurous and romantic touch that Lise liked, one of her favourite
+amusements in the intervals between "steadies" being to walk up and down
+Faber Street of an evening after supper, arm in arm with two or three
+other young ladies, all chewing gum, wheeling into store windows and
+wheeling out again, pretending the utmost indifference to melting glances
+cast in their direction.  An exciting sport, though incomprehensible to
+masculine intelligence.  It was a principle with Lise to pay no attention
+to any young man who was not "presented," those venturing to approach her
+with the ready formula "Haven't we met before?" being instantly
+congealed.  She was strict as to etiquette.  But Mr. Wiley, it seemed,
+could claim acquaintance with Miss Schuler, one of the ladies to whose
+arm Lise's was linked, and he had the further advantage of appearing in a
+large and seductive touring car, painted green, with an eagle poised
+above the hood and its name, Wizard, in a handwriting rounded and bold,
+written in nickel across the radiator.  He greeted Miss Schuler
+effusively, but his eye was on Lise from the first, and it was she he
+took with, him in the front seat, indifferent to the giggling behind.
+Ever since then Lise had had a motor at her disposal, and on Sundays they
+took long "joy rides" beyond the borders of the state.  But it must not
+be imagined that Mr. Whey was the proprietor of the vehicle; nor was he a
+chauffeur,--her American pride would not have permitted her to keep
+company with a chauffeur: he was the demonstrator for the Wizard,
+something of a wizard himself, as Lise had to admit when they whizzed
+over the tarvia of the Riverside Boulevard at fifty or sixty miles an
+hour with the miner cut out--a favourite diversion of Mr. Whey's, who did
+not feel he was going unless he was accompanied by a noise like that of a
+mitrailleuse in action.  Lise, experiencing a ravishing terror, hung on
+to her hat with one hand and to Mr. Wiley with the other, her code
+permitting this; permitting him also, occasionally, when they found
+themselves in tenebrous portions of Slattery's Riverside Park, to put his
+arm around her waist and kiss her.  So much did Lise's virtue allow, and
+no more, the result being that he existed in a tantalizing state of hope
+and excitement most detrimental to the nerves.
+
+He never lost, however,--in public at least, or before Lise's
+family,--the fine careless, jaunty air of the demonstrator, of the
+free-lance for whom seventy miles an hour has no terrors; the automobile,
+apparently, like the ship, sets a stamp upon its votaries.  No
+Elizabethan buccaneer swooping down on defenceless coasts ever exceeded
+in audacity Mr. Wiley's invasion of quiet Fillmore Street. He would draw
+up with an ear-splitting screaming of brakes in front of the clay-yellow
+house, and sometimes the muffler, as though unable to repress its
+approval of the performance, would let out a belated pop that never
+failed to jar the innermost being of Auermann, who had been shot at, or
+rather shot past, by an Italian, and knew what it was.  He hated
+automobiles, he hated Mr. Wiley.
+
+"Vat you do?" he would demand, glaring.
+
+And Mr. Wiley would laugh insolently.
+
+"You think I done it, do you, Dutchie--huh!"
+
+He would saunter past, up the stairs, and into the Bumpus dining-room,
+often before the family had finished their evening meal.  Lise alone made
+him welcome, albeit demurely; but Mr. Wiley, not having sensibilities,
+was proof against Hannah's coldness and Janet's hostility.  With unerring
+instinct he singled out Edward as his victim.
+
+"How's Mr. Bumpus this evening?" he would genially inquire.
+
+Edward invariably assured Mr. Wiley that he was well, invariably took a
+drink of coffee to emphasize the fact, as though the act of lifting his
+cup had in it some magic to ward off the contempt of his wife and elder
+daughter.
+
+"Well, I've got it pretty straight that the Arundel's going to run
+nights, starting next week," Lise's suitor would continue.
+
+And to save his soul Edward could not refrain from answering, "You don't
+say so!"  He feigned interest in the information that the Hampton Ball
+Team, owing to an unsatisfactory season, was to change managers next
+year.  Mr. Wiley possessed the gift of gathering recondite bits of news,
+he had confidence in his topics and in his manner of dealing with them;
+and Edward, pretending to be entertained, went so far in his politeness
+as to ask Mr. Wiley if he had had supper.
+
+"I don't care if I sample one of Mis' Bumpus's doughnuts," Mr. Wiley
+would reply politely, reaching out a large hand that gave evidence, in
+spite of Sapolio, of an intimacy with grease cups and splash pans.  "I
+guess there's nobody in this burg can make doughnuts to beat yours, Miss
+Bumpus."
+
+If she had only known which doughnut he would take; Hannah sometimes
+thought she might have been capable of putting arsenic in it.  Her icy
+silence did not detract from the delights of his gestation.
+
+Occasionally, somewhat to Edward's alarm, Hannah demanded: "Where are you
+taking Lise this evening?"
+
+Mr. Wiley's wisdom led him to be vague.
+
+"Oh, just for a little spin up the boulevard.  Maybe we'll pick up Ella
+Schuler and one or two other young ladies."
+
+Hannah and Janet knew very well he had no intention of doing this, and
+Hannah did not attempt to conceal her incredulity.  As a matter of fact,
+Lise sometimes did insist on a "party."
+
+"I want you should bring her back by ten o'clock.  That's late enough for
+a girl who works to be out.  It's late enough for any girl."
+
+"Sure, Mis' Bumpus," Wiley would respond easily.
+
+Hannah chafed because she had no power to enforce this, because Mr. Wiley
+and Lise understood she had no power.  Lise went to put on her hat; if
+she skimped her toilet in the morning, she made up for it in the evening
+when she came home from the store, and was often late for supper.  In the
+meantime, while Lise was in the bedroom adding these last touches, Edward
+would contemptibly continue the conversation, fingering the Evening
+Banner as it lay in his lap, while Mr. Wiley helped himself boldly to
+another doughnut, taking--as Janet observed-- elaborate precautions to
+spill none of the crumbs on a brown suit, supposed to be the last
+creation in male attire.  Behind a plate glass window in Faber Street,
+belonging to a firm of "custom" tailors whose stores had invaded every
+important city in the country, and who made clothes for "college" men,
+only the week before Mr. Wiley had seen this same suit artistically
+folded, combined with a coloured shirt, brown socks, and tie and
+"torture" collar--lures for the discriminating.  Owing to certain
+expenses connected with Lise, he had been unable to acquire the shirt and
+the tie, but he had bought the suit in the hope and belief that she would
+find him irresistible therein.  It pleased him, too, to be taken for a
+"college" man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened shoulders and
+diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had not been spent in
+vain; that strange young ladies--to whom, despite his infatuation for the
+younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly indifferent--would mistake him for
+an undergraduate of Harvard,--an imposition concerning which he had no
+scruples.  But Lise, though shaken, had not capitulated.....
+
+When she returned to the dining-room, arrayed in her own finery, demure,
+triumphant, and had carried off Mr. Whey there would ensue an interval of
+silence broken only by the clattering together of the dishes Hannah
+snatched up.
+
+"I guess he's the kind of son-in-law would suit you," she threw over her
+shoulder once to Edward.
+
+"Why?" he inquired, letting down his newspaper nervously.
+
+"Well, you seem to favour him, to make things as pleasant for him as you
+can."
+
+Edward would grow warm with a sense of injustice, the inference being
+that he was to blame for Mr. Wiley; if he had been a different kind of
+father another sort of suitor would be courting Lise.
+
+"I have to be civil," he protested.  He pronounced that, word "civil"
+exquisitely, giving equal value to both syllables.
+
+"Civil!" Hannah scoffed, as she left the room; and to Janet, who had
+followed her into the kitchen, she added:  "That's the trouble with your
+father, he's always be'n a little too civil.  Edward Bumpus is just as
+simple as a child, he's afraid of offending folks' feelings ....  Think
+of being polite to that Whey!"  In those two words Hannah announced
+eloquently her utter condemnation of the demonstrator of the Wizard.  It
+was characteristic of her, however, when she went back for another load
+of dishes and perceived that Edward was only pretending to read his
+Banner, to attempt to ease her husband's feelings.  She thought it queer
+because she was still fond of Edward Bumpus, after all he had "brought on
+her."
+
+"It's Lise," she said, as though speaking to Janet, "she attracts 'em.
+Sometimes I just can't get used to it that she's my daughter.  I don't
+know who she takes after.  She's not like any of my kin, nor any of the
+Bumpuses."
+
+"What can you do?" asked Edward.  "You can't order him out of the house.
+It's better for him to come here.  And you can't stop Lise from going
+with him-- she's earning her own money...."
+
+They had talked over the predicament before, and always came to the same
+impasse.  In the privacy of the kitchen Hannah paused suddenly in her
+energetic rubbing of a plate and with supreme courage uttered a question.
+
+"Janet, do you calculate he means anything wrong?"
+
+"I don't know what he means," Janet replied, unwilling to give Mr. Wiley
+credit for anything, "but I know this, that Lise is too smart to let him
+take advantage of her."
+
+Hannah ruminated.  Cleverness as the modern substitute for feminine
+virtue did not appeal to her, but she let it pass.  She was in no mood to
+quarrel with any quality that would ward off disgrace.
+
+"I don't know what to make of Lise--she don't appear to have any
+principles...."
+
+If the Wiley affair lasted longer than those preceding it, this was
+because former suitors had not commanded automobiles.  When Mr. Wiley
+lost his automobile he lost his luck--if it may be called such.  One
+April evening, after a stroll with Eda, Janet reached home about nine
+o'clock to find Lise already in their room, to remark upon the absence of
+Mr. Wiley's picture from the frame.
+
+"I'm through with him," Lise declared briefly, tugging at her hair.
+
+"Through with him?" Janet repeated.
+
+Lise paused in her labours and looked at her sister steadily.  "I handed
+him the mit--do you get me?"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Why?  I was sick of him--ain't that enough?  And then he got mixed up
+with a Glendale trolley and smashed his radiator, and the Wizard people
+sacked him.  I always told him he was too fly.  It's lucky for him I
+wasn't in the car."
+
+"It's lucky for you," said Janet.  Presently she inquired curiously:
+"Aren't you sorry?"
+
+"Nix."  Lise shook her head, which was now bowed, her face hidden by
+hair. "Didn't I tell you I was sick of him?  But he sure was some
+spender," she added, as though in justice bound to give him his due.
+
+Janet was shocked by the ruthlessness of it, for Lise appeared relieved,
+almost gay.  She handed Janet a box containing five peppermint
+creams--all that remained of Mr. Wiley's last gift.
+
+One morning in the late spring Janet crossed the Warren Street bridge,
+the upper of the two spider-like structures to be seen from her office
+window, spanning the river beside the great Hampton dam.  The day,
+dedicated to the memory of heroes fallen in the Civil War, the thirtieth
+of May, was a legal holiday.  Gradually Janet had acquired a dread of
+holidays as opportunities never realized, as intervals that should have
+been filled with unmitigated joys, and yet were invariably wasted,
+usually in walks with Eda Rawle.  To-day, feeling an irresistible longing
+for freedom, for beauty, for adventure, for quest and discovery of she
+knew not what, she avoided Eda, and after gazing awhile at the sunlight
+dancing in the white mist below the falls, she walked on, southward,
+until she had left behind her the last straggling houses of the city and
+found herself on a wide, tarvia road that led, ultimately, to Boston. So
+read the sign.
+
+Great maples, heavy with leaves, stood out against the soft blue of the
+sky, and the sunlight poured over everything, bathing the stone walls,
+the thatches of the farmhouses, extracting from the copses of stunted
+pine a pungent, reviving perfume.  Sometimes she stopped to rest on the
+pine needles, and walked on again, aimlessly, following the road because
+it was the easiest way. There were spring flowers in the farmhouse yards,
+masses of lilacs whose purple she drank in eagerly; the air, which had
+just a tang of New England sharpness, was filled with tender sounds, the
+clucking of hens, snatches of the songs of birds, the rustling of maple
+leaves in the fitful breeze.  A chipmunk ran down an elm and stood
+staring at her with beady, inquisitive eyes, motionless save for his
+quivering tail, and she put forth her hand, shyly, beseechingly, as
+though he held the secret of life she craved.  But he darted away.
+
+She looked around her unceasingly, at the sky, at the trees, at the
+flowers and ferns and fields, at the vireos and thrushes, the robins and
+tanagers gashing in and out amidst the foliage, and she was filled with a
+strange yearning to expand and expand until she should become a part of
+all nature, be absorbed into it, cease to be herself.  Never before had
+she known just that feeling, that degree of ecstasy mingled with divine
+discontent ....  Occasionally, intruding faintly upon the countryside
+peace, she was aware of a distant humming sound that grew louder and
+louder until there shot roaring past her an automobile filled with noisy
+folk, leaving behind it a suffocating cloud of dust.  Even these
+intrusions, reminders of the city she had left, were powerless to destroy
+her mood, and she began to skip, like a schoolgirl, pausing once in a
+while to look around her fearfully, lest she was observed; and it pleased
+her to think that she had escaped forever, that she would never go back:
+she cried aloud, as she skipped, "I won't go back, I won't go back,"
+keeping time with her feet until she was out of breath and almost
+intoxicated, delirious, casting herself down, her heart beating wildly,
+on a bank of ferns, burying her face in them.  She had really stopped
+because a pebble had got into her shoe, and as she took it out she looked
+at her bare heel and remarked ruefully:--
+
+"Those twenty-five cent stockings aren't worth buying!"
+
+Economic problems, however, were powerless to worry her to-day, when the
+sun shone and the wind blew and the ferns, washed by the rill running
+through the culvert under the road, gave forth a delicious moist odour
+reminding her of the flower store where her sister Lise had once been
+employed.  But at length she arose, and after an hour or more of
+sauntering the farming landscape was left behind, the crumbling stone
+fences were replaced by a well-kept retaining wall capped by a privet
+hedge, through which, between stone pillars, a driveway entered and
+mounted the shaded slope, turning and twisting until lost to view. But
+afar, standing on the distant crest, through the tree trunks and foliage
+Janet saw one end of the mansion to which it led, and ventured timidly
+but eagerly in among the trees in the hope of satisfying her new-born
+curiosity. Try as she would, she never could get any but disappointing
+and partial glimpses of a house which, because of the mystery of its
+setting, fired her imagination, started her to wondering why it was that
+some were permitted to live in the midst of such beauty while she was
+condemned to spend her days in Fillmore Street and the prison of the
+mill.  She was not even allowed to look at it!  The thought was like a
+cloud across the sun.
+
+However, when she had regained the tarvia road and walked a little way
+the shadow suddenly passed, and she stood surprised.  The sight of a long
+common with its ancient trees in the fullness of glory, dense maples,
+sturdy oaks, strong, graceful elms that cast flickering, lacy shadows
+across the road filled her with satisfaction, with a sense of peace
+deepened by the awareness, in the background, ranged along the common on
+either side, of stately, dignified buildings, each in an appropriate
+frame of foliage.  With the essence rather than the detail of all this
+her consciousness became steeped; she was naturally ignorant of the great
+good fortune of Silliston Academy of having been spared with one or two
+exceptions--donations during those artistically lean years of the
+nineteenth century when American architecture affected the Gothic, the
+Mansard, and the subsequent hybrid.  She knew this must be Silliston, the
+seat of that famous academy of which she had heard.
+
+The older school buildings and instructors' houses, most of them white or
+creamy yellow, were native Colonial, with tall, graceful chimneys and
+classic pillars and delicate balustrades, eloquent at once of the racial
+inheritance of the Republic and of a bygone individuality, dignity, and
+pride.  And the modern architect, of whose work there was an abundance,
+had graciously and intuitively held this earlier note and developed it.
+He was an American, but an American who had been trained.  The result was
+harmony, life as it should proceed, the new growing out of the old.  And
+no greater tribute can be paid to Janet Bumpus than that it pleased her,
+struck and set exquisitely vibrating within her responsive chords.  For
+the first time in her adult life she stood in the presence of tradition,
+of a tradition inherently if unconsciously the innermost reality of her
+being a tradition that miraculously was not dead, since after all the
+years it had begun to put forth these vigorous shoots....
+
+What Janet chiefly realized was the delicious, contented sense of having
+come, visually at least, to the home for which she had longed.  But her
+humour was that of a child who has strayed, to find its true dwelling
+place in a region of beauty hitherto unexplored and unexperienced,
+tinged, therefore, with unreality, with mystery,--an effect enhanced by
+the chance stillness and emptiness of the place.  She wandered up and
+down the Common, whose vivid green was starred with golden dandelions;
+and then, spying the arched and shady vista of a lane, entered it, bent
+on new discoveries.  It led past one of the newer buildings, the
+library--as she read in a carved inscription over the door--plunged into
+shade again presently to emerge at a square farmhouse, ancient and
+weathered, with a great square chimney thrust out of the very middle of
+the ridge-pole,--a landmark left by one of the earliest of Silliston's
+settlers.  Presiding over it, embracing and protecting it, was a splendid
+tree.  The place was evidently in process of reconstruction and repair,
+the roof had been newly shingled, new frames, with old-fashioned, tiny
+panes had been put in the windows; a little garden was being laid out
+under the sheltering branches of the tree, and between the lane and the
+garden, half finished, was a fence of an original and pleasing design,
+consisting of pillars placed at intervals with upright pickets between,
+the pickets sawed in curves, making a line that drooped in the middle.
+Janet did not perceive the workman engaged in building this fence until
+the sound of his hammer attracted her attention.  His back was bent, he
+was absorbed in his task.
+
+"Are there any stores near here?" she inquired.
+
+He straightened up.  "Why yes," he replied, "come to think of it, I have
+seen stores, I'm sure I have."
+
+Janet laughed; his expression, his manner of speech were so delightfully
+whimsical, so in keeping with the spirit of her day, and he seemed to
+accept her sudden appearance in the precise make-believe humour she could
+have wished. And yet she stood a little struck with timidity, puzzled by
+the contradictions he presented of youth and age, of shrewdness,
+experience and candour, of gentility and manual toil.  He must have been
+about thirty-five; he was hatless, and his hair, uncombed but not
+unkempt, was greying at the temples; his eyes--which she noticed
+particularly--were keen yet kindly, the irises delicately stencilled in a
+remarkable blue; his speech was colloquial yet cultivated, his workman's
+clothes belied his bearing.
+
+"Yes, there are stores, in the village," he went on, "but isn't it a
+holiday, or Sunday--perhaps--or something of the kind?"
+
+"It's Decoration Day," she reminded him, with deepening surprise.
+
+"So it is!  And all the storekeepers have gone on picnics in their
+automobiles, or else they're playing golf.  Nobody's working today."
+
+"But you--aren't you working?" she inquired.
+
+"Working?" he repeated.  "I suppose some people would call it work.  I--I
+hadn't thought of it in that way."
+
+"You mean--you like it," Janet was inspired to say.
+
+"Well, yes," he confessed.  "I suppose I do."
+
+Her cheeks dimpled.  If her wonder had increased, her embarrassment had
+flown, and he seemed suddenly an old acquaintance.  She had, however,
+profound doubts now of his being a carpenter.
+
+"Were you thinking of going shopping?" he asked, and at the very
+ludicrousness of the notion she laughed again.  She discovered a keen
+relish for this kind of humour, but it was new to her experience, and she
+could not cope with it.
+
+"Only to buy some crackers, or a sandwich," she replied, and blushed.
+
+"Oh," he said.  "Down in the village, on the corner where the cars stop,
+is a restaurant.  It's not as good as the Parker House in Boston, I
+believe, but they do have sandwiches, yes, and coffee.  At least they
+call it coffee."
+
+"Oh, thank you," she said.
+
+"You'd better wait till you try it," he warned her.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind, I don't want much."  And she was impelled to add:
+"It's such a beautiful day."
+
+"It's absurd to get hungry on such a day--absurd," he agreed.
+
+"Yes, it is," she laughed.  "I'm not really hungry, but I haven't time to
+get back to Hampton for dinner."  Suddenly she grew hot at the thought
+that he might suspect her of hinting.  "You see, I live in Hampton," she
+went on hurriedly, "I'm a stenographer there, in the Chippering Mill, and
+I was just out for a walk, and--I came farther than I intended."  She had
+made it worse.
+
+But he said, "Oh, you came from Hampton!" with an intonation of surprise,
+of incredulity even, that soothed and even amused while it did not
+deceive her. Not that the superior intelligence of which she had begun to
+suspect him had been put to any real test by the discovery of her home,
+and she was quite sure her modest suit of blue serge and her $2.99 pongee
+blouse proclaimed her as a working girl of the mill city.  "I've been to
+Hampton," he declared, just as though it were four thousand miles away
+instead of four.
+
+"But I've never been here before, to Silliston," she responded in the
+same spirit: and she added wistfully, "it must be nice to live in such a
+beautiful place as this!"
+
+"Yes, it is nice," he agreed.  "We have our troubles, too,--but it's
+nice."
+
+She ventured a second, appraising glance.  His head, which he carried a
+little flung back, his voice, his easy and confident bearing--all these
+contradicted the saw and the hammer, the flannel shirt, open at the neck,
+the khaki trousers still bearing the price tag.  And curiosity beginning
+to get the better of her, she was emboldened to pay a compliment to the
+fence.  If one had to work, it must be a pleasure to work on things
+pleasing to the eye--such was her inference.
+
+"Why, I'm glad you like it," he said heartily.  "I was just hoping some
+one would come along here and admire it.  Now--what colour would you
+paint it?"
+
+"Are you a painter, too?"
+
+"After a fashion.  I'm a sort of man of all work--I thought of painting
+it white, with the pillars green."
+
+"I think that would be pretty," she answered, judicially, after a
+moment's thought.  "What else can you do?"
+
+He appeared to be pondering his accomplishments.
+
+"Well, I can doctor trees," he said, pointing an efficient finger at the
+magnificent maple sheltering, like a guardian deity, the old farmhouse.
+"I put in those patches."
+
+"They're cement," she exclaimed.  "I never heard of putting cement in
+trees."
+
+"They don't seem to mind."
+
+"Are the holes very deep?"
+
+"Pretty deep."
+
+"But I should think the tree would be dead."
+
+"Well, you see the life of a tree is right under the bark.  If you can
+keep the outer covering intact, the tree will live."
+
+"Why did you let the holes get so deep?"
+
+"I've just come here.  The house was like the tree the shingles all
+rotten, but the beams were sound.  Those beams were hewn out of the
+forest two hundred and fifty years ago."
+
+"Gracious!" said Janet.  "And how old is the tree?"
+
+"I should say about a hundred.  I suppose it wouldn't care to admit it."
+
+"How do you know?" she inquired.
+
+"Oh, I'm very intimate with trees.  I find out their secrets."
+
+"It's your house!" she exclaimed, somewhat appalled by the discovery.
+
+"Yes--yes it is," he answered, looking around at it and then in an
+indescribably comical manner down at his clothes.  His gesture, his
+expression implied that her mistake was a most natural one.
+
+"Excuse me, I thought--" she began, blushing hotly, yet wanting to laugh
+again.
+
+"I don't blame you--why shouldn't you?" he interrupted her.  "I haven't
+got used to it yet, and there is something amusing about--my owning a
+house.  When the parlour's finished I'll have to wear a stiff collar, I
+suppose, in order to live up to it."
+
+Her laughter broke forth, and she tried to imagine him in a stiff
+collar.... But she was more perplexed than ever.  She stood balancing on
+one foot, poised for departure.
+
+"I ought to be going," she said, as though she had been paying him a
+formal visit.
+
+"Don't hurry," he protested cordially.  "Why hurry back to Hampton?"
+
+"I never want to go back!" she cried with a vehemence that caused him to
+contemplate her anew, suddenly revealing the intense, passionate quality
+which had so disturbed Mr. Ditmar.  She stood transformed.  "I hate it!"
+she declared.  "It's so ugly, I never want to see it again."
+
+"Yes, it is ugly," he confessed.  "Since you admit it, I don't mind
+saying so. But it's interesting, in a way."  Though his humorous moods
+had delighted her, she felt subtly flattered because he had grown more
+serious.
+
+"It is interesting," she agreed.  She was almost impelled to tell him
+why, in her excursions to the various quarters, she had found Hampton
+interesting, but a shyness born of respect for the store of knowledge she
+divined in him restrained her.  She was curious to know what this man saw
+in Hampton.  His opinion would be worth something.  Unlike her neighbours
+in Fillmore Street, he was not what her sister Lise would call "nutty";
+he had an air of fine sanity, of freedom, of detachment,--though the word
+did not occur to her; he betrayed no bitter sense of injustice, and his
+beliefs were uncoloured by the obsession of a single panacea.  "Why do
+you think it's interesting?" she demanded.
+
+"Well, I'm always expecting to hear that it's blown up.  It reminds me of
+nitro-glycerine," he added, smiling.
+
+She repeated the word.
+
+"An explosive, you know--they put it in dynamite.  They say a man once
+made it by accident, and locked up his laboratory and ran home--and never
+went back."
+
+"I know what you mean!" she cried, her eyes alight with excitement.  "All
+those foreigners!  I've felt it that something would happen, some day, it
+frightened me, and yet I wished that something would happen.  Only, I
+never would have thought of--nitro-glycerine."
+
+She was unaware of the added interest in his regard.  But he answered
+lightly enough:--
+
+"Oh, not only the foreigners.  Human chemicals--you can't play with human
+chemicals any more than you can play with real ones--you've got to know
+something about chemistry."
+
+This remark was beyond her depth.
+
+"Who is playing with them?" she asked.
+
+"Everybody--no one in particular.  Nobody seems to know much about them,
+yet," he replied, and seemed disinclined to pursue the subject.  A robin
+with a worm in its bill was hopping across the grass; he whistled softly,
+the bird stopped, cocking its head and regarding them.  Suddenly, in
+conflict with her desire to remain indefinitely talking with this strange
+man, Janet felt an intense impulse to leave.  She could bear the
+conversation no longer, she might burst into tears--such was the
+extraordinary effect he had produced on her.
+
+"I must go,--I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said.
+
+"Drop in again," he said, as he took her trembling hand ....  When she
+had walked a little way she looked back over her shoulder to see him
+leaning idly against the post, gazing after her, and waving his hammer in
+friendly fashion.
+
+For a while her feet fairly flew, and her heart beat tumultuously,
+keeping time with her racing thoughts.  She walked about the Common,
+seeing nothing, paying no attention to the passers-by, who glanced at her
+curiously.  But at length as she grew calmer the needs of a youthful and
+vigorous body became imperative, and realizing suddenly that she was
+tired and hungry, sought and found the little restaurant in the village
+below.  She journeyed back to Hampton pondering what this man had said to
+her; speculating, rather breathlessly, whether he had been impelled to
+conversation by a natural kindness and courtesy, or whether he really had
+discovered something in her worthy of addressing, as he implied.
+Resentment burned in her breast, she became suddenly blinded by tears:
+she might never see him again, and if only she were "educated" she might
+know him, become his friend.  Even in this desire she was not
+conventional, and in the few moments of their contact he had developed
+rather than transformed what she meant by "education."  She thought of it
+not as knowledge reeking of books and schools, but as the acquirement of
+the freemasonry which he so evidently possessed, existence on terms of
+understanding, confidence, and freedom with nature; as having the world
+open up to one like a flower filled with colour and life.  She thought of
+the robin, of the tree whose secrets he had learned, of a mental range
+including even that medley of human beings amongst whom she lived.  And
+the fact that something of his meaning had eluded her grasp made her
+rebel all the more bitterly against the lack of a greater knowledge ....
+
+Often during the weeks that followed he dwelt in her mind as she sat at
+her desk and stared out across the river, and several times that summer
+she started to walk to Silliston.  But always she turned back.  Perhaps
+she feared to break the charm of that memory....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Our American climate is notoriously capricious.  Even as Janet trudged
+homeward on that Memorial Day afternoon from her Cinderella-like
+adventure in Silliston the sun grew hot, the air lost its tonic, becoming
+moist and tepid, white clouds with dark edges were piled up in the
+western sky.  The automobiles of the holiday makers swarmed ceaselessly
+over the tarvia.  Valiantly as she strove to cling to her dream,
+remorseless reality was at work dragging her back, reclaiming her;
+excitement and physical exercise drained her vitality, her feet were
+sore, sadness invaded her as she came in view of the ragged outline of
+the city she had left so joyfully in the morning.  Summer, that most
+depressing of seasons in an environment of drab houses and grey
+pavements, was at hand, listless householders and their families were
+already, seeking refuge on front steps she passed on her way to Fillmore
+Street.
+
+It was about half past five when she arrived.  Lise, her waist removed,
+was seated in a rocking chair at the window overlooking the littered
+yards and the backs of the tenements on Rutger Street.  And Lise, despite
+the heaviness of the air, was dreaming.  Of such delicate texture was the
+fabric of Janet's dreams that not only sordid reality, but contact with
+other dreams of a different nature, such as her sister's, often sufficed
+to dissolve them.  She resented, for instance, the presence in the plush
+oval of Mr. Eustace Arlington; the movie star whose likeness had replaced
+Mr. Wiley's, and who had played the part of the western hero in "Leila of
+Hawtrey's."  With his burning eyes and sensual face betraying the
+puffiness that comes from over-indulgence, he was not Janet's ideal of a
+hero, western or otherwise.  And now Lise was holding a newspaper: not
+the Banner, whose provinciality she scorned, but a popular Boston sheet
+to be had for a cent, printed at ten in the morning and labelled "Three
+O'clock Edition," with huge red headlines stretched across the top of the
+page:--
+
+               "JURY FINDS IN MISS NEALY'S FAVOR."
+
+As Janet entered Lise looked up and exclaimed:--
+
+"Say, that Nealy girl's won out!"
+
+"Who is she?" Janet inquired listlessly.
+
+"You are from the country, all right," was her sister's rejoinder.  "I
+would have bet there wasn't a Reub in the state that wasn't wise to the
+Ferris breach of promise case, and here you blow in after the show's over
+and want to know who Nelly Nealy is.  If that doesn't beat the band!"
+
+"This woman sued a man named Ferris--is that it?"
+
+"A man named Ferris!" Lise repeated, with the air of being appalled by
+her sister's ignorance.  "I guess you never heard of Ferris, either--the
+biggest copper man in Boston.  He could buy Hampton, and never feel it,
+and they say his house in Brighton cost half a million dollars.  Nelly
+Nealy put her damages at one hundred and fifty thousand and stung him for
+seventy five.  I wish I'd been in court when that jury came back!
+There's her picture."
+
+To Janet, especially in the mood of reaction in which she found herself
+that evening, Lise's intense excitement, passionate partisanship and
+approval of Miss Nealy were incomprehensible, repellent.  However, she
+took the sheet, gazing at the image of the lady who, recently an obscure
+stenographer, had suddenly leaped into fame and become a "headliner," the
+envied of thousands of working girls all over New England.  Miss Nealy,
+in spite of the "glare of publicity" she deplored, had borne up admirably
+under the strain, and evidently had been able to consume three meals a
+day and give some thought to her costumes.  Her smile under the picture
+hat was coquettish, if not bold.  The special article, signed by a lady
+reporter whose sympathies were by no means concealed and whose talents
+were given free rein, related how the white-haired mother had wept tears
+of joy; how Miss Nealy herself had been awhile too overcome to speak, and
+then had recovered sufficiently to express her gratitude to the twelve
+gentlemen who had vindicated the honour of American womanhood.  Mr.
+Ferris, she reiterated, was a brute; never as long as she lived would she
+be able to forget how she had loved and believed in him, and how, when at
+length she unwillingly became convinces of his perfidy, she had been
+"prostrated," unable to support her old mother.  She had not, naturally,
+yet decided how she would invest her fortune; as for going on the stage,
+that had been suggested, but she had made no plans.  "Scores of women
+sympathizers" had escorted her to a waiting automobile....
+
+Janet, impelled by the fascination akin to disgust, read thus far, and
+flinging the newspaper on the floor, began to tidy herself for supper.
+But presently, when she heard Lise sigh, she could contain herself no
+longer.
+
+"I don't see how you can read such stuff as that," she exclaimed.
+"It's--it's horrible."
+
+"Horrible?" Lise repeated.
+
+Janet swung round from the washbasin, her hands dripping.
+
+"Instead of getting seventy five thousand dollars she ought to be tarred
+and feathered.  She's nothing but a blackmailer."
+
+Lise, aroused from her visions, demanded vehemently "Ain't he a
+millionaire?"
+
+"What difference does that make?" Janet retorted.  "And you can't tell me
+she didn't know what she was up to all along--with that face."
+
+"I'd have sued him, all right," declared Lise, defiantly.
+
+"Then you'd be a blackmailer, too.  I'd sooner scrub floors, I'd sooner
+starve than do such a thing--take money for my affections.  In the first
+place, I'd have more pride, and in the second place, if I really loved a
+man, seventy five thousand or seventy five million dollars wouldn't help
+me any.  Where do you get such ideas?  Decent people don't have them."
+
+Janet turned to the basin again and began rubbing her face
+vigorously--ceasing for an instance to make sure of the identity of a
+sound reaching her ears despite the splashing of water.  Lise was
+sobbing.  Janet dried her face and hands, arranged her hair, and sat down
+on the windowsill; the scorn and anger, which had been so intense as
+completely to possess her, melting into a pity and contempt not unmixed
+with bewilderment.  Ordinarily Lise was hard, impervious to such
+reproaches, holding her own in the passionate quarrels that occasionally
+took place between them yet there were times, such as this, when her
+resistance broke down unexpectedly, and she lost all self control.  She
+rocked to and fro in the chair, her shoulders bowed, her face hidden in
+her hands.  Janet reached out and touched her.
+
+"Don't be silly," she began, rather sharply, "just because I said it was
+a disgrace to have such ideas.  Well, it is."
+
+"I'm not silly," said Lise.  "I'm sick of that job at the Bagatelle"
+--sob--"there's nothing in it--I'm going to quit--I wish to God I was
+dead!  Standing on your feet all day till you're wore out for six dollars
+a week--what's there in it?"--sob--"With that guy Walters who walks the
+floor never lettin' up on you.  He come up to me yesterday and says, `I
+didn't know you was near sighted, Miss Bumpus' just because there was a
+customer Annie Hatch was too lazy to wait on"--sob--"That's his line of
+dope--thinks he's sarcastic--and he's sweet on Annie.  Tomorrow I'm going
+to tell him to go to hell.  I'm through I'm sick of it, I tell
+you"--sob--"I'd rather be dead than slave like that for six dollars."
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Janet.
+
+"I don't know--I don't care.  What's the difference? any place'd be
+better than this."  For awhile she continued to cry on a ridiculously
+high, though subdued, whining note, her breath catching at intervals.  A
+feeling of helplessness, of utter desolation crept over Janet; powerless
+to comfort herself, how could she comfort her sister?  She glanced around
+the familiar, sordid room, at the magazine pages against the faded
+wall-paper, at the littered bureau and the littered bed, over which
+Lise's clothes were flung.  It was hot and close even now, in summer it
+would be stifling.  Suddenly a flash of sympathy revealed to her a
+glimpse of the truth that Lise, too, after her own nature, sought beauty
+and freedom!  Never did she come as near comprehending Lise as in such
+moments as this, and when, on dark winter mornings, her sister clung to
+her, terrified by the siren.  Lise was a child, and the thought that she,
+Janet, was powerless to change her was a part of the tragic tenderness.
+What would become of Lise?  And what would become of her, Janet?...  So
+she clung, desperately, to her sister's hand until at last Lise roused
+herself, her hair awry, her face puckered and wet with tears and
+perspiration.
+
+"I can't stand it any more--I've just got to go away anywhere," she said,
+and the cry found an echo in Janet's heart....
+
+But the next morning Lise went back to the Bagatelle, and Janet to the
+mill....
+
+The fact that Lise's love affairs had not been prospering undoubtedly had
+something to do with the fit of depression into which she had fallen that
+evening.  A month or so before she had acquired another beau.  It was
+understood by Lise's friends and Lise's family, though not by the
+gentleman himself, that his position was only temporary or at most
+probationary; he had not even succeeded to the rights, title, and
+privileges of the late Mr. Wiley, though occupying a higher position in
+the social scale--being the agent of a patent lawn sprinkler with an
+office in Faber Street.
+
+"Stick to him and you'll wear diamonds--that's what he tries to put
+across," was Lise's comment on Mr. Frear's method, and thus Janet gained
+the impression that her sister's feelings were not deeply involved.  "If
+I thought he'd make good with the sprinkler I might talk business.  But
+say, he's one of those ginks that's always tryin' to beat the bank.  He's
+never done a day's work in his life.  Last year he was passing around
+Foley's magazine, and before that he was with the race track that went
+out of business because the ministers got nutty over it.  Well, he may
+win out," she added reflectively, "those guys sometimes do put the game
+on the blink.  He sure is a good spender when the orders come in, with a
+line of talk to make you holler for mercy."
+
+Mr. Frear's "line of talk" came wholly, astonishingly, from one side of
+his mouth--the left side.  As a muscular feat it was a triumph.  A deaf
+person on his right side would not have known he was speaking.  The
+effect was secretive, extraordinarily confidential; enabling him to sell
+sprinklers, it ought to have helped him to make love, so distinctly
+personal was it, implying as it did that the individual addressed was
+alone of all the world worthy of consideration. Among his friends it was
+regarded as an accomplishment, but Lise was critical, especially since he
+did not look into one's eyes, but gazed off into space, as though he
+weren't talking at all.
+
+She had once inquired if the right side of his face was paralyzed.
+
+She permitted him to take her, however, to Gruber's Cafe, to the movies,
+and one or two select dance halls, and to Slattery's Riverside Park,
+where one evening she had encountered the rejected Mr. Wiley.
+
+"Say, he was sore!" she told Janet the next morning, relating the
+incident with relish, "for two cents he would have knocked Charlie over
+the ropes.  I guess he could do it, too, all right."
+
+Janet found it curious that Lise should display such vindictiveness
+toward Mr. Wiley, who was more sinned against than sinning.  She was
+moved to inquire after his welfare.
+
+"He's got one of them red motorcycles," said Lise.  "He was gay with it
+too-- when we was waiting for the boulevard trolley he opened her up and
+went right between Charlie and me.  I had to laugh.  He's got a job over
+in Haverhill you can't hold that guy under water long."
+
+Apparently Lise had no regrets.  But her premonitions concerning Mr.
+Frear proved to be justified.  He did not "make good."  One morning the
+little office on Faber Street where the sprinklers were displayed was
+closed, Hampton knew him no more, and the police alone were sincerely
+regretful.  It seemed that of late he had been keeping all the money for
+the sprinklers, and spending a good deal of it on Lise.  At the time she
+accepted the affair with stoical pessimism, as one who has learned what
+to expect of the world, though her moral sense was not profoundly
+disturbed by the reflection that she had indulged in the delights of
+Slattery's and Gruber's and a Sunday at "the Beach" at the expense of the
+Cascade Sprinkler Company of Boston.  Mr. Frear inconsiderately neglected
+to prepare her for his departure, the news of which was conveyed to her
+in a singular manner, and by none other than Mr. Johnny Tiernan of the
+tin shop,--their conversation throwing some light, not only on Lise's
+sophistication, but on the admirable and intricate operation of Hampton's
+city government.  About five o'clock Lise was coming home along Fillmore
+Street after an uneventful, tedious and manless holiday spent in the
+company of Miss Schuler and other friends when she perceived Mr. Tiernan
+seated on his steps, grinning and waving a tattered palm-leaf fan.
+
+"The mercury is sure on the jump," he observed.  "You'd think it was
+July."
+
+And Lise agreed.
+
+"I suppose you'll be going to Tim Slattery's place tonight," he went on.
+"It's the coolest spot this side of the Atlantic Ocean."
+
+There was, apparently, nothing cryptic in this remark, yet it is worth
+noting that Lise instantly became suspicious.
+
+"Why would I be going out there?" she inquired innocently, darting at him
+a dark, coquettish glance.
+
+Mr. Tiernan regarded her guilelessly, but there was admiration in his
+soul; not because of her unquestioned feminine attractions,--he being
+somewhat amazingly proof against such things,--but because it was
+conveyed to him in some unaccountable way that her suspicions were
+aroused.  The brain beneath that corkscrew hair was worthy of a
+Richelieu.  Mr. Tiernan's estimate of Miss Lise Bumpus, if he could have
+been induced to reveal it, would have been worth listening to.
+
+"And why wouldn't you?" he replied heartily.  "Don't I see all the pretty
+young ladies out there, including yourself, and you dancing with the
+Cascade man. Why is it you'll never give me a dance?"
+
+"Why is it you never ask me?" demanded Lise.
+
+"What chance have I got, against him?"
+
+"He don't own me," said Lise.
+
+Mr. Tiernan threw back his head, and laughed.
+
+"Well, if you're there to-night, tangoin' with him and I come up and
+says, `Miss Bumpus, the pleasure is mine,' I'm wondering what would
+happen."
+
+"I'm not going to Slattery's to-night," she declared having that instant
+arrived at this conclusion.
+
+"And where then?  I'll come along, if there's a chance for me."
+
+"Quit your kidding," Lise reproved him.
+
+Mr. Tiernan suddenly looked very solemn:
+
+"Kidding, is it?  Me kiddin' you?  Give me a chance, that's all I'm
+asking. Where will you be, now?"
+
+"Is Frear wanted?" she demanded.
+
+Mr. Tiernan's expression changed.  His nose seemed to become more
+pointed, his eyes to twinkle more merrily than ever.  He didn't take the
+trouble, now, to conceal his admiration.
+
+"Sure, Miss Bumpus," he said, "if you was a man, we'd have you on the
+force to- morrow."
+
+"What's he wanted for?"
+
+"Well," said Johnny, "a little matter of sprinklin'.  He's been
+sprinklin' his company's water without a license."
+
+She was silent a moment before she exclaimed:--
+
+"I ought to have been wise that he was a crook!"
+
+"Well," said Johnny consolingly, "there's others that ought to have been
+wise, too.  The Cascade people had no business takin' on a man that
+couldn't use but half of his mouth."
+
+This seemed to Lise a reflection on her judgment.  She proceeded to clear
+herself.
+
+"He was nothing to me.  He never gave me no rest.  He used to come 'round
+and pester me to go out with him--"
+
+"Sure!" interrupted Mr. Tiernan.  "Don't I know how it is with the likes
+of him!  A good time's a good time, and no harm in it.  But the point is"
+and here he cocked his nose--"the point is, where is he?  Where will he
+be tonight?"
+
+All at once Lise grew vehement, almost tearful.
+
+"I don't know--honest to God, I don't.  If I did I'd tell you.  Last
+night he said he might be out of town.  He didn't say where he was
+going."  She fumbled in her bag, drawing out an imitation lace
+handkerchief and pressing it to her eyes.
+
+"There now!" exclaimed Mr. Tiernan, soothingly.  "How would you know?
+And he deceivin' you like he did the company--"
+
+"He didn't deceive me," cried Lise.
+
+"Listen," said Mr. Tiernan, who had risen and laid his hand on her arm.
+"It's not young ladies like you that works and are self-respecting that
+any one would be troublin', and you the daughter of such a fine man as
+your father.  Run along, now, I won't be detaining you, Miss Bumpus, and
+you'll accept my apology.  I guess we'll never see him in Hampton
+again...."
+
+Some twenty minutes later he sauntered down the street, saluting
+acquaintances, and threading his way across the Common entered a grimy
+brick building where a huge policeman with an insignia on his arm was
+seated behind a desk.  Mr. Tiernan leaned on the desk, and reflectively
+lighted a Thomas-Jefferson-Five- Cent Cigar, Union Label, the
+excellencies of which were set forth on large signs above the "ten foot"
+buildings on Faber Street.
+
+"She don't know nothing, Mike," he remarked.  "I guess he got wise this
+morning."
+
+The sergeant nodded....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+To feel potential within one's self the capacity to live and yet to have
+no means of realizing this capacity is doubtless one of the least
+comfortable and agreeable of human experiences.  Such, as summer came on,
+was Janet's case. The memory of that visit to Silliston lingered in her
+mind, sometimes to flare up so vividly as to make her existence seem
+unbearable.  How wonderful, she thought, to be able to dwell in such a
+beautiful place, to have as friends and companions such amusing and
+intelligent people as the stranger with whom she had talked!  Were all
+the inhabitants of Silliston like him?  They must be, since it was a seat
+of learning.  Lise's cry, "I've just got to go away, anywhere," found an
+echo in Janet's soul.  Why shouldn't she go away?  She was capable of
+taking care of herself, she was a good stenographer, her salary had been
+raised twice in two years,--why should she allow consideration for her
+family to stand in the way of what she felt would be self realization?
+Unconsciously she was a true modern in that the virtues known as duty and
+self sacrifice did not appeal to her,--she got from them neither benefit
+nor satisfaction, she understood instinctively that they were impeding to
+growth.  Unlike Lise, she was able to see life as it is, she did not
+expect of it miracles, economic or matrimonial.  Nothing would happen
+unless she made it happen.  She was twenty-one, earning nine dollars a
+week, of which she now contributed five to the household,--her father,
+with characteristic incompetence, having taken out a larger insurance
+policy than he could reasonably carry.  Of the remaining four dollars she
+spent more than one on lunches, there were dresses and underclothing,
+shoes and stockings to buy, in spite of darning and mending; little
+treats with Eda that mounted up; and occasionally the dentist--for Janet
+would not neglect her teeth as Lise neglected hers.  She managed to save
+something, but it was very little.  And she was desperately unhappy when
+she contemplated the grey and monotonous vista of the years ahead, saw
+herself growing older and older, driven always by the stern necessity of
+accumulating a margin against possible disasters; little by little drying
+up, losing, by withering disuse, those rich faculties of enjoyment with
+which she was endowed, and which at once fascinated and frightened her.
+Marriage, in such an environment, offered no solution; marriage meant
+dependence, from which her very nature revolted: and in her existence,
+drab and necessitous though it were, was still a remnant of freedom that
+marriage would compel her to surrender....
+
+One warm evening, oppressed by such reflections, she had started home
+when she remembered having left her bag in the office, and retraced her
+steps.  As she turned the corner of West Street, she saw, beside the
+canal and directly in front of the bridge, a new and smart-looking
+automobile, painted crimson and black, of the type known as a runabout,
+which she recognized as belonging to Mr. Ditmar.  Indeed, at that moment
+Mr. Ditmar himself was stepping off the end of the bridge and about to
+start the engine when, dropping the crank, he walked to the dashboard and
+apparently became absorbed in some mechanisms there.  Was it the glance
+cast in her direction that had caused him to delay his departure? Janet
+was seized by a sudden and rather absurd desire to retreat, but Canal
+Street being empty, such an action would appear eccentric, and she came
+slowly forward, pretending not to see her employer, ridiculing to herself
+the idea that he had noticed her.  Much to her annoyance, however, her
+embarrassment persisted, and she knew it was due to the memory of certain
+incidents, each in itself almost negligible, but cumulatively amounting
+to a suspicion that for some months he had been aware of her: many times
+when he had passed through the outer office she had felt his eyes upon
+her, had been impelled to look up from her work to surprise in them a
+certain glow to make her bow her head again in warm confusion.  Now, as
+she approached him, she was pleasantly but rather guiltily conscious of
+the more rapid beating of the blood that precedes an adventure, yet
+sufficiently self-possessed to note the becoming nature of the light
+flannel suit axed rather rakish Panama he had pushed back from his
+forehead.  It was not until she had almost passed him that he
+straightened up, lifted the Panama, tentatively, and not too far,
+startling her.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Bumpus," he said.  "I thought you had gone."
+
+"I left my bag in the office," she replied, with the outward calmness
+that rarely deserted her--the calmness, indeed, that had piqued him and
+was leading him on to rashness.
+
+"Oh," he said.  "Simmons will get it for you."  Simmons was the watchman
+who stood in the vestibule of the office entrance.
+
+"Thanks.  I can get it myself," she told him, and would have gone on had
+he not addressed her again.  "I was just starting out for a spin.  What
+do you think of the car?  It's good looking, isn't it?"  He stood off and
+surveyed it, laughing a little, and in his laugh she detected a note
+apologetic, at variance with the conception she had formed of his
+character, though not alien, indeed, to the dust-coloured vigour of the
+man.  She scarcely recognized Ditmar as he stood there, yet he excited
+her, she felt from him an undercurrent of something that caused her
+inwardly to tremble.  "See how the lines are carried through." He
+indicated this by a wave of his hand, but his eyes were now on her.
+
+"It is pretty," she agreed.
+
+In contrast to the defensive tactics which other ladies of his
+acquaintance had adopted, tactics of a patently coy and coquettish
+nature, this self-collected manner was new and spicy, challenging to
+powers never as yet fully exerted while beneath her manner he felt
+throbbing that rare and dangerous thing in women, a temperament, for
+which men have given their souls.  This conviction of her possession of a
+temperament,--he could not have defined the word, emotional rather than
+intellectual, produced the apologetic attitude she was quick to sense.
+He had never been, at least during his maturity, at a loss with the other
+sex, and he found the experience delicious.
+
+"You like pretty things, I'm sure of that," he hazarded.  But she did not
+ask him how he knew, she simply assented.  He raised the hood, revealing
+the engine.  "Isn't that pretty?  See how nicely everything is adjusted
+in that little space to do the particular work for which it is designed."
+
+Thus appealed to, she came forward and stopped, still standing off a
+little way, but near enough to see, gazing at the shining copper caps on
+the cylinders, at the bright rods and gears.
+
+"It looks intricate," said Mr. Ditmar, "but really it's very simple.  The
+gasoline comes in here from the tank behind--this is called the
+carburetor, it has a jet to vaporize the gasoline, and the vapour is
+sucked into each of these cylinders in turn when the piston moves--like
+this."  He sought to explain the action of the piston.  "That compresses
+it, and then a tiny electric spark comes just at the right moment to
+explode it, and the explosion sends the piston down again, and turns the
+shaft.  Well, all four cylinders have an explosion one right after
+another, and that keeps the shaft going."  Whereupon the most important
+personage in Hampton, the head of the great Chippering Mill proceeded,
+for the benefit of a humble assistant stenographer, to remove the floor
+boards behind the dash.  "There's the shaft, come here and look at it."
+She obeyed, standing beside him, almost touching him, his arm, indeed,
+brushing her sleeve, and into his voice crept a tremor.  "The shaft turns
+the rear wheels by means of a gear at right angles on the axle, and the
+rear wheels drive the car.  Do you see?"
+
+"Yes," she answered faintly, honesty compelling her to add: "a little."
+
+He was looking, now, not at the machinery, but intently at her, and she
+could feel the blood flooding into her cheeks and temples.  She was even
+compelled for an instant to return his glance, and from his eyes into
+hers leaped a flame that ran scorching through her body.  Then she knew
+with conviction that the explanation of the automobile had been an
+excuse; she had comprehended almost nothing of it, but she had been
+impressed by the facility with which he described it, by his evident
+mastery over it.  She had noticed his hands, how thick his fingers were
+and close together; yet how deftly he had used them, without smearing the
+cuffs of his silk shirt or the sleeves of his coat with the oil that
+glistened everywhere.
+
+"I like machinery," he told her as he replaced the boards.  "I like to
+take care of it myself."
+
+"It must be interesting," she assented, aware of the inadequacy of the
+remark, and resenting in herself an inarticulateness seemingly imposed by
+inhibition connected with his nearness.  Fascination and antagonism were
+struggling within her.  Her desire to get away grew desperate.
+
+"Thank you for showing it to me."  With an effort of will she moved
+toward the bridge, but was impelled by a consciousness of the abruptness
+of her departure to look back at him once--and smile, to experience again
+the thrill of the current he sped after her.  By lifting his hat, a
+little higher, a little more confidently than in the first instance, he
+made her leaving seem more gracious, the act somehow conveying an
+acknowledgment on his part that their relationship had changed.
+
+Once across the bridge and in the mill, she fairly ran up the stairs and
+into the empty office, to perceive her bag lying on the desk where she
+had left it, and sat down for a few minutes beside the window, her heart
+pounding in her breast as though she had barely escaped an accident
+threatening her with physical annihilation.  Something had happened to
+her at last!  But what did it mean?  Where would it lead?  Her fear, her
+antagonism, of which she was still conscious, her resentment that Ditmar
+had thus surreptitiously chosen to approach her in a moment when they
+were unobserved were mingled with a throbbing exultation in that he had
+noticed her, that there was something in her to attract him in that way,
+to make his voice thicker and his smile apologetic when he spoke to her.
+Of that "something-in-her" she had been aware before, but never had it
+been so unmistakably recognized and beckoned to from without.  She was at
+once terrified, excited--and flattered.
+
+At length, growing calmer, she made her way out of the building.  When
+she reached the vestibule she had a moment of sharp apprehension, of
+paradoxical hope, that Ditmar might still be there, awaiting her.  But he
+had gone....
+
+In spite of her efforts to dismiss the matter from her mind, to persuade
+herself there had been no significance in the encounter, when she was
+seated at her typewriter the next morning she experienced a renewal of
+the palpitation of the evening before, and at the sound of every step in
+the corridor she started. Of this tendency she was profoundly ashamed.
+And when at last Ditmar arrived, though the blood rose to her temples,
+she kept her eyes fixed on the keys.  He went quickly into his room: she
+was convinced he had not so much as glanced at her....  As the days went
+by, however, she was annoyed by the discovery that his continued ignoring
+of her presence brought more resentment than relief, she detected in it a
+deliberation implying between them a guilty secret: she hated secrecy,
+though secrecy contained a thrill.  Then, one morning when she was alone
+in the office with young Caldwell, who was absorbed in some reports,
+Ditmar entered unexpectedly and looked her full in the eyes, surprising
+her into answering his glance before she could turn away, hating herself
+and hating him.  Hate, she determined, was her prevailing sentiment in
+regard to Mr. Ditmar.
+
+The following Monday Miss Ottway overtook her, at noon, on the stairs.
+
+"Janet, I wanted to speak to you, to tell you I'm leaving," she said.
+
+"Leaving!"  repeated Janet, who had regarded Miss Ottway as a fixture.
+
+"I'm going to Boston," Miss Ottway explained, in her deep, musical voice.
+"I've always wanted to go, I have an unmarried sister there of whom I'm
+very fond, and Mr. Ditmar knows that.  He's got me a place with the
+Treasurer, Mr. Semple."
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry you're going, though of course I'm glad for you," Janet
+said sincerely, for she liked and respected Miss Ottway, and was
+conscious in the older woman of a certain kindly interest.
+
+"Janet, I've recommended you to Mr. Ditmar for my place."
+
+"Oh!" cried Janet, faintly.
+
+"It was he who asked about you, he thinks you are reliable and quick and
+clever, and I was very glad to say a good word for you, my dear, since I
+could honestly do so."  Miss Ottway drew Janet's arm through hers and
+patted it affectionately.  "Of course you'll have to expect some
+jealousy, there are older women in the other offices who will think they
+ought to have the place, but if you attend to your own affairs, as you
+always have done, there won't be any trouble."
+
+"Oh, I won't take the place, I can't!" Janet cried, so passionately that
+Miss Ottway looked at her in surprise.  "I'm awfully grateful to you,"
+she added, flushing crimson, "I--I'm afraid I'm not equal to it."
+
+"Nonsense," said the other with decision.  "You'd be very foolish not to
+try it.  You won't get as much as I do, at first, at any rate, but a
+little more money won't be unwelcome, I guess.  Mr. Ditmar will speak to
+you this afternoon.  I leave on Saturday.  I'm real glad to do you a good
+turn, Janet, and I know you'll get along," Miss Ottway added impulsively
+as they parted at the corner of Faber Street.  "I've always thought a
+good deal of you."
+
+For awhile Janet stood still, staring after the sturdy figure of her
+friend, heedless of the noonday crowd that bumped her.  Then she went to
+Grady's Quick Lunch Counter and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk,
+which she consumed slowly, profoundly sunk in thought.  Presently Eda
+Rawle arrived, and noticing her preoccupation, inquired what was the
+matter.
+
+"Nothing," said Janet....
+
+At two o'clock, when Ditmar returned to the office, he called Miss
+Ottway, who presently came out to summon Janet to his presence.  Fresh,
+immaculate, yet virile in his light suit and silk shirt with red stripes,
+he was seated at his desk engaged in turning over some papers in a
+drawer.  He kept her waiting a moment, and then said, with apparent
+casualness:--
+
+"Is that you, Miss Bumpus?  Would you mind closing the door?"
+
+Janet obeyed, and again stood before him.  He looked up.  A suggestion of
+tenseness in her pose betraying an inner attitude of alertness, of
+defiance, conveyed to him sharply and deliciously once more the
+panther-like impression he had received when first, as a woman, she had
+come to his notice.  The renewed and heightened perception of this feral
+quality in her aroused a sense of danger by no means unpleasurable,
+though warning him that he was about to take an unprecedented step, being
+drawn beyond the limits of caution he had previously set for himself in
+divorcing business and sex.  Though he was by no means self-convinced of
+an intention to push the adventure, preferring to leave its possibilities
+open, he strove in voice and manner to be business-like; and instinct,
+perhaps, whispered that she might take alarm.
+
+"Sit down, Miss Bumpus," he said pleasantly, as he closed the drawer.
+
+She seated herself on an office chair.
+
+"Do you like your work here?"  he inquired.
+
+"No," said Janet.
+
+"Why not?"  he demanded, staring at her.
+
+"Why should I?"  she retorted.
+
+"Well--what's the trouble with it?  It isn't as hard as it would be in
+some other places, is it?"
+
+"I'm not saying anything against the place."
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"You asked me if I liked my work.  I don't."
+
+"Then why do you do it?" he demanded.
+
+"To live," she replied.
+
+He smiled, but his gesture as he stroked his moustache implied a slight
+annoyance at her composure.  He found it difficult with this dark, self-
+contained young woman to sustain the role of benefactor.
+
+"What kind of work would you like to do?" he demanded.
+
+"I don't know.  I haven't got the choice, anyway," she said.
+
+He observed that she did her work well, to which she made no answer.  She
+refused to help him, although Miss Ottway must have warned her.  She
+acted as though she were conferring the favour.  And yet, clearing his
+throat, he was impelled to say:--
+
+"Miss Ottway's leaving me, she's going into the Boston office with Mr.
+Semple, the treasurer of the corporation.  I shall miss her, she's an
+able and reliable woman, and she knows my ways."  He paused, fingering
+his paper knife.  "The fact is, Miss Bumpus, she's spoken highly of you,
+she tells me you're quick and accurate and painstaking--I've noticed that
+for myself.  She seems to think you could do her work, and recommends
+that I give you a trial.  You understand, of course, that the position is
+in a way confidential, and that you could not expect at first, at any
+rate, the salary Miss Ottway has had, but I'm willing to offer you
+fourteen dollars a week to begin with, and afterwards, if we get along
+together, to give you more.  What do you say?"
+
+"I'd like to try it, Mr. Ditmar," Janet said, and added nothing, no word
+of gratitude or of appreciation to that consent.
+
+"Very well then," he replied, "that's settled.  Miss Ottway will explain
+things to you, and tell you about my peculiarities.  And when she goes
+you can take her desk, by the window nearest my door."
+
+Ditmar sat idle for some minutes after she had gone, staring through the
+open doorway into the outer office....
+
+To Ditmar she had given no evidence of the storm his offer had created in
+her breast, and it was characteristic also that she waited until supper
+was nearly over to inform her family, making the announcement in a
+matter-of-fact tone, just as though it were not the unique piece of good
+fortune that had come to the Bumpuses since Edward had been eliminated
+from the mercantile establishment at Dolton.  The news was received with
+something like consternation.  For the moment Hannah was incapable of
+speech, and her hand trembled as she resumed the cutting of the pie: but
+hope surged within her despite her effort to keep it down, her
+determination to remain true to the fatalism from which she had
+paradoxically derived so much comfort.  The effect on Edward, while
+somewhat less violent, was temporarily to take away his appetite.  Hope,
+to flower in him, needed but little watering.  Great was his faith in the
+Bumpus blood, and secretly he had always regarded his eldest daughter as
+the chosen vessel for their redemption.
+
+"Well, I swan!" he exclaimed, staring at her in admiration and neglecting
+his pie, "I've always thought you had it in you to get on, Janet.  I
+guess I've told you you've always put me in mind of Eliza Bumpus--the one
+that held out against the Indians till her husband came back with the
+neighbours.  I was just reading about her again the other night."
+
+"Yes, you've told us, Edward," said Hannah.
+
+"She had gumption," he went on, undismayed.  "And from what I can gather
+of her looks I calculate you favour her--she was dark and not so very
+tall--not so tall as you, I guess.  So you're goin'" (he pronounced it
+very slowly) "you're goin' to be Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer!  He's
+a smart man, Mr. Ditmar, he's a good man, too.  All you've got to do is
+to behave right by him.  He always speaks to me when he passes by the
+gate.  I was sorry for him when his wife died--a young woman, too.  And
+he's never married again!  Well, I swan!"
+
+"You'd better quit swanning," exclaimed Hannah.  "And what's Mr. Ditmar's
+goodness got to do with it?  He's found-out Janet has sense, she's
+willing and hard working, he won't" (pronounced want) "he won't be the
+loser by it, and he's not giving her what he gave Miss Ottway.  It's just
+like you, thinking he's doing her a good turn."
+
+"I'm not saying Janet isn't smart," he protested, "but I know it's hard
+to get work with so many folks after every job."
+
+"Maybe it ain't so hard when you've got some get-up and go," Hannah
+retorted rather cruelly.  It was thus characteristically and with
+unintentional sharpness she expressed her maternal pride by a reflection
+not only upon Edward, but Lise also.  Janet had grown warm at the mention
+of Ditmar's name.
+
+"It was Miss Ottway who recommended me," she said, glancing at her
+sister, who during this conversation had sat in silence.  Lise's
+expression, normally suggestive of a discontent not unbecoming to her
+type, had grown almost sullen. Hannah's brisk gathering up of the dishes
+was suddenly arrested.
+
+"Lise, why don't you say something to your sister?  Ain't you glad she's
+got the place?"
+
+"Sure, I'm glad," said Lise, and began to unscrew the top of the salt
+shaker. "I don't see why I couldn't get a raise, too.  I work just as
+hard as she does."
+
+Edward, who had never got a "raise" in his life, was smitten with
+compunction and sympathy.
+
+"Give 'em time, Lise," he said consolingly.  "You ain't so old as Janet."
+
+"Time!" she cried, flaring up and suddenly losing her control.  "I've got
+a picture of Waiters giving me a raise I know the girls that get raises
+from him."
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Hannah declared.  "There--you've
+spilled the salt!"
+
+But Lise, suddenly bursting into tears, got up and left the room.  Edward
+picked up the Banner and pretended to read it, while Janet collected the
+salt and put it back into the shaker.  Hannah, gathering up the rest of
+the dishes, disappeared into the kitchen, but presently returned, as
+though she had forgotten something.
+
+"Hadn't you better go after her?" she said to Janet.
+
+"I'm afraid it won't be any use.  She's got sort of queer, lately--she
+thinks they're down on her."
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke so sharp.  But then--" Hannah shook her head, and her
+sentence remained unfinished.
+
+Janet sought her sister, but returned after a brief interval, with the
+news that Lise had gone out.
+
+One of the delights of friendship, as is well known, is the exchange of
+confidences of joy or sorrow, but there was, in Janet's promotion,
+something intensely personal to increase her natural reserve.  Her
+feelings toward Ditmar were so mingled as to defy analysis, and several
+days went by before she could bring herself to inform Eda Rawle of the
+new business relationship in which she stood to the agent of the
+Chippering Mill.  The sky was still bright as they walked out Warren
+Street after supper, Eda bewailing the trials of the day just ended: Mr.
+Frye, the cashier of the bank, had had one of his cantankerous fits, had
+found fault with her punctuation, nothing she had done had pleased him.
+But presently, when they had come to what the Banner called the
+"residential district," she was cheered by the sight of the green lawns,
+the flowerbeds and shrubbery, the mansions of those inhabitants of
+Hampton unfamiliar with boardinghouses and tenements.  Before one of
+these she paused, retaining Janet by the arm, exclaiming wistfully:
+
+"Wouldn't you like to live there?  That belongs to your boss."
+
+Janet, who had been dreaming as she gazed at the fagade of rough stucco
+that once had sufficed to fill the ambitions of the late Mrs. Ditmar,
+recognized it as soon as Eda spoke, and dragged her friend hastily,
+almost roughly along the sidewalk until they had reached the end of the
+block.  Janet was red.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Eda, as soon as she had recovered from her
+surprise.
+
+"Nothing," said Janet.  "Only--I'm in his office."
+
+"But what of it?  You've got a right to look at his house, haven't you?"
+
+"Why yes,--a right," Janet assented.  Knowing Eda's ambitions for her
+were not those of a business career, she was in terror lest her friend
+should scent a romance, and for this reason she had never spoken of the
+symptoms Ditmar had betrayed.  She attempted to convey to Eda the
+doubtful taste of staring point- blank at the house of one's employer,
+especially when he might be concealed behind a curtain.
+
+"You see," she added, "Miss Ottway's recommended me for her place--she's
+going away."
+
+"Janet!"  cried Eda.  "Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Well," said Janet guiltily, "it's only a trial.  I don't know whether
+he'll keep me or not."
+
+"Of course he'll keep you," said Eda, warmly.  "If that isn't just like
+you, not saying a word about it.  Gee, if I'd had a raise like that I
+just couldn't wait to tell you.  But then, I'm not smart like you."
+
+"Don't be silly," said Janet, out of humour with herself, and annoyed
+because she could not then appreciate Eda's generosity.
+
+"We've just got to celebrate!" declared Eda, who had the gift, which
+Janet lacked, of taking her joys vicariously; and her romantic and
+somewhat medieval proclivities would permit no such momentous occasion to
+pass without an appropriate festal symbol.  "We'll have a spree on
+Saturday--the circus is coming then."
+
+"It'll be my spree," insisted Janet, her heart warming.  "I've got the
+raise...."
+
+On Saturday, accordingly, they met at Grady's for lunch, Eda attired in
+her best blouse of pale blue, and when they emerged from the restaurant,
+despite the torrid heat, she beheld Faber Street as in holiday garb as
+they made their way to the cool recesses of Winterhalter's to complete
+the feast.  That glorified drug-store with the five bays included in its
+manifold functions a department rivalling Delmonico's, with electric fans
+and marble-topped tables and white-clad waiters who took one's order and
+filled it at the soda fountain. It mattered little to Eda that the young
+man awaiting their commands had pimples and long hair and grinned
+affectionately as he greeted them.
+
+"Hello, girls!" he said.  "What strikes you to-day?"
+
+"Me for a raspberry nut sundae," announced Eda, and Janet, being unable
+to imagine any more delectable confection, assented.  The penetrating
+odour peculiar to drugstores, dominated by menthol and some unnamable but
+ancient remedy for catarrh, was powerless to interfere with their
+enjoyment.
+
+The circus began at two.  Rather than cling to the straps of a crowded
+car they chose to walk, following the familiar route of the trolley past
+the car barns and the base-ball park to the bare field under the seared
+face of Torrey's Hill, where circuses were wont to settle.  A
+sirocco-like breeze from the southwest whirled into eddies the clouds of
+germladen dust stirred up by the automobiles, blowing their skirts
+against their legs, and sometimes they were forced to turn, clinging to
+their hats, confused and giggling, conscious of male glances.  The crowd,
+increasing as they proceeded, was in holiday mood; young men with a
+newly-washed aspect, in Faber Street suits, chaffed boisterously groups
+of girls, who retorted with shrill cries and shrieks of laughter; amorous
+couples strolled, arm in arm, oblivious, as though the place were as
+empty as Eden; lady-killers with exaggerated square shoulders, wearing
+bright neckties, their predatory instincts alert, hovered about in eager
+search of adventure.  There were men-killers, too, usually to be found in
+pairs, in startling costumes they had been persuaded were the latest
+Paris models,-- imitations of French cocottes in Hampton, proof of the
+smallness of our modern world.  Eda regarded them superciliously.
+
+"They'd like you to think they'd never been near a loom or a bobbin!"
+she exclaimed.
+
+In addition to these more conspicuous elements, the crowd contained sober
+operatives of the skilled sort possessed of sufficient means to bring
+hither their families, including the baby; there were section-hands and
+foremen, slashers, mule spinners, beamers, French-Canadians, Irish,
+Scotch, Welsh and English, Germans, with only an occasional Italian,
+Lithuanian, or Jew.  Peanut and popcorn men, venders of tamales and
+Chile-con-carne hoarsely shouted their wares, while from afar could be
+heard the muffled booming of a band.  Janet's heart beat faster.  She
+regarded with a tinge of awe the vast expanse of tent that rose before
+her eyes, the wind sending ripples along the heavy canvas from
+circumference to tent pole.  She bought the tickets; they entered the
+circular enclosure where the animals were kept; where the strong beams of
+the sun, in trying to force their way through the canvas roof, created an
+unnatural, jaundiced twilight, the weirdness of which was somehow
+enhanced by the hoarse, amazingly penetrating growls of beasts.  Suddenly
+a lion near them raised a shaggy head, emitting a series of undulating,
+soul-shaking roars.
+
+"Ah, what's eatin' you?" demanded a thick-necked youth, pretending not to
+be awestricken by this demonstration.
+
+"Suppose he'd get out!" cried Eda, drawing Janet away.
+
+"I wouldn't let him hurt you, dearie," the young man assured her.
+
+"You!" she retorted contemptuously, but grinned in spite of herself,
+showing her gums.
+
+The vague feeling of terror inspired by this tent was a part of its
+fascination, for it seemed pregnant with potential tragedies suggested by
+the juxtaposition of helpless babies and wild beasts, the babies crying
+or staring in blank amazement at padding tigers whose phosphorescent eyes
+never left these morsels beyond the bars.  The two girls wandered about,
+their arms closely locked, but the strange atmosphere, the roars of the
+beasts, the ineffable, pungent odour of the circus, of sawdust mingled
+with the effluvia of animals, had aroused an excitement that was slow in
+subsiding.  Some time elapsed before they were capable of taking a normal
+interest in the various exhibits.
+
+"`Adjutant Bird,'" Janet read presently from a legend on one of the
+compartments of a cage devoted to birds, and surveying the somewhat
+dissolute occupant.  "Why, he's just like one of those tall mashers who
+stay at the Wilmot and stand on the sidewalk,--travelling men, you know."
+
+"Say-isn't he?" Eda agreed.  "Isn't he pleased with himself, and his feet
+crossed!"
+
+"And see this one, Eda--he's a 'Harpy Eagle.'  There's somebody we know
+looks just like that.  Wait a minute--I'll tell you--it's the woman who
+sits in the cashier's cage at Grady's."
+
+"If it sure isn't!" said Eda.
+
+"She has the same fluffy, light hair--hairpins can't keep it down, and
+she looks at you in that same sort of surprised way with her head on one
+side when you hand in your check."
+
+"Why, it's true to the life!" cried Eda enthusiastically.  "She thinks
+she's got all the men cinched,--she does and she's forty if she's a day."
+
+These comparisons brought them to a pitch of risible enjoyment amply
+sustained by the spectacle in the monkey cage, to which presently they
+turned.  A chimpanzee, with a solicitation more than human, was solemnly
+searching a friend for fleas in the midst of a pandemonium of chattering
+and screeching and chasing, of rattling of bars and trapezes carried on
+by their companions.
+
+"Well, young ladies," said a voice, "come to pay a call on your
+relations--have ye?"
+
+Eda giggled hysterically.  An elderly man was standing beside them.  He
+was shabbily dressed, his own features were wizened, almost simian, and
+by his friendly and fatuous smile Janet recognized one of the harmless
+obsessed in which Hampton abounded.
+
+"Relations!" Eda exclaimed.
+
+"You and me, yes, and her," he answered, looking at Janet, though at
+first he had apparently entertained some doubt as to this inclusion,
+"we're all descended from them."  His gesture triumphantly indicated the
+denizens of the cage.
+
+"What are you giving us?" said Eda.
+
+"Ain't you never read Darwin?"  he demanded.  "If you had, you'd know
+they're our ancestors, you'd know we came from them instead of Adam and
+Eve.  That there's a fable."
+
+"I'll never believe I came from them," cried Eda, vehement in her
+disgust.
+
+But Janet laughed.  "What's the difference?  Some of us aren't any better
+than monkeys, anyway."
+
+"That's so," said the man approvingly.  "That's so."  He wanted to
+continue the conversation, but they left him rather ruthlessly.  And
+when, from the entrance to the performance tent, they glanced back over
+their shoulders, he was still gazing at his cousins behind the bars,
+seemingly deriving an acute pleasure from his consciousness of the
+connection....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Modern business, by reason of the mingling of the sexes it involves, for
+the playwright and the novelist and the sociologist is full of
+interesting and dramatic situations, and in it may be studied,
+undoubtedly, one phase of the evolution tending to transform if not
+disintegrate certain institutions hitherto the corner-stones of society.
+Our stage is set.  A young woman, conscious of ability, owes her
+promotion primarily to certain dynamic feminine qualities with which she
+is endowed.  And though she may make an elaborate pretense of ignoring
+the fact, in her heart she knows and resents it, while at the same time,
+paradoxically, she gets a thrill from it,--a sustaining and inspiring
+thrill of power!  On its face it is a business arrangement;
+secretly,--attempt to repudiate this as one may,--it is tinged with the
+colours of high adventure.  When Janet entered into the intimate
+relationship with Mr. Claude Ditmar necessitated by her new duties as his
+private stenographer her attitude, slightly defiant, was the
+irreproachable one of a strict attention to duty.  All unconsciously she
+was a true daughter of the twentieth century, and probably a feminist at
+heart, which is to say that her conduct was determined by no preconceived
+or handed-down notions of what was proper and lady-like. For feminism, in
+a sense, is a return to atavism, and sex antagonism and sex attraction
+are functions of the same thing.  There were moments when she believed
+herself to hate Mr. Ditmar, when she treated him with an aloofness, an
+impersonality unsurpassed; moments when he paused in his dictation to
+stare at her in astonishment.  He, who flattered himself that he
+understood women!
+
+She would show him!--such was her dominating determination.  Her
+promotion assumed the guise of a challenge, of a gauntlet flung down at
+the feet of her sex.  In a certain way, an insult, though incredibly
+stimulating.  If he flattered himself that he had done her a favour, if
+he entertained the notion that he could presently take advantage of the
+contact with her now achieved to make unbusinesslike advances--well, he
+would find out.  He had proclaimed his desire for an able assistant in
+Miss Ottway's place--he would get one, and nothing more.  She watched
+narrowly, a l'affut, as the French say, for any signs of sentiment, and
+indeed this awareness of her being on guard may have had some influence
+on Mr. Ditmar's own attitude, likewise irreproachable....  A rather
+anaemic young woman, a Miss Annie James, was hired for Janet's old place.
+
+In spite of this aloofness and alertness, for the first time in her life
+Janet felt the exuberance of being in touch with affairs of import.
+Hitherto the mill had been merely a greedy monster claiming her freedom
+and draining her energies in tasks routine, such as the copying of
+meaningless documents and rows of figures; now, supplied with stimulus
+and a motive, the Corporation began to take on significance, and she
+flung herself into the work with an ardour hitherto unknown, determined
+to make herself so valuable to Ditmar that the time would come when he
+could not do without her.  She strove to memorize certain names and
+addresses, lest time be lost in looking them up, to familiarize herself
+with the ordinary run of his correspondence, to recall what letters were
+to be marked "personal," to anticipate matters of routine, in order that
+he might not have the tedium of repeating instructions; she acquired the
+faculty of keeping his engagements in her head; she came early to the
+office, remaining after hours, going through the files, becoming familiar
+with his system; and she learned to sort out his correspondence, sifting
+the important from the unimportant, to protect him, more and more, from
+numerous visitors who called only to waste his time.  Her instinct for
+the detection of book-agents, no matter how brisk and businesslike they
+might appear, was unerring--she remembered faces and the names belonging
+to them: an individual once observed to be persona non grata never
+succeeded in passing her twice.  On one occasion Ditmar came out of his
+office to see the back of one of these visitors disappearing into the
+corridor.
+
+"Who was that?" he asked.
+
+"His name is McCalla," she said.  "I thought you didn't want to be
+bothered."
+
+"But how in thunder did you get rid of him?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh, I just wouldn't let him in," she replied demurely.
+
+And Ditmar went away, wondering....  Thus she gtudied him, without
+permitting him to suspect it, learning his idiosyncrasies, his attitude
+toward all those with whom daily he came in contact, only to find herself
+approving.  She was forced to admit that he was a judge of men, compelled
+to admire his adroitness in dealing with them.  He could be democratic or
+autocratic as occasion demanded; he knew when to yield, and when to
+remain inflexible.  One morning, for instance, there arrived from New
+York a dapper salesman whose jauntily tied bow, whose thin
+hair--carefully parted to conceal an incipient baldness--whose wary and
+slightly weary eyes all impressively suggested the metropolitan
+atmosphere of high pressure and sophistication from which he had emerged.
+He had a machine to sell; an amazing machine, endowed with human
+intelligence and more than human infallibility; for when it made a
+mistake it stopped.  It was designed for the express purpose of
+eliminating from the payroll the skilled and sharp-eyed women who are
+known as "drawers-in," who sit all day long under a north light patiently
+threading the ends of the warp through the heddles of the loom harness.
+Janet's imagination was gradually fired as she listened to the visitor's
+eloquence; and the textile industry, which hitherto had seemed to her
+uninteresting and sordid, took on the colours of romance.
+
+"Now I've made up my mind we'll place one with you, Mr. Ditmar," the
+salesman concluded.  "I don't object to telling you we'd rather have one
+in the Chippering than in any mill in New England."
+
+Janet was surprised, almost shocked to see Ditmar shake his head, yet she
+felt a certain reluctant admiration because he had not been swayed by
+blandishments. At such moments, when he was bent on refusing a request,
+he seemed physically to acquire massiveness,--and he had a dogged way of
+chewing his cigar.
+
+"I don't want it, yet," he replied, "not until you improve it."  And she
+was impressed by the fact that he seemed to know as much about the
+machine as the salesman himself.  In spite of protests, denials, appeals,
+he remained firm. "When you get rid of the defects I've mentioned come
+back, Mr. Hicks--but don't come back until then."
+
+And Mr. Hicks departed, discomfited....
+
+Ditmar knew what he wanted.  Of the mill he was the absolute master,
+familiar with every process, carrying constantly in his mind how many
+spindles, how many looms were at work; and if anything untoward happened,
+becoming aware of it by what seemed to Janet a subconscious process,
+sending for the superintendent of the department: for Mr. Orcutt,
+perhaps, whose office was across the hall--a tall, lean, spectacled man
+of fifty who looked like a schoolmaster.
+
+"Orcutt, what's the matter with the opener in Cooney's room?"
+
+"Why, the blower's out of order."
+
+"Well, whose fault is it?"....
+
+He knew every watchman and foreman in the mill, and many of the second
+hands. The old workers, men and women who had been in the Chippering
+employ through good and bad times for years, had a place in his
+affections, but toward the labour force in general his attitude was
+impersonal.  The mill had to be run, and people to be got to run it.
+With him, first and last and always it was the mill, and little by little
+what had been for Janet a heterogeneous mass of machinery and human
+beings became unified and personified in Claude Ditmar.  It was odd how
+the essence and quality of that great building had changed for her; how
+the very roaring of the looms, as she drew near the canal in the
+mornings, had ceased to be sinister and depressing, but bore now a burden
+like a great battle song to excite and inspire, to remind her that she
+had been snatched as by a miracle from the commonplace.  And all this was
+a function of Ditmar.
+
+Life had become portentous.  And she was troubled by no qualms of logic,
+but gloried, womanlike, in her lack of it.  She did not ask herself why
+she had deliberately enlarged upon Miss Ottway's duties, invaded
+debatable ground in part inevitably personal, flung herself with such
+abandon into the enterprise of his life's passion, at the same time
+maintaining a deceptive attitude of detachment, half deceiving herself
+that it was zeal for the work by which she was actuated.  In her soul she
+knew better.  She was really pouring fuel on the flames.  She read him,
+up to a certain point--as far as was necessary; and beneath his attempts
+at self-control she was conscious of a dynamic desire that betrayed
+itself in many acts and signs,--as when he brushed against her; and
+occasionally when he gave evidence with his subordinates of a certain
+shortness of temper unusual with him she experienced a vaguely alarming
+but delicious thrill of power.  And this, of all men, was the great Mr.
+Ditmar!  Was she in love with him?  That question did not trouble her
+either.  She continued to experience in his presence waves of antagonism
+and attraction, revealing to her depths and possibilities of her nature
+that frightened while they fascinated. It never occurred to her to
+desist.  That craving in her for high adventure was not to be denied.
+
+On summer evenings it had been Ditmar's habit when in Hampton to stroll
+about his lawn, from time to time changing the position of the sprinkler,
+smoking a cigar, and reflecting pleasantly upon his existence.  His
+house, as he gazed at it against the whitening sky, was an eminently
+satisfactory abode, his wife was dead, his children gave him no trouble;
+he felt a glow of paternal pride in his son as the boy raced up and down
+the sidewalk on a bicycle; George was manly, large and strong for his
+age, and had a domineering way with other boys that gave Ditmar secret
+pleasure.  Of Amy, who was showing a tendency to stoutness, and who had
+inherited her mother's liking for candy and romances, Ditmar thought
+scarcely at all: he would glance at her as she lounged, reading, in a
+chair on the porch, but she did not come within his range of problems.
+He had, in short, everything to make a reasonable man content, a life
+nicely compounded of sustenance, pleasure, and business,--business
+naturally being the greatest of these.  He was--though he did not know
+it--ethically and philosophically right in squaring his morals with his
+occupation, and his had been the good fortune to live in a world whose
+codes and conventions had been carefully adjusted to the pursuit of that
+particular brand of happiness he had made his own.  Why, then, in the
+name of that happiness, of the peace and sanity and pleasurable effort it
+had brought him, had he allowed and even encouraged the advent of a new
+element that threatened to destroy the equilibrium achieved? an element
+refusing to be classified under the head of property, since it involved
+something he desired and could not buy?  A woman who was not property,
+who resisted the attempt to be turned into property, was an anomaly in
+Ditmar's universe.  He had not, of course, existed for more than forty
+years without having heard and read of and even encountered in an
+acquaintance or two the species of sex attraction sentimentally called
+love that sometimes made fools of men and played havoc with more
+important affairs, but in his experience it had never interfered with his
+sanity or his appetite or the Chippering Mill: it had never made his
+cigars taste bitter; it had never caused a deterioration in the
+appreciation of what he had achieved and held.  But now he was
+experiencing strange symptoms of an intensity out of all proportion to
+that of former relations with the other sex.  What was most unusual for
+him, he was alarmed and depressed, at moments irritable.  He regretted
+the capricious and apparently accidental impulse that had made him
+pretend to tinker with his automobile that day by the canal, that had led
+him to the incomparable idiocy of getting rid of Miss Ottway and
+installing the disturber of his peace as his private stenographer.
+
+What the devil was it in her that made him so uncomfortable?  When in his
+office he had difficulty in keeping his mind on matters of import; he
+would watch her furtively as she went about the room with the lithe and
+noiseless movements that excited him the more because he suspected
+beneath her outward and restrained demeanour a fierceness he craved yet
+feared.  He thought of her continually as a panther, a panther he had
+caught and could not tame; he hadn't even caught her, since she might
+escape at any time.  He took precautions not to alarm her.  When she
+brushed against him he trembled.  Continually she baffled and puzzled
+him, and he never could tell of what she was thinking.  She represented a
+whole set of new and undetermined values for which he had no precedents,
+and unlike every woman he had known--including his wife--she had an
+integrity of her own, seemingly beyond the reach of all influences
+economic and social.  All the more exasperating, therefore, was a
+propinquity creating an intimacy without substance, or without the
+substance he craved for she had magically become for him a sort of
+enveloping, protecting atmosphere.  In an astonishingly brief time he had
+fallen into the habit of talking things over with her; naturally not
+affairs of the first importance, but matters such as the economy of his
+time: when, for instance, it was most convenient for him to go to Boston;
+and he would find that she had telephoned, without being told, to the
+office there when to expect him, to his chauffeur to be on hand.  He
+never had to tell her a thing twice, nor did she interrupt--as Miss
+Ottway sometimes had done--the processes of his thought.  Without
+realizing it he fell into the habit of listening for the inflections of
+her voice, and though he had never lacked the power of making decisions,
+she somehow made these easier for him especially if, a human equation
+were involved.
+
+He had, at least, the consolation--if it were one--of reflecting that his
+reputation was safe, that there would be no scandal, since two are
+necessary to make the kind of scandal he had always feared, and Miss
+Bumpus, apparently, had no intention of being the second party.  Yet she
+was not virtuous, as he had hitherto defined the word.  Of this he was
+sure.  No woman who moved about as she did, who had such an effect on
+him, who had on occasions, though inadvertently, returned the lightning
+of his glances, whose rare laughter resembled grace notes, and in whose
+hair was that almost imperceptible kink, could be virtuous.  This
+instinctive conviction inflamed him.  For the first time in his life he
+began to doubt the universal conquering quality of his own charms,--and
+when such a thing happens to a man like Ditmar he is in danger of
+hell-fire.  He indulged less and less in the convivial meetings and
+excursions that hitherto had given him relaxation and enjoyment, and if
+his cronies inquired as to the reasons for his neglect of them he failed
+to answer with his usual geniality.
+
+"Everything going all right up at the mills, Colonel?" he was asked one
+day by Mr. Madden, the treasurer of a large shoe company, when they met
+on the marble tiles of the hall in their Boston club.
+
+"All right.  Why?"
+
+"Well," replied Madden, conciliatingly, "you seem kind of preoccupied,
+that's all.  I didn't know but what the fifty-four hour bill the
+legislature's just put through might be worrying you."
+
+"We'll handle that situation when the time comes," said Ditmar.  He
+accepted a gin rickey, but declined rather curtly the suggestion of a
+little spree over Sunday to a resort on the Cape which formerly he would
+have found enticing.  On another occasion he encountered in the lobby of
+the Parker House a more intimate friend, Chester Sprole, sallow,
+self-made, somewhat corpulent, one of those lawyers hail fellows well met
+in business circles and looked upon askance by the Brahmins of their
+profession; more than half politician, he had been in Congress, and from
+time to time was retained by large business interests because of his
+persuasive gifts with committees of the legislature--though these had
+been powerless to avert the recent calamity of the women and children's
+fifty-four hour bill.  Mr. Sprole's hair was prematurely white, and the
+crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes were not the result of legal
+worries.
+
+"Hullo, Dit," he said jovially.
+
+"Hullo, Ches," said Ditmar.
+
+"Now you're the very chap I wanted to see.  Where have you been keeping
+yourself lately?  Come out to the farm to-night,--same of the boys'll be
+there."  Mr. Sprole, like many a self-made man, was proud of his farm,
+though he did not lead a wholly bucolic existence.
+
+"I can't, Ches," answered Ditmar.  "I've got to go back to Hampton."
+
+This statement Mr. Sprole unwisely accepted as a fiction.  He took hold
+of Ditmar's arm.
+
+"A lady--eh--what?"
+
+"I've got to go back to Hampton," repeated Ditmar, with a suggestion of
+truculence that took his friend aback.  Not for worlds would Mr. Sprole
+have offended the agent of the Chippering Mill.
+
+"I was only joking, Claude," he hastened to explain.  Ditmar, somewhat
+mollified but still dejected, sought the dining-room when the lawyer had
+gone.
+
+"All alone to-night, Colonel?" asked the coloured head waiter,
+obsequiously.
+
+Ditmar demanded a table in the corner, and consumed a solitary meal.
+
+Very naturally Janet was aware of the change in Ditmar, and knew the
+cause of it.  Her feelings were complicated.  He, the most important man
+in Hampton, the self-sufficient, the powerful, the hitherto distant and
+unattainable head of the vast organization known as the Chippering Mill,
+of which she was an insignificant unit, at times became for her just a
+man--a man for whom she had achieved a delicious contempt.  And the
+knowledge that she, if she chose, could sway and dominate him by the mere
+exercise of that strange feminine force within her was intoxicating and
+terrifying.  She read this in a thousand signs; in his glances; in his
+movements revealing a desire to touch her; in little things he said,
+apparently insignificant, yet fraught with meaning; in a constant
+recurrence of the apologetic attitude--so alien to the Ditmar formerly
+conceived--of which he had given evidence that day by the canal: and from
+this attitude emanated, paradoxically, a virile and galvanic current
+profoundly disturbing.  Sometimes when he bent over her she experienced a
+commingled ecstasy and fear that he would seize her in his arms.  Yet the
+tension was not constant, rising and falling with his moods and
+struggles, all of which she read--unguessed by him--as easily as a
+printed page by the gift that dispenses with laborious processes of the
+intellect.  On the other hand, a resentment boiled within her his
+masculine mind failed to fathom.  Stevenson said of John Knox that many
+women had come to learn from him, but he had never condescended to become
+a learner in return--a remark more or less applicable to Ditmar.  She
+was, perforce, thrilled that he was virile and wanted her, but because he
+wanted her clandestinely her pride revolted, divining his fear of scandal
+and hating him for it like a thoroughbred.  To do her justice, marriage
+never occurred to her.  She was not so commonplace.
+
+There were times, however, when the tension between them would relax,
+when some incident occurred to focus Ditmar's interest on the enterprise
+that had absorbed and unified his life, the Chippering Mill.  One day in
+September, for instance, after an absence in New York, he returned to the
+office late in the afternoon, and she was quick to sense his elation, to
+recognize in him the restored presence of the quality of elan, of
+command, of singleness of purpose that had characterized him before she
+had become his stenographer.  At first, as he read his mail, he seemed
+scarcely conscious of her presence.  She stood by the window, awaiting
+his pleasure, watching the white mist as it rolled over the floor of the
+river, catching glimpses in vivid, saffron blurs of the lights of the
+Arundel Mill on the farther shore.  Autumn was at hand.  Suddenly she
+heard Ditmar speaking.
+
+"Would you mind staying a little while longer this evening, Miss Bumpus?"
+
+"Not at all," she replied, turning.
+
+On his face was a smile, almost boyish.
+
+"The fact is, I think I've got hold of the biggest single order that ever
+came into any mill in New England," he declared.
+
+"Oh, I'm glad," she said quickly.
+
+"The cotton cards--?" he demanded.
+
+She knew he referred to the schedules, based on the current prices of
+cotton, made out in the agent's office and sent in duplicate to the
+selling house, in Boston.  She got them from the shelf; and as he went
+over them she heard him repeating the names of various goods now become
+familiar, pongees, poplins, percales and voiles, garbardines and
+galateas, lawns, organdies, crepes, and Madras shirtings, while he wrote
+down figures on a sheet of paper.  So complete was his absorption in this
+task that Janet, although she had resented the insinuating pressure of
+his former attitude toward her, felt a paradoxical sensation of jealousy.
+Presently, without looking up, he told her to call up the Boston office
+and ask for Mr. Fraile, the cotton buyer; and she learned from the talk
+over the telephone though it was mostly about "futures"--that Ditmar had
+lingered for a conference in Boston on his way back from New York.
+Afterwards, having dictated two telegrams which she wrote out on her
+machine, he leaned back in his chair; and though the business for the day
+was ended, showed a desire to detain her.  His mood became communicative.
+
+"I've been on the trail of that order for a month," he declared.  "Of
+course it isn't my business to get orders, but to manage this mill, and
+that's enough for one man, God knows.  But I heard the Bradlaughs were in
+the market for these goods, and I told the selling house to lie low, that
+I'd go after it.  I knew I could get away with it, if anybody could.  I
+went to the Bradlaughs and sat down on 'em, I lived with 'em, ate with
+'em, brought 'em home at night.  I didn't let 'em alone a minute until
+they handed it over.  I wasn't going to give any other mill in New
+England or any of those southern concerns a chance to walk off with
+it--not on your life!  Why, we have the facilities.  There isn't another
+mill in the country can turn it out in the time they ask, and even we
+will have to go some to do it.  But we'll do it, by George, unless I'm
+struck by lightning."
+
+He leaned forward, hitting the desk with his fist, and Janet, standing
+beside him, smiled.  She had the tempting gift of silence.  Forgetting
+her twinge of jealousy, she was drawn toward him now, and in this mood of
+boyish exuberance, of self-confidence and pride in his powers and success
+she liked him better than ever before.  She had, for the first time, the
+curious feeling of being years older than he, yet this did not detract
+from a new-born admiration.
+
+"I made this mill, and I'm proud of it," he went on.  "When old Stephen
+Chippering put me in charge he was losing money, he'd had three agents in
+four years.  The old man knew I had it in me, and I knew it, if I do say
+it myself. All this union labour talk about shorter hours makes me
+sick--why, there was a time when I worked ten and twelve hours a day, and
+I'm man enough to do it yet, if I have to.  When the last agent--that was
+Cort--was sacked I went to Boston on my own hook and tackled the old
+gentleman--that's the only way to get anywhere.  I couldn't bear to see
+the mill going to scrap, and I told him a thing or two,--I had the facts
+and the figures.  Stephen Chippering was a big man, but he had a streak
+of obstinacy in him, he was conservative, you bet.  I had to get it
+across to him there was a lot of dead wood in this plant, I had to wake
+him up to the fact that the twentieth century was here.  He had to be
+shown--he was from Boston, you know--" Ditmar laughed--"but he was all
+wool and a yard wide, and he liked me and trusted me.
+
+"That was in nineteen hundred.  I can remember the interview as well as
+if it had happened last night--we sat up until two o'clock in the morning
+in that library of his with the marble busts and the leather-bound books
+and the double windows looking out over the Charles, where the wind was
+blowing a gale.  And at last he said, `All right, Claude, go ahead.  I'll
+put you in as agent, and stand behind you.' And by thunder, he did stand
+behind me.  He was quiet, the finest looking old man I ever saw in my
+life, straight as a ramrod, with a little white goatee and a red,
+weathered face full of creases, and a skin that looked as if it had been
+pricked all over with needles--the old Boston sort. They don't seem to
+turn 'em out any more.  Why, I have a picture of him here."
+
+He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a photograph.  Janet gazed at
+it sympathetically.
+
+"It doesn't give you any notion of those eyes of his," Ditmar said,
+reminiscently.  "They looked right through a man's skull, no matter how
+thick it was.  If anything went wrong, I never wasted any time in telling
+him about it, and I guess it was one reason he liked me.  Some of the
+people up here didn't understand him, kow-towed to him, they were scared
+of him, and if he thought they had something up their sleeves he looked
+as if he were going to eat 'em alive.  Regular fighting eyes, the kind
+that get inside of a man and turn the light on.  And he sat so
+still--made you ashamed of yourself.  Well, he was a born fighter, went
+from Harvard into the Rebellion and was left for dead at Seven Oaks,
+where one of the company found him and saved him.  He set that may up for
+life, and never talked about it, either.  See what he wrote on the
+bottom--'To my friend, Claude Ditmar, Stephen Chippering.' And believe
+me, when he once called a man a friend he never took it back.  I know one
+thing, I'll never get another friend like him."
+
+With a gesture that gave her a new insight into Ditmar, reverently he
+took the picture from her hand and placed it back in the drawer.  She was
+stirred, almost to tears, and moved away from him a little, as though to
+lessen by distance the sudden attraction he had begun to exert: yet she
+lingered, half leaning, half sitting on the corner of the big desk, her
+head bent toward him, her eyes filled with light.  She was wondering
+whether he could ever love a woman as he loved this man of whom he had
+spoken, whether he could be as true to a woman.  His own attitude seemed
+never to have been more impersonal, but she had ceased to resent it;
+something within her whispered that she was the conductor, the inspirer..
+
+"I wish Stephen Chippering could have lived to see this order," he
+exclaimed, "to see the Chippering Mill to-day!  I guess he'd be proud of
+it, I guess he wouldn't regret having put me in as agent."
+
+Janet did not reply.  She could not.  She sat regarding him intently, and
+when he raised his eyes and caught her luminous glance, his expression
+changed, she knew Stephen Chippering had passed from his mind.
+
+"I hope you like it here," he said.  His voice had become vibrant,
+ingratiating, he had changed from the master to the suppliant--and yet
+she was not displeased.  Power had suddenly flowed back into her, and
+with it an exhilarating self-command.
+
+"I do like it," she answered.
+
+"But you said, when I asked you to be my stenographer, that you didn't
+care for your work."
+
+"Oh, this is different."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I'm interested, the mill means something to me now you see, I'm not just
+copying things I don't know anything about."
+
+"I'm glad you're interested," he said, in the same odd, awkward tone.
+"I've never had any one in the office who did my work as well.  Now Miss
+Ottway was a good stenographer, she was capable, and a fine woman, but
+she never got the idea, the spirit of the mill in her as you've got it,
+and she wasn't able to save me trouble, as you do.  It's remarkable how
+you've come to understand, and in such a short time."
+
+Janet coloured.  She did not look at him, but had risen and begun to
+straighten out the papers beside her.
+
+"There are lots of other things I'd like to understand," she said.
+
+"What?" he demanded.
+
+"Well--about the mill.  I never thought much about it before, I always
+hated it," she cried, dropping the papers and suddenly facing him.  "It
+was just drudgery.  But now I want to learn everything, all I can, I'd
+like to see the machinery."
+
+"I'll take you through myself--to-morrow," he declared.
+
+His evident agitation made her pause.  They were alone, the outer office
+deserted, and the Ditmar she saw now, whom she had summoned up with
+ridiculous ease by virtue of that mysterious power within her, was no
+longer the agent of the Chippering Mill, a boy filled with enthusiasm by
+a business achievement, but a man, the incarnation and expression of
+masculine desire desire for her. She knew she could compel him, if she
+chose, to throw caution to the winds.
+
+"Oh no!" she exclaimed.  She was afraid of him, she shrank from such a
+conspicuous sign of his favour.
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Because I don't want you to," she said, and realized, as soon as she had
+spoken, that her words might imply the existence of a something between
+them never before hinted at by her.  "I'll get Mr. Caldwell to take me
+through." She moved toward the door, and turned; though still on fire
+within, her manner had become demure, repressed.  "Did you wish anything
+more this evening?" she inquired.
+
+"That's all," he said, and she saw that he was gripping the arms of his
+chair....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Autumn was at hand.  All day it had rained, but now, as night fell and
+Janet went homeward, the white mist from the river was creeping
+stealthily over the city, disguising the familiar and sordid landmarks.
+These had become beautiful, mysterious, somehow appealing.  The electric
+arcs, splotches in the veil, revealed on the Common phantom trees; and in
+the distance, against the blurred lights from the Warren Street stores
+skirting the park could be seen phantom vehicles, phantom people moving
+to and fro.  Thus, it seemed to Janet, invaded by a pearly mist was her
+own soul, in which she walked in wonder,--a mist shot through and through
+with soft, exhilarating lights half disclosing yet transforming and
+etherealizing certain landmark's there on which, formerly, she had not
+cared to gaze.  She was thinking of Ditmar as she had left him gripping
+his chair, as he had dismissed her for the day, curtly, almost savagely.
+She had wounded and repelled him, and lingering in her was that exquisite
+touch of fear--a fear now not so much inspired by Ditmar as by the
+semi-acknowledged recognition of certain tendencies and capacities within
+herself.  Yet she rejoiced in them, she was glad she had hurt Ditmar, she
+would hurt him again.  Still palpitating, she reached the house in
+Fillmore Street, halting a moment with her hand on the door, knowing her
+face was flushed, anxious lest her mother or Lise might notice something
+unusual in her manner. But, when she had slowly mounted the stairs and
+lighted the gas in the bedroom the sight of her sister's clothes cast
+over the chairs was proof that Lise had already donned her evening finery
+and departed.  The room was filled with the stale smell of clothes, which
+Janet detested.  She flung open the windows.  She took off her hat and
+swiftly tidied herself, yet the relief she felt at Lise's absence was
+modified by a sudden, vehement protest against sordidness.  Why should
+she not live by herself amidst clean and tidy surroundings?  She had
+begun to earn enough, and somehow a vista had been opened up--a vista
+whose end she could not see, alluring, enticing....  In the dining-room,
+by the cleared table, her father was reading the Banner; her mother
+appeared in the kitchen door.
+
+"What in the world happened to you, Janet?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Nothing," said Janet.  "Mr. Ditmar asked me to stay--that was all.
+He'd been away."
+
+"I was worried, I was going to make your father go down to the mill.
+I've saved you some supper."
+
+"I don't want much," Janet told her, "I'm not hungry."
+
+"I guess you have to work too hard in that new place," said Hannah, as
+she brought in the filled plate from the oven.
+
+"Well, it seems to agree with her, mother," declared Edward, who could
+always be counted on to say the wrong thing with the best of intentions.
+"I never saw her looking as well--why, I swan, she's getting real
+pretty!"
+
+Hannah darted at him a glance, but restrained herself, and Janet reddened
+as she tried to eat the beans placed before her.  The pork had browned
+and hardened at the edges, the gravy had spread, a crust covered the
+potatoes. When her father resumed his reading of the Banner and her
+mother went back into the kitchen she began to speculate rather
+resentfully and yet excitedly why it was that this adventure with a man,
+with Ditmar, made her look better, feel better,--more alive.  She was too
+honest to disguise from herself that it was an adventure, a high one,
+fraught with all sorts of possibilities, dangers, and delights.  Her
+promotion had been merely incidental.  Both her mother and father, did
+they know the true circumstances,--that Mr. Ditmar desired her, was
+perhaps in love with her--would be disturbed.  Undoubtedly they would
+have believed that she could "take care" of herself.  She knew that
+matters could not go on as they were, that she would either have to leave
+Mr. Ditmar or--and here she baulked at being logical.  She had no
+intention of leaving him: to remain, according to the notions of her
+parents, would be wrong.  Why was it that doing wrong agreed with her,
+energized her, made her more alert, cleverer, keying up her faculties?
+turned life from a dull affair into a momentous one? To abandon Ditmar
+would be to slump back into the humdrum, into something from which she
+had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she sat;
+by the red-checked tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, the cherry chairs
+with the frayed seats, the horsehair sofa from which the stuffing
+protruded, the tawdry pillow with its colours, once gay, that Lise had
+bought at a bargain at the Bagatelle....  The wooden clock with the round
+face and quaint landscape below--the family's most cherished
+heirloom--though long familiar, was not so bad; but the two yellowed
+engravings on the wall offended her.  They had been wedding presents to
+Edward's father.  One represented a stupid German peasant woman holding a
+baby, and standing in front of a thatched cottage; its companion was a
+sylvan scene in which certain wooden rustics were supposed to be enjoying
+themselves.  Between the two, and dotted with flyspecks, hung an
+insurance calendar on which was a huge head of a lady, florid,
+fluffy-haired, flirtatious.  Lise thought her beautiful.
+
+The room was ugly.  She had long known that, but tonight the realization
+came to her that what she chiefly resented in it was the note it
+proclaimed--the note of a mute acquiescence, without protest or struggle,
+in what life might send.  It reflected accurately the attitude of her
+parents, particularly of her father.  With an odd sense of detachment, of
+critical remoteness and contempt she glanced at him as he sat stupidly
+absorbed in his newspaper, his face puckered, his lips pursed, and Ditmar
+rose before her--Ditmar, the embodiment of an indomitableness that
+refused to be beaten and crushed.  She thought of the story he had told
+her, how by self-assertion and persistence he had become agent of the
+Chippering Mill, how he had convinced Mr. Stephen Chippering of his
+ability.  She could not think of the mill as belonging to the Chipperings
+and the other stockholders, but to Ditmar, who had shaped it into an
+expression of himself, since it was his ideal.  And now it seemed that he
+had made it hers also.  She regretted having repulsed him, pushed her
+plate away from her, and rose.
+
+"You haven't eaten anything," said Hannah, who had come into the room.
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"Out--to Eda's," Janet answered....
+
+"It's late," Hannah objected.  But Janet departed.  Instead of going to
+Eda's she walked alone, seeking the quieter streets that her thoughts
+might flow undisturbed.  At ten o'clock, when she returned, the light was
+out in the diningroom, her sister had not come in, and she began slowly
+to undress, pausing every now and then to sit on the bed and dream; once
+she surprised herself gazing into the glass with a rapt expression that
+was almost a smile. What was it about her that had attracted Ditmar?
+No other man had ever noticed it.  She had never thought herself good
+looking, and now--it was astonishing!-- she seemed to have changed, and
+she saw with pride that her arms and neck were shapely, that her dark
+hair fell down in a cascade over her white shoulders to her waist.  She
+caressed it; it was fine.  When she looked again, a radiancy seemed to
+envelop her.  She braided her hair slowly, in two long plaits, looking
+shyly in the mirror and always seeing that radiancy....
+
+Suddenly it occurred to her with a shock that she was doing exactly what
+she had despised Lise for doing, and leaving the mirror she hurried her
+toilet, put out the light, and got into bed.  For a long time, however,
+she remained wakeful, turning first on one side and then on the other,
+trying to banish from her mind the episode that had excited her.  But
+always it came back again.  She saw Ditmar before her, virile, vital,
+electric with desire.  At last she fell asleep.
+
+Gradually she was awakened by something penetrating her consciousness,
+something insistent, pervasive, unescapable, which in drowsiness she
+could not define.  The gas was burning, Lise had come in, and was moving
+peculiarly about the room.  Janet watched her.  She stood in front of the
+bureau, just as Janet herself had done, her hands at her throat.  At last
+she let them fall, her head turning slowly, as though drawn, by some
+irresistible, hypnotic power, and their eyes met.  Lise's were filmed,
+like those of a dog whose head is being stroked, expressing a luxuriant
+dreaminess uncomprehending, passionate.
+
+"Say, did I wake you?" she asked.  "I did my best not to make any
+noise--honest to God."
+
+"It wasn't the noise that woke me up," said Janet.
+
+"It couldn't have been."
+
+"You've been drinking!" said Janet, slowly.
+
+Lise giggled.
+
+"What's it to you, angel face!"  she inquired.  "Quiet down, now, and go
+bye- bye."
+
+Janet sprang from the bed, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her.
+She was limp.  She began to whimper.
+
+"Cut it out--leave me go.  It ain't nothing to you what I do--I just had
+a highball."
+
+Janet released her and drew back.
+
+"I just had a highball--honest to God!"
+
+"Don't say that again!" whispered Janet, fiercely.
+
+"Oh, very well.  For God's sake, go to bed and leave me alone--I can take
+care of myself, I guess--I ain't nutty enough to hit the booze.  But I
+ain't like you--I've got to have a little fun to keep alive."
+
+"A little fun!" Janet exclaimed.  The phrase struck her sharply.  A
+little fun to keep alive!
+
+With that same peculiar, cautious movement she had observed, Lise
+approached a chair, and sank into it,--jerking her head in the direction
+of the room where Hannah and Edward slept.
+
+"D'you want to wake 'em up?  Is that your game?" she asked, and began to
+fumble at her belt.  Overcoming with an effort a disgust amounting to
+nausea, Janet approached her sister again, little by little undressing
+her, and finally getting her into bed, when she immediately fell into a
+profound slumber. Janet, too, got into bed, but sleep was impossible: the
+odour lurked like a foul spirit in the darkness, mingling with the
+stagnant, damp air that came in at the open window, fairly saturating her
+with horror: it seemed the very essence of degradation.  But as she lay
+on the edge of the bed, shrinking from contamination, in the throes of
+excitement inspired by an unnamed fear, she grew hot, she could feel and
+almost hear the pounding of her heart.  She rose, felt around in the
+clammy darkness for her wrapper and slippers, gained the door, crept
+through the dark hall to the dining-room, where she stealthily lit the
+lamp; darkness had become a terror.  A cockroach scurried across the
+linoleum.  The room was warm and close, it reeked with the smell of stale
+food, but at least she found relief from that other odour.  She sank down
+on the sofa.
+
+Her sister was drunk.  That in itself was terrible enough, yet it was not
+the drunkenness alone that had sickened Janet, but the suggestion of
+something else.  Where had Lise been?  In whose company had she become
+drunk?  Of late, in contrast to a former communicativeness, Lise had been
+singuarly secretive as to her companions, and the manner in which her
+evenings were spent; and she, Janet, had grown too self-absorbed to be
+curious.  Lise, with her shopgirl's cynical knowledge of life and its
+pitfalls and the high valuation at which she held her charms, had seemed
+secure from danger; but Janet recalled her discouragement, her threat to
+leave the Bagatelle.  Since then there had been something furtive about
+her.  Now, because that odour of alcohol Lise exhaled had destroyed in
+Janet the sense of exhilaration, of life on a higher plane she had begun
+to feel, and filled her with degradation, she hated Lise, felt for her
+sister no strain of pity.  A proof, had she recognized it, that
+immorality is not a matter of laws and decrees, but of individual
+emotions.  A few hours before she had seen nothing wrong in her
+relationship with Ditmar: now she beheld him selfish, ruthless, pursuing
+her for one end, his own gratification. As a man, he had become an enemy.
+Ditmar was like all other men who exploited her sex without compunction,
+but the thought that she was like Lise, asleep in a drunken stupor, that
+their cases differed only in degree, was insupportable.
+
+At last she fell asleep from sheer weariness, to dream she was with
+Ditmar at some place in the country under spreading trees, Silliston,
+perhaps--Silliston Common, cleverly disguised: nor was she quite sure,
+always, that the man was Ditmar; he had a way of changing, of resembling
+the man she had met in Silliston whom she had mistaken for a carpenter.
+He was pleading with her, in his voice was the peculiar vibrancy that
+thrilled her, that summoned some answering thing out of the depths of
+her, and she felt herself yielding with a strange ecstasy in which were
+mingled joy and terror.  The terror was conquering the joy, and suddenly
+he stood transformed before her eyes, caricatured, become a shrieking
+monster from whom she sought in agony to escape....  In this paralysis of
+fear she awoke, staring with wide eyes at the flickering flame of the
+lamp, to a world filled with excruciating sound--the siren of the
+Chippering Mill!  She lay trembling with the horror of the dreamspell
+upon her, still more than half convinced that the siren was Ditmar's
+voice, his true expression.  He was waiting to devour her.  Would the
+sound never end?...
+
+Then, remembering where she was, alarmed lest her mother might come in
+and find her there, she left the sofa, turned out the sputtering lamp,
+and ran into the bedroom.  Rain was splashing on the bricks of the
+passage-way outside, the shadows of the night still lurked in the
+corners; by the grey light she gazed at Lise, who breathed loudly and
+stirred uneasily, her mouth open, her lips parched.  Janet touched her.
+
+"Lise--get up!" she said.  "It's time to get up."  She shook her.
+
+"Leave me alone--can't you?"
+
+"It's time to get up.  The whistle has sounded."
+
+Lise heavily opened her eyes.  They were bloodshot.
+
+"I don't want to get up.  I won't get up."
+
+"But you must," insisted Janet, tightening her hold.  "You've got
+to--you've got to eat breakfast and go to work."
+
+"I don't want any breakfast, I ain't going to work any more."
+
+A gust of wind blew inward the cheap lace curtains, and the physical
+effect of it emphasized the chill that struck Janet's heart.  She got up
+and closed the window, lit the gas, and returning to the bed, shook Lise
+again.
+
+"Listen," she said, "if you don't get up I'll tell mother what happened
+last night."
+
+"Say, you wouldn't--!" exclaimed Lise, angrily.
+
+"Get up!" Janet commanded, and watched her rather anxiously, uncertain as
+to the after effects of drunkenness.  But Lise got up.  She sat on the
+edge of the bed and yawned, putting her hand to her forehead.
+
+"I've sure got a head on me," she remarked.
+
+Janet was silent, angrier than ever, shocked that tragedy, degradation,
+could be accepted thus circumstantially.  Lise proceeded to put up her
+hair.  She seemed to be mistress of herself; only tired, gaping
+frequently.  Once she remarked:--
+
+"I don't see the good of getting nutty over a highball."
+
+Seeing that Janet was not to be led into controversy, she grew morose.
+
+Breakfast in Fillmore Street, never a lively meal, was more dismal than
+usual that morning, eaten to the accompaniment of slopping water from the
+roofs on the pavement of the passage.  The indisposition of Lise passed
+unobserved by both Hannah and Edward; and at twenty minutes to eight the
+two girls, with rubbers and umbrellas, left the house together, though it
+was Janet's custom to depart earlier, since she had farther to go.  Lise,
+suspicious, maintained an obstinate silence, keeping close to the curb.
+They reached the corner by the provision shop with the pink and orange
+chromos of jellies in the window.
+
+"Lise, has anything happened to you?" demanded Janet suddenly.  "I want
+you to tell me."
+
+"Anything happened--what do you mean?  Anything happened?"
+
+"You know very well what I mean."
+
+"Well, suppose something has happened?"  Lise's reply was pert, defiant.
+"What's it to you?  If anything's happened, it's happened to me--hasn't
+it?"
+
+Janet approached her.
+
+"What are you trying to do?" said Lise.  "Push me into the gutter?"
+
+"I guess you're there already," said Janet.
+
+Lise was roused to a sudden pitch of fury.  She turned on Janet and
+thrust her back.
+
+"Well, if I am who's going to blame me?" she cried.  "If you had to work
+all day in that hole, standing on your feet, picked on by yaps for six a
+week, I guess you wouldn't talk virtuous, either.  It's easy for you to
+shoot off your mouth, you've got a soft snap with Ditmar."
+
+Janet was outraged.  She could not restrain her anger.
+
+"How dare you say that?" she demanded.
+
+Lise was cowed.
+
+"Well, you drove me to it--you make me mad enough to say anything.  Just
+because I went to Gruber's with Neva Lorrie and a couple of
+gentlemen--they were gentlemen all right, as much gentlemen as
+Ditmar--you come at me and tell me I'm all to the bad."  She began to
+sob.  "I'm as straight as you are.  How was I to know the highball was
+stiff?  Maybe I was tired--anyhow, it put me on the queer, and everything
+in the joint began to tango 'round me--and Neva came home with me."
+
+Janet felt a surge of relief, in which were mingled anxiety and
+resentment: relief because she was convinced that Lise was telling the
+truth, anxiety because she feared for Lise's future, resentment because
+Ditmar had been mentioned.  Still, what she had feared most had not come
+to pass.  Lise left her abruptly, darting down a street that led to a
+back entrance of the Bagatelle, and Janet pursued her way.  Where, she
+wondered, would it all end? Lise had escaped so far, but drunkenness was
+an ominous sign.  And "gentlemen"? What kind of gentlemen had taken her
+sister to Gruber's?  Would Ditmar do that sort of thing if he had a
+chance?
+
+The pavement in front of the company boarding-houses by the canal was
+plastered with sodden leaves whipped from the maples by the driving rain
+in the night. The sky above the mills was sepia.  White lights were
+burning in the loom rooms.  When she reached the vestibule Simmons, the
+watchman, informed her that Mr. Ditmar had already been there, and left
+for Boston.
+
+Janet did not like to acknowledge to herself her disappointment on
+learning that Ditmar had gone to Boston.  She knew he had had no such
+intention the night before; an accumulated mail and many matters
+demanding decisions were awaiting him; and his sudden departure seemed an
+act directed personally against her, in the nature of a retaliation,
+since she had offended and repulsed him.  Through Lise's degrading act
+she had arrived at the conclusion that all adventure and consequent
+suffering had to do with Man--a conviction peculiarly maddening to such
+temperaments as Janet's.  Therefore she interpreted her suffering in
+terms of Ditmar, she had looked forward to tormenting him again, and by
+departing he had deliberately balked and cheated her.  The rain fell
+ceaselessly out of black skies, night seemed ever ready to descend on the
+river, a darkness--according to young Mr. Caldwell--due not to the clouds
+alone, but to forest fires many hundreds of miles away, in Canada. As the
+day wore on, however, her anger gradually gave place to an extreme
+weariness and depression, and yet she dreaded going home, inventing
+things for herself to do; arranging and rearranging Ditmar's papers that
+he might have less trouble in sorting them, putting those uppermost which
+she thought he would deem the most important.  Perhaps he would come in,
+late!  In a world of impending chaos the brilliantly lighted office was a
+tiny refuge to which she clung.  At last she put on her coat and rubbers,
+faring forth reluctantly into the wet.
+
+At first when she entered the bedroom she thought it empty, though the
+gas was burning, and them she saw Lise lying face downward on the bed.
+For a moment she stood still, then closed the door softly.
+
+"Lise," she said.
+
+"What?"
+
+Janet sat down on the bed, putting out her hand.  Unconsciously she began
+to stroke Lise's hand, and presently it turned and tightened on her own.
+
+"Lise," she said, "I understand why you--" she could not bring herself to
+pronounce the words "got drunk,"--"I understand why you did it.  I
+oughtn't to have talked to you that way.  But it was terrible to wake up
+and see you."
+
+For awhile Lise did not reply.  Then she raised herself, feeling her hair
+with an involuntary gesture, regarding her sister with a bewildered look,
+her face puckered.  Her eyes burned, and under them were black shadows.
+
+"How do you mean--you understand?"  she asked slowly.  "You never hit the
+booze."
+
+Even Lise's language, which ordinarily offended her, failed to change her
+sudden impassioned and repentant mood.  She was astonished at herself for
+this sudden softening, since she did not really love Lise, and all day
+she had hated her, wished never to see her again.
+
+"No, but I can understand how it would be to want to," Janet said.
+"Lise, I guess we're searching--both of us for something we'll never
+find."
+
+Lise stared at her with a contracted, puzzled expression, as of a person
+awaking from sleep, all of whose faculties are being strained toward
+comprehension.
+
+"What do you mean?" she demanded.  "You and me?  You're all right--you've
+got no kick coming."
+
+"Life is hard, it's hard on girls like us--we want things we can't have."
+Janet was at a loss to express herself.
+
+ "Well, it ain't any pipe dream," Lise agreed.  Her glance turned
+involuntarily toward the picture of the Olympian dinner party pinned on
+the wall.  "Swells have a good time," she added.
+
+"Maybe they pay for it, too," said Janet.
+
+"I wouldn't holler about paying--it's paying and not getting the goods,"
+declared Lise.
+
+"You'll pay, and you won't get it.  That kind of life is--hell," Janet
+cried.
+
+Self-centered as Lise was, absorbed in her own trouble and present
+physical discomfort, this unaccustomed word from her sister and the
+vehemence with which it was spoken surprised and frightened her, brought
+home to her some hint of the terror in Janet's soul.
+
+"Me for the water wagon," she said.
+
+Janet was not convinced.  She had hoped to discover the identity of the
+man who had taken Lise to Gruber's, but she did not attempt to continue
+the conversation.  She rose and took off her hat.
+
+"Why don't you go to bed?"  she asked.  "I'll tell mother you have a
+headache and bring in your supper."
+
+"Well, I don't care if I do," replied Lise, gratefully.
+
+Perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of that complex affair, the
+human organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods.  The soul, so
+called, is as sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected
+by lack of sleep, by smells and sounds, by food, by the weather--whether
+a day be sapphire or obsidian.  And the resolutions arising from one mood
+are thwarted by the actions of the next.  Janet had observed this
+phenomenon, and sometimes, when it troubled her, she thought herself the
+most inconsistent and vacillating of creatures.  She had resolved, far
+instance, before she fell asleep, to leave the Chippering Mill, to banish
+Ditmar from her life, to get a position in Boston, whence she could send
+some of her wages home: and in the morning, as she made her way to the
+office, the determination gave her a sense of peace and unity.  But the
+northwest wind was blowing.  It had chased away the mist and the clouds,
+the smoke from Canada.  The sun shone with a high brilliancy, the elms of
+the Common cast sharp, black shadow-patterns on the pavements, and when
+she reached the office and looked out of his window she saw the blue
+river covered with quicksilver waves chasing one another across the
+current.  Ditmar had not yet returned to Hampton.  About ten o'clock, as
+she was copying out some figures for Mr. Price, young Mr. Caldwell
+approached her.  He had a Boston newspaper in his hand.
+
+"Have you seen this article about Mr. Ditmar?" he asked.
+
+"About Mr. Ditmar?  No."
+
+"It's quite a send-off for the Colonel," said Caldwell, who was wont at
+times to use the title facetiously.  "Listen; `One of the most notable
+figures in the Textile industry of the United States, Claude Ditmar,
+Agent of the Chippering Mill.'" Caldwell spread out the page and pointed
+to a picture.  "There he is, as large as life."
+
+A little larger than life, Janet thought.  Ditmar was one of those men
+who, as the expression goes, "take" well, a valuable asset in semi-public
+careers; and as he stood in the sunlight on the steps of the building
+where they had "snap- shotted" him he appeared even more massive,
+forceful, and preponderant than she had known him.  Beholding him thus
+set forth and praised in a public print, he seemed suddenly to have been
+distantly removed from her, to have reacquired at a bound the dizzy
+importance he had possessed for her before she became his stenographer.
+She found it impossible to realize that this was the Ditmar who had
+pursued and desired her; at times supplicating, apologetic, abject; and
+again revealed by the light in his eyes and the trembling of his hand as
+the sinister and ruthless predatory male from whom--since the revelation
+in her sister Lise she had determined to flee, and whom she had persuaded
+herself she despised.  He was a bigger man than she had thought, and as
+she read rapidly down the column the fascination that crept over her was
+mingled with disquieting doubt of her own powers: it was now difficult to
+believe she had dominated or could ever dominate this self-sufficient,
+successful person, the list of whose achievements and qualities was so
+alluringly set forth by an interviewer who himself had fallen a victim.
+
+The article carried the implication that the modern, practical, American
+business man was the highest type as yet evolved by civilization: and
+Ditmar, referred to as "a wizard of the textile industry," was
+emphatically one who had earned the gratitude of the grand old
+Commonwealth.  By the efforts of such sons she continued to maintain her
+commanding position among her sister states. Prominent among the
+qualities contributing to his success was openmindedness, "a willingness
+to be shown," to scrap machinery when his competitors still clung to
+older methods.  The Chippering Mill had never had a serious strike,--
+indication of an ability to deal with labour; and Mr. Ditmar's views on
+labour followed: if his people had a grievance, let them come to him, and
+settle it between them.  No unions.  He had consistently refused to
+recognize them. There was mention of the Bradlaugh order as being the
+largest commission ever given to a single mill, a reference to the
+excitement and speculation it had aroused in trade circles.  Claude
+Ditmar's ability to put it through was unquestioned; one had only to look
+at him,--tenacity, forcefulness, executiveness were written all over
+him....  In addition, the article contained much material of an
+autobiographical nature that must--Janet thought--have been supplied by
+Ditmar himself, whose modesty had evidently shrunk from the cruder
+self-eulogy of an interview.  But she recognized several characteristic
+phrases.
+
+Caldwell, watching her as she read, was suddenly fascinated.  During a
+trip abroad, while still an undergraduate, he had once seen the face of
+an actress, a really good Parisian actress, light up in that way; and it
+had revealed to him, in a flash, the meaning of enthusiasm.  Now Janet
+became vivid for him. There must be something unusual in a person whose
+feelings could be so intense, whose emotions rang so true.  He was not
+unsophisticated.  He had sometimes wondered why Ditmar had promoted her,
+though acknowledging her ability.  He admired Ditmar, but had no
+illusions about him.  Harvard, and birth in a social stratum where
+emphasis is superfluous, enabled him to smile at the reporter's
+exuberance; and he was the more drawn toward her to see on Janet's
+flushed face the hint of a smile as she looked up at him when she had
+finished.
+
+"The Colonel hypnotized that reporter," he said, as he took the paper;
+and her laugh, despite its little tremor, betrayed in her an unsuspected,
+humorous sense of proportion.  "Well, I'll take off my hat to him,"
+Caldwell went on. "He is a wonder, he's got the mill right up to capacity
+in a week.  He's agreed to deliver those goods to the Bradlaughs by the
+first of April, you know, and Holster, of the Clarendon, swears it can't
+be done, he says Ditmar's crazy. Well, I stand to lose twenty-five
+dollars on him."
+
+This loyalty pleased Janet, it had the strange effect of reviving loyalty
+in her.  She liked this evidence of Dick Caldwell's confidence.  He was a
+self- contained and industrious young man, with crisp curly hair, cordial
+and friendly yet never intimate with the other employer; liked by
+them--but it was tacitly understood his footing differed from theirs.  He
+was a cousin of the Chipperings, and destined for rapid promotion.  He
+went away every Saturday, it was known that he spent Sundays and holidays
+in delightful places, to return reddened and tanned; and though he never
+spoke about these excursions, and put on no airs of superiority, there
+was that in his manner and even in the cut of his well-worn suits
+proclaiming him as belonging to a sphere not theirs, to a category of
+fortunate beings whose stumbles are not fatal, who are sustained from
+above.  Even Ditmar was not of these.
+
+"I've just been showing a lot of highbrows through the mill," he told
+Janet. "They asked questions enough to swamp a professor of economics."
+
+And Janet was suddenly impelled to ask:--
+
+"Will you take me through sometime, Mr. Caldwell?"
+
+"You've never been through?" he exclaimed.  "Why, we'll go now, if you
+can spare the time."
+
+Her face had become scarlet.
+
+"Don't tell Mr. Ditmar," she begged.  "You see--he wanted to take me
+himself."
+
+"Not a word," Caldwell promised as they left the office together and went
+downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton Department.
+The showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather tiresome; but
+now his curiosity and interest were aroused, he was conscious of a keen
+stimulation when he glanced at Janet's face.  Its illumination perplexed
+him.  The effect was that of a picture obscurely hung and hitherto
+scarcely noticed on which the light had suddenly been turned.  It glowed
+with a strange and disturbing radiance....
+
+As for Janet, she was as one brought suddenly to the realization of a
+miracle in whose presence she had lived for many years and never before
+suspected; the miracle of machinery, of the triumph of man over nature.
+In the brief space of an hour she beheld the dirty bales flung off the
+freight cars on the sidings transformed into delicate fabrics wound from
+the looms; cotton that only last summer, perhaps, while she sat
+typewriting at her window, had been growing in the fields of the South.
+She had seen it torn by the balebreakers, blown into the openers,
+loosened, cleansed, and dried; taken up by the lappers, pressed into
+batting, and passed on to the carding machines, to emerge like a wisp of
+white smoke in a sliver and coil automatically in a can.  Once more it
+was flattened into a lap, given to a comber that felt out its fibres,
+removing with superhuman precision those for the finer fabric too short,
+thrusting it forth again in another filmy sliver ready for the drawing
+frames.  Six of these gossamer ropes were taken up, and again six.  Then
+came the Blubbers and the roving frames, twisting and winding, the while
+maintaining the most delicate of tensions lest the rope break, running
+the strands together into a thread constantly growing stronger and finer,
+until it was ready for spinning.
+
+Caldwell stood close to her, shouting his explanations in her ear, while
+she strained to follow them.  But she was bewildered and entranced by the
+marvellous swiftness, accuracy and ease with which each of the complex
+machines, fed by human hands, performed its function.  These human hands
+were swift, too, as when they thrust the bobbins of roving on the
+ringspinning frames to be twisted into yarn.  She saw a woman, in the
+space of an instant, mend a broken thread.  Women and boys were here,
+doffer boys to lift off the full bobbins of yarn with one hand and set on
+the empty bobbins with the other: while skilled workmen, alert for the
+first sign of trouble, followed up and down in its travels the long frame
+of the mule-spinner.  After the spinning, the heavy spools of yarn were
+carried to a beam-warper, standing alone like a huge spider's web, where
+hundreds of threads were stretched symmetrically and wound evenly, side
+by side, on a large cylinder, forming the warp of the fabric to be woven
+on the loom.  First, however, this warp must be stiffened or "slashed" in
+starch and tallow, dried over heated drums, and finally wound around one
+great beam from which the multitude of threads are taken up, one by one,
+and slipped through the eyes of the loom harnesses by women who sit all
+day under the north windows overlooking the canal--the "drawers-in" of
+whom Ditmar had spoken.  Then the harnesses are put on the loom, the
+threads attached to the cylinder on which the cloth is to be wound.  The
+looms absorbed and fascinated Janet above all else.  It seemed as if she
+would never tire of watching the rhythmic rise and fall of the
+harnesses,--each rapid movement making a V in the warp, within the angle
+of which the tiny shuttles darted to and fro, to and fro, carrying the
+thread that filled the cloth with a swiftness so great the eye could
+scarcely follow it; to be caught on the other side when the angle closed,
+and flung back, and back again!  And in the elaborate patterns not one,
+but several harnesses were used, each awaiting its turn for the impulse
+bidding it rise and fall!...  Abruptly, as she gazed, one of the machines
+halted, a weaver hurried up, searched the warp for the broken thread,
+tied it, and started the loom again.
+
+"That's intelligent of it," said Caldwell, in her ear.  But she could
+only nod in reply.
+
+The noise in the weaving rooms was deafening, the heat oppressive.  She
+began to wonder how these men and women, boys and girls bore the strain
+all day long. She had never thought much about them before save to
+compare vaguely their drudgery with that from which now she had been
+emancipated; but she began to feel a new respect, a new concern, a new
+curiosity and interest as she watched them passing from place to place
+with indifference between the whirling belts, up and down the narrow
+aisles, flanked on either side by that bewildering, clattering machinery
+whose polished surfaces continually caught and flung back the light of
+the electric bulbs on the ceiling.  How was it possible to live for hours
+at a time in this bedlam without losing presence of mind and thrusting
+hand or body in the wrong place, or becoming deaf?  She had never before
+realized what mill work meant, though she had read of the accidents. But
+these people--even the children--seemed oblivious to the din and the
+danger, intent on their tasks, unconscious of the presence of a visitor,
+save occasionally when she caught a swift glance from a woman or girl a
+glance, perhaps, of envy or even of hostility.  The dark, foreign faces
+glowed, and instantly grew dull again, and then she was aware of lurking
+terrors, despite her exaltation, her sense now of belonging to another
+world, a world somehow associated with Ditmar.  Was it not he who had
+lifted her farther above all this?  Was it not by grace of her
+association with him she was there, a spectator of the toil beneath?  Yet
+the terror persisted.  She, presently, would step out of the noise, the
+oppressive moist heat of the drawing and spinning rooms, the constant,
+remorseless menace of whirling wheels and cogs and belts.  But they?...
+She drew closer to Caldwell's side.
+
+"I never knew--" she said.  "It must be hard to work here."
+
+He smiled at her, reassuringly.
+
+"Oh, they don't mind it," he replied.  "It's like a health resort
+compared to the conditions most of them live in at home.  Why, there's
+plenty of ventilation here, and you've got to have a certain amount of
+heat and moisture, because when cotton is cold and dry it can't be drawn
+or spin, and when it's hot and dry the electricity is troublesome.  If
+you think this moisture is bad you ought to see a mill with the old
+vapour-pot system with the steam shooting out into the room.  Look here!"
+He led Janet to the apparatus in which the pure air is forced through wet
+cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the ventilation and humidity
+were regulated automatically, how the temperature of the room was
+controlled by a thermostat.
+
+"There isn't an agent in the country who's more concerned about the
+welfare of his operatives than Mr. Ditmar.  He's made a study of it, he's
+spent thousands of dollars, and as soon as these machines became
+practical he put 'em in.  The other day when I was going through the room
+one of these shuttles flew off, as they sometimes do when the looms are
+running at high speed.  A woman was pretty badly hurt.  Ditmar came right
+down."
+
+"He really cares about them," said Janet.  She liked Caldwell's praise of
+Ditmar, yet she spoke a little doubtfully.
+
+"Of course he cares.  But it's common sense to make 'em as comfortable
+and happy as possible--isn't it?  He won't stand for being held up, and
+he'd be stiff enough if it came to a strike.  I don't blame him for that.
+Do you?"
+
+Janet was wondering how ruthless Ditmar could be if his will were
+crossed.... They had left the room with its noise and heat behind them
+and were descending the worn, oaken treads of the spiral stairway of a
+neighbouring tower.  Janet shivered a little, and her face seemed almost
+feverish as she turned to Caldwell and thanked him.
+
+"Oh, it was a pleasure, Miss Bumpus," he declared.  "And sometime, when
+you want to see the Print Works or the Worsted Department, let me
+know--I'm your man.  And--I won't mention it."
+
+She did not answer.  As they made their way back to the office he glanced
+at her covertly, astonished at the emotional effect in her their tour had
+produced.  Though not of an inflammable temperament, he himself was
+stirred, and it was she who, unaccountably, had stirred him: suggested,
+in these processes he saw every day, and in which he was indeed
+interested, something deeper, more significant and human than he had
+guessed, and which he was unable to define....
+
+Janet herself did not know why this intimate view of the mills, of the
+people who worked in them had so greatly moved her.  All day she thought
+of them.  And the distant throb of the machinery she felt when her
+typewriter was silent meant something to her now--she could not say what.
+When she found herself listening for it, her heart beat faster.  She had
+lived and worked beside it, and it had not existed for her, it had had no
+meaning, the mills might have been empty.  She had, indeed, many, many
+times seen these men and women, boys and girls trooping away from work,
+she had strolled through the quarters in which they lived, speculated on
+the lands from which they had come; but she had never really thought of
+them as human beings, individuals, with problems and joys and sorrows and
+hopes and fears like her own.  Some such discovery was borne in upon her.
+And always an essential function of this revelation, looming larger than
+ever in her consciousness, was Ditmar.  It was for Ditmar they toiled, in
+Ditmar's hands were their very existences, his was the stupendous
+responsibility and power.
+
+As the afternoon wore, desire to see these toilers once more took
+possession of her.  From the white cupola perched above the huge mass of
+the Clarendon Mill across the water sounded the single stroke of a bell,
+and suddenly the air was pulsing with sounds flung back and forth by the
+walls lining the river. Seizing her hat and coat, she ran down the stairs
+and through the vestibule and along the track by the canal to the great
+gates, which her father was in the act of unbarring.  She took a stand
+beside him, by the gatehouse.  Edward showed a mild surprise.
+
+"There ain't anything troubling you--is there, Janet?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I wanted to see the hands come out," she said.
+
+Sometimes, as at present, he found Janet's whims unaccountable.
+
+"Well, I should have presumed you'd know what they look like by this
+time. You'd better stay right close to me, they're a rough lot, with no
+respect or consideration for decent folks--these foreigners.  I never
+could see why the government lets 'em all come over here."  He put on the
+word "foreigners" an emphasis of contempt and indignation, pathetic
+because of its peculiar note of futility.  Janet paid no attention to
+him.  Her ears were strained to catch the rumble of feet descending the
+tower stairs, her eyes to see the vanguard as it came from the
+doorway--the first tricklings of a flood that instantly filled the yard
+and swept onward and outward, irresistibly, through the narrow gorge of
+the gates.  Impossible to realize this as the force which, when
+distributed over the great spaces of the mills, performed an orderly and
+useful task! for it was now a turbid and lawless torrent unconscious of
+its swollen powers, menacing, breathlessly exciting to behold.  It seemed
+to Janet indeed a torrent as she clung to the side of the gatehouse as
+one might cling to the steep bank of a mountain brook after a
+cloud-burst.  And suddenly she had plunged into it. The desire was
+absurd, perhaps, but not to be denied,--the desire to mix with it, feel
+it, be submerged and swept away by it, losing all sense of identity. She
+heard her father call after her, faintly--the thought crossed her mind
+that his appeals were always faint,--and then she was being carried along
+the canal, eastward, the pressure relaxing somewhat when the draining of
+the side streets began.
+
+She remembered, oddly, the Stanley Street bridge where the many streams
+met and mingled, streams from the Arundel, the Patuxent, the Arlington
+and the Clarendon; and, eager to prolong and intensify her sensations,
+hurried thither, reaching it at last and thrusting her way outward until
+she had gained the middle, where she stood grasping the rail.  The great
+structure was a-tremble from the assault, its footpaths and its roadway
+overrun with workers, dodging between trolleys and trucks,--some darting
+nimbly, dinner pails in hand, along the steel girders.  Doffer boys
+romped and whistled, young girls in jaunty, Faber Street clothes and
+flowered hats, linked to one another for protection, chewed gum and
+joked, but for the most part these workers were silent, the apathy of
+their faces making a strange contrast with the hurry, hurry of their feet
+and set intentness of their bodies as they sped homeward to the
+tenements. And the clothes of these were drab, save when the occasional
+colour of a hooded peasant's shawl, like the slightly faded tints of an
+old master, lit up a group of women.  Here, going home to their children,
+were Italian mothers bred through centuries to endurance and patience;
+sallow Jewesses, gaunt, bearded Jews with shadowy, half-closed eyes and
+wrinkled brows, broad-faced Lithuanians, flat-headed Russians; swarthy
+Italian men and pale, blond Germans mingled with muddy Syrians and
+nondescript Canadians.  And suddenly the bridge was empty, the army
+vanished as swiftly as it came!
+
+Janet turned.  Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball
+of fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent.  The delicate lines of
+the upper bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an instant
+the cupola of the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above floated in
+the azure a cloud of pink jeweller's cotton.  Even as she strove to fix
+these colours in her mind they vanished, the western sky faded to
+magenta, to purple-mauve; the corridor of the river darkened, on either
+side pale lights sparkled from the windows of the mills, while down the
+deepened blue of the waters came floating iridescent suds from the
+washing of the wools.  It was given to her to know that which an artist
+of living memory has called the incommunicable thrill of things....
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The after-effects of this experience of Janet's were not what ordinarily
+are called "spiritual," though we may some day arrive at a saner meaning
+of the term, include within it the impulses and needs of the entire
+organism.  It left her with a renewed sense of energy and restlessness,
+brought her nearer to high discoveries of mysterious joys which a voice
+out of the past called upon her to forego, a voice somehow identified
+with her father!  It was faint, ineffectual. In obeying it, would she not
+lose all life had to give?  When she came in to supper her father was
+concerned about her because, instead of walking home with him she had
+left him without explanation to plunge into the crowd of workers. Her
+evident state of excitement had worried him, her caprice was beyond his
+comprehension.  And how could she explain the motives that led to it?
+She was sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions
+the something within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and
+more rebellious, more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a
+nature timorous and less vitalized.
+
+After supper, unable to sit still, she went out, and, filled with the
+spirit of adventure, hurried toward Faber Street, which was already
+thronging with people.  It was bright here and gay, the shops glittered,
+and she wandered from window to window until she found herself staring at
+a suit of blue cloth hung on a form, beneath which was a card that read,
+"Marked down to $20."  And suddenly the suggestion flashed into her mind,
+why shouldn't she buy it?  She had the money, she needed a new suit for
+the winter, the one she possessed was getting shabby...but behind the
+excuse of necessity was the real reason triumphantly proclaiming
+itself--she would look pretty in it, she would be transformed, she would
+be buying a new character to which she would have to live up.  The old
+Janet would be cast off with the old raiment; the new suit would announce
+to herself and to the world a Janet in whom were released all those
+longings hitherto disguised and suppressed, and now become insupportable!
+This was what the purchase meant, a change of existence as complete as
+that between the moth and the butterfly; and the realization of this
+fact, of the audacity she was resolved to commit made her hot as she
+gazed at the suit.  It was modest enough, yet it had a certain
+distinction of cut, it looked expensive: twenty dollars was not cheap, to
+be sure, but as the placard announced, it had the air of being much more
+costly--even more costly than thirty dollars, which seemed fabulous.
+Though she strove to remain outwardly calm, her heart beat rapidly as she
+entered the store and asked for the costume, and was somewhat reassured
+by the comportment of the saleswoman, who did not appear to think the
+request preposterous, to regard her as a spendthrift and a profligate.
+She took down the suit from the form and led Janet to a cabinet in the
+back of the shop, where it was tried on.
+
+"It's worth every bit of thirty dollars," she heard the woman say, "but
+we've had it here for some time, and it's no use for our trade.  You
+can't sell anything like that in Hampton, there's no taste here, it's too
+good, it ain't showy enough.  My, it fits you like it was made for you,
+and it's just your style--and you can see it wants a lady to wear it.
+Your old suit is too tight- -I guess you've filled out some since you
+bought it."
+
+She turned Janet around and around, patting the skirt here and there, and
+then stood off a little way, with clasped hands, her expression almost
+rapturous. Janet's breath came fast as she gazed into the mirror and
+buttoned up the coat. Was the woman's admiration cleverly feigned? this
+image she beheld an illusion? or did she really look different,
+distinguished? and if not beautiful-- alluring?  She had had a momentary
+apprehension, almost sickening, that she would be too conspicuous, but
+the saleswoman had anticipated that objection with the magical word
+"lady."
+
+"I'll take it," she announced.
+
+"Well, you couldn't have done better if you'd gone to Boston," declared
+the woman.  "It's one chance in a thousand.  Will you wear it?"
+
+"Yes," said Janet faintly....  "Just put my old suit in a box, and I'll
+call for it in an hour."
+
+The woman's sympathetic smile followed her as she left the shop.  She had
+an instant of hesitation, of an almost panicky desire to go back and
+repair her folly, ere it was too late.  Why had she taken her money with
+her that evening, if not with some deliberate though undefined purpose?
+But she was ashamed to face the saleswoman again, and her elation was not
+to be repressed--an elation optically presented by a huge electric sign
+on the farther side of the street that flashed through all the colours of
+the spectrum, surrounded by running fire like the running fire in her
+soul.  Deliciously self-conscious, her gaze fixed ahead, she pressed
+through the Wednesday night crowds, young mill men and women in their
+best clothes, housewives and fathers of families with children and
+bundles.  In front of the Banner office a group blocked the pavement
+staring up at the news bulletin, which she paused to read.  "Five
+Millionaire Directors Indicted in New York," "State Treasurer Accused of
+Graft," "Murdock Fortune Contested by Heirs."  The phrases seemed
+meaningless, and she hurried on again....  She was being noticed!  A man
+looked at her, twice, the first glance accidental, the second arresting,
+appealing, subtly flattering, agitating--she was sure he had turned and
+was following her.  She hastened her steps.  It was wicked, what she was
+doing, but she gloried in it; and even the sight, in burning red letters,
+of Gruber's Cafe failed to bring on a revulsion by its association with
+her sister Lise.  The fact that Lise had got drunk there meant nothing to
+her now.  She gazed curiously at the illuminated, orange-coloured panes
+separated by curving leads, at the design of a harp in green, at the sign
+"Ladies' Entrance"; listened eagerly to the sounds of voices and laughter
+that came from within.  She looked cautiously over her shoulder, a shadow
+appeared, she heard a voice, low, insinuating....
+
+Four blocks farther down she stopped.  The man was no longer following
+her. She had been almost self-convinced of an intention to go to
+Eda's--not quite. Of late her conscience had reproached her about Eda,
+Janet had neglected her. She told herself she was afraid of Eda's uncanny
+and somewhat nauseating flair for romance; and to show Eda the new suit,
+though she would relish her friend's praise, would be the equivalent of
+announcing an affair of the heart which she, Janet, would have
+indignantly to deny.  She was not going to Eda's.  She knew now where she
+was going.  A prepared but hitherto undisclosed decree of fate had bade
+her put money in her bag that evening, directed her to the shop to buy
+the dress, and would presently impel her to go to West Street--nay, was
+even now so impelling her.  Ahead of her were the lights of the
+Chippering Mill, in her ears was the rhythmic sound of the looms working
+of nights on the Bradlaugh order.  She reached the canal.  The white arc
+above the end of the bridge cast sharp, black shadows of the branches of
+the trees on the granite, the thousand windows of the mill shone yellow,
+reflected in the black water.  Twice she started to go, twice she paused,
+held by the presage of a coming event, a presage that robbed her of
+complete surprise when she heard footsteps on the bridge, saw the figure
+of a man halting at the crown of the arch to look back at the building he
+had left, his shoulders squared, his hand firmly clasping the rail.  Her
+heart was throbbing with the looms, and yet she stood motionless, until
+he turned and came rapidly down the slope of the arch and stopped in
+front of her.  Under the arc lamp it was almost as bright as day.
+
+"Miss Bumpus!"  he exclaimed.
+
+"Mr. Ditmar" she said.
+
+"Were you--were you coming to the office?"
+
+"I was just out walking," she told him.  "I thought you were in Boston."
+
+"I came home," he informed her, somewhat superfluously, his eyes never
+leaving her, wandering hungrily from her face to her new suit, and back
+again to her face.  "I got here on the seven o'clock train, I wanted to
+see about those new Blubbers."
+
+"They finished setting them up this afternoon," she said.
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"I asked Mr. Orcutt about it--I thought you might telephone."
+
+"You're a wonder," was his comment.  "Well, we've got a running start on
+that order," and he threw a glance over his shoulder at the mill.
+"Everything going full speed ahead.  When we put it through I guess I'll
+have to give you some of the credit."
+
+"Oh, I haven't done anything," she protested.
+
+"More than you think.  You've taken so much off my shoulders I couldn't
+get along without you."  His voice vibrated, reminding her of the voices
+of those who made sentimental recitations for the graphophone.  It
+sounded absurd, yet it did not repel her: something within her responded
+to it.  "Which way were you going?" he inquired.
+
+"Home," she said.
+
+"Where do you live?"
+
+"In Fillmore Street."  And she added with a touch of defiance: "It's a
+little street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street."
+
+"Oh yes," he said vaguely, as though he had not understood.  "I'll come
+with you as far as the bridge--along the canal.  I've got so much to say
+to you."
+
+"Can't you say it to-morrow?"
+
+"No, I can't; there are so many people in the office--so many
+interruptions, I mean.  And then, you never give me a chance."
+
+She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her.  He had proposed
+the route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize
+them, and her pride resented this.  On the other hand, there was the
+sweet allurement of the adventure she craved, which indeed she had come
+out to seek and by a strange fatality found--since he had appeared on the
+bridge almost as soon as she reached it.  The sense of fate was strong
+upon her.  Curiosity urged her, and, thanks to the eulogy she had read of
+him that day, to the added impression of his power conveyed by the trip
+through the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than ever in her consciousness.
+
+"What do you want to say?"  she asked.
+
+"Oh, lots of things."
+
+She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently but
+firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a power
+stronger than herself, a masculine power, was delicious.  Her arm seemed
+to burn where he touched her.
+
+"Have I done something to offend you?"  she heard him say.  "Or is it
+because you don't like me?"
+
+"I'm not sure whether I like you or not," she told him.  "I don't like
+seeing you--this way.  And why should you want to know me and see me
+outside of the office?  I'm only your stenographer."
+
+"Because you're you--because you're different from any woman I ever met.
+You don't understand what you are--you don't see yourself."
+
+"I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any longer,"
+she informed him.
+
+"For God's sake, why?" he exclaimed.  "I've been afraid of that.  Don't
+go--I don't know what I'd do.  I'll be careful--I won't get you talked
+about."
+
+"Talked about!"  She tore herself away from him.  "Why should you get me
+talked about?" she cried.
+
+He was frightened.  "No, no," he stammered, "I didn't mean--"
+
+"What did you mean?"
+
+"Well--as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we
+shouldn't be friends.  I only meant--I wouldn't do anything to make our
+friendship the subject of gossip."
+
+Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and
+penitence, she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over
+him.
+
+"Why should you want me?  I don't know anything, I've never had any
+advantages- -and you have so much.  I read an article in the newspaper
+about you today--Mr. Caldwell gave it to me--"
+
+"Did you like it?" he interrupted, naively.
+
+"Well, in some places it was rather funny."
+
+"Funny?  How?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know."  She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic
+lack of restraint hinted at by Caldwell.  "I liked it, but I thought it
+praised you too much, it didn't criticize you enough."
+
+He laughed.  In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing.
+From the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got
+anything but flattery.
+
+"I want you to criticize me," he said.
+
+But she went on relentlessly:--
+
+"When I read in that article how successful you were, and how you'd got
+everything you'd started out to get, and how some day you might be
+treasurer and president of the Chippering Mill, well--"  Despairing of
+giving adequate expression to her meaning, she added, "I didn't see how
+we could be friends."
+
+"You wanted me for a friend?" he interrupted eagerly.
+
+"I couldn't help knowing you wanted me--you've shown it so plainly.  But
+I didn't see how it could be.  You asked me where I lived--in a little
+flat that's no better than a tenement.  I suppose you would call it a
+tenement. It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of
+cooking.  You couldn't come there--don't you see how impossible it is?
+And you wouldn't care to be talked about yourself, either," she added
+vehemently.
+
+This defiant sincerity took him aback.  He groped for words.
+
+"Listen!" he urged.  "I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and
+honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me.  I've come to depend on
+you. And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I
+thought of you, I said to myself 'She'll be pleased, she'll help me to
+put it over.'"
+
+She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to
+herself, to take her arm again.
+
+"How could I help you?"
+
+"Oh, in a thousand ways--you ought to know, you do a good deal of
+thinking for me, and you can help me by just being there.  I can't
+explain it, but I feel somehow that things will go right.  I've come to
+depend on you."
+
+He was a little surprised to find himself saying these things he had not
+intended to say, and the lighter touch he had always possessed in dealing
+with the other sex, making him the envied of his friends, had apparently
+abandoned him.  He was appalled at the possibility of losing her.
+
+"I've never met a woman like you," he went on, as she remained silent.
+"You're different--I don't know what it is about you, but you are."  His
+voice was low, caressing, his head was bent down to her, his shoulder
+pressed against her shoulder.  "I've never had a woman friend before,
+I've never wanted one until now."
+
+She wondered about his wife.
+
+"You've got brains--I've never met a woman with brains."
+
+"Oh, is that why?" she exclaimed.
+
+"You're beautiful," he whispered.  "It's queer, but I didn't know it at
+first. You're more beautiful to-night than I've ever seen you."
+
+They had come almost to Warren Street.  Suddenly realizing that they were
+standing in the light, that people were passing to and fro over the end
+of the bridge, she drew away from him once more, this time more gently.
+
+"Let's walk back a little way," he proposed.
+
+"I must go home--it's late."
+
+"It's only nine o'clock."
+
+"I have an errand to do, and they'll expect me.  Good night."
+
+"Just one more turn!" he pleaded.
+
+But she shook her head, backing away from him.
+
+"You'll see me to-morrow," she told him.  She didn't know why she said
+that. She hurried along Warren Street without once looking over her
+shoulder; her feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the sound of
+music was in her ears, the lights sparkled.  She had had an adventure, at
+last, an adventure that magically had transformed her life!  She was
+beautiful!  No one had ever told her that before.  And he had said that
+he needed her.  She smiled as, with an access of tenderness, in spite of
+his experience and power she suddenly felt years older than Ditmar.  She
+could help him!...
+
+She was breathless when she reached the shop in Faber Street.
+
+"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said.
+
+"Oh no, we don't close until ten," answered the saleswoman.  She was
+seated quietly sewing under the lamp.
+
+"I wonder whether you'd mind if I put on my old suit again, and carried
+this?" Janet asked.
+
+The expression of sympathy and understanding in the woman's eyes, as she
+rose, brought the blood swiftly to Janet's face.  She felt that her
+secret had been guessed.  The change effected, Janet went homeward
+swiftly, to encounter, on the corner of Faber Street, her sister Lise,
+whose attention was immediately attracted by the bundle.
+
+"What have you got there, angel face?" she demanded.
+
+"A new suit," said Janet.
+
+"You don't tell me--where'd you get it? at the Paris?"
+
+"No, at Dowling's."
+
+"Say, I'll bet it was that plain blue thing marked down to twenty!"
+
+"Well, what if it was?"
+
+Lise, when surprised or scornful, had a peculiarly irritating way of
+whistling through her teeth.
+
+"Twenty bucks!  Gee, you'll be getting your clothes in Boston next.
+Well, as sure as I live when I went by that window the other day when
+they first knocked it down I said to Sadie, `those are the rags Janet
+would buy if she had the ready.'  Have you got another raise out of
+Ditmar?"
+
+"If I have, it isn't any business of yours," Janet retorted.  "I've got a
+right to do as I please with my own money."
+
+"Oh sure," said Lise, and added darkly: "I guess Ditmar likes to see you
+look well."
+
+After this Janet refused obstinately to speak to Lise, to answer, when
+they reached home, her pleadings and complaints to their mother that
+Janet had bought a new suit and refused to exhibit it.  And finally, when
+they had got to bed, Janet lay long awake in passionate revolt against
+this new expression of the sordidness and lack of privacy in which she
+was forced to live, made the more intolerable by the close, sultry
+darkness of the room and the snoring of Lise.
+
+In the morning, however, after a groping period of semiconsciousness
+during the ringing of the bells, the siren startled her into awareness
+and alertness.  It had not wholly lost its note of terror, but the note
+had somehow become exhilarating, an invitation to adventure and to life;
+and Lise's sarcastic comments as to the probable reasons why she did not
+put on the new suit had host their power of exasperation.  Janet
+compromised, wearing a blouse of china silk hitherto reserved for "best."
+The day was bright, and she went rapidly toward the mill, glorying in the
+sunshine and the autumn sharpness of the air; and her thoughts were not
+so much of Ditmar as of something beyond him, of which he was the medium.
+She was going, not to meet him, but to meet that. When she reached the
+office she felt weak, her fingers trembled as she took off her hat and
+jacket and began to sort out the mail.  And she had to calm herself with
+the assurance that her relationship with Ditmar had undergone no change.
+She had merely met him by the canal, and he had talked to her.  That was
+all. He had, of course, taken her arm: it tingled when she remembered it.
+But when he suddenly entered the room her heart gave a bound.  He closed
+the door, he took off his hat, and stood gazing at her--while she
+continued arranging letters.  Presently she was forced to glance at him.
+His bearing, his look, his confident smile all proclaimed that he, at
+least, believed things to be changed.  He glowed with health and vigour,
+with an aggressiveness from which she shrank, yet found delicious.
+
+"How are you this morning?"  he said at last--this morning as
+distinguished from all other mornings.
+
+"I'm well, as usual," she answered.  She herself was sometimes surprised
+by her ability to remain outwardly calm.
+
+"Why did you run away from me last night?"
+
+"I didn't run away, I had to go home," she said, still arranging the
+letters.
+
+"We could have had a little walk.  I don't believe you had to go home at
+all. You just wanted an excuse to get away from me."
+
+"I didn't need an excuse," she told him.  He moved toward her, but she
+took a paper from the desk and carried it to a file across the room.
+
+"I thought we were going to be friends," he said.
+
+"Being friends doesn't mean being foolish," she retorted.  "And Mr.
+Orcutt's waiting to see you."
+
+"Let him wait."
+
+He sat down at his desk, but his blood was warm, and he read the
+typewritten words of the topmost letter of the pile without so much as
+grasping the meaning of them.  From time to time he glanced up at Janet
+as she flitted about the room.  By George, she was more desirable than he
+had ever dared to imagine!  He felt temporarily balked, but hopeful.  On
+his way to the mill he had dwelt with Epicurean indulgence on this sight
+of her, and he had not been disappointed. He had also thought that he
+might venture upon more than the mere feasting of his eyes, yet found an
+inspiring alleviation in the fact that she by no means absolutely
+repulsed him.  Her attitude toward him had undergone a subtle
+transformation.  There could be no doubt of that.  She was almost
+coquettish. His eyes lingered.  The china silk blouse was slightly open
+at the neck, suggesting the fullness of her throat; it clung to the
+outline of her shoulders.  Overcome by an impulse he could not control,
+he got up and went toward her, but she avoided him.
+
+"I'll tell Mr. Orcutt you've come," she said, rather breathlessly, as she
+reached the door and opened it.  Ditmar halted in his steps at the sight
+of the tall, spectacled figure of the superintendent on the threshold.
+
+Orcutt hesitated, looking from one to the other.
+
+"I've been waiting for you," he said, after a moment, "the rest of that
+lot didn't come in this morning.  I've telephoned to the freight agent."
+
+Ditmar stared at him uncomprehendingly.  Orcutt repeated the information.
+
+"Oh well, keep after him, get him to trace them."
+
+"I'm doing that," replied the conscientious Orcutt.
+
+"How's everything else going?" Ditmar demanded, with unlooked-for
+geniality. "You mustn't take things too hard, Orcutt, don't wear yourself
+out."
+
+Mr. Orcutt was relieved.  He had expected an outburst of the exasperation
+that lately had characterized his superior.  They began to chat.  Janet
+had escaped.
+
+"Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me.  I was just going to ring you
+up," Ditmar informed him.
+
+"She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things,"
+Orcutt observed.  "And she's always on the job.  Only yesterday I saw her
+going through the mill with young Caldwell."
+
+Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held.
+
+"Oh, she went through, did she?"
+
+After Orcutt departed he sat for awhile whistling a tune, from a popular
+musical play, keeping time by drumming with his fingers on the desk.
+
+That Mr. Semple, the mill treasurer, came down from Boston that morning
+to confer with Ditmar was for Janet in the nature of a reprieve.  She sat
+by her window, and as her fingers flew over the typewriter keys she was
+swept by surges of heat in which ecstasy and shame and terror were
+strangely commingled. A voice within her said, "This can't go on, this
+can't go on!  It's too terrible!  Everyone in the office will notice
+it--there will be a scandal.  I ought to go away while there is yet
+time--to-day."  Though the instinct of flight was strong within her, she
+was filled with rebellion at the thought of leaving when Adventure was
+flooding her drab world with light, even as the mill across the waters
+was transfigured by the heavy golden wash of the autumn sun. She had made
+at length the discovery that Adventure had to do with Man, was
+inconceivable without him.
+
+Racked by these conflicting impulses of self-preservation on the one hand
+and what seemed self-realization on the other, she started when, toward
+the middle of the afternoon, she heard Ditmar's voice summoning her to
+take his letters; and went palpitating, leaving the door open behind her,
+seating herself on the far side of the desk, her head bent over her book.
+Her neck, where her hair grew in wisps behind her ear, seemed to burn:
+Ditmar's glance was focussed there.  Her hands were cold as she wrote....
+Then, like a deliverer, she saw young Caldwell coming in from the outer
+office, holding a card in his hand which he gave to Ditmar, who sat
+staring at it.
+
+"Siddons?" he said.  "Who's Siddons?"
+
+Janet, who had risen, spoke up.
+
+"Why, he's been making the Hampton `survey.'  You wrote him you'd see
+him-- don't you remember, Mr. Ditmar?"
+
+"Don't go!" exclaimed Ditmar.  "You can't tell what those confounded
+reformers will accuse you of if you don't have a witness."
+
+Janet sat down again.  The sharpness of Ditmar's tone was an exhilarating
+reminder of the fact that, in dealing with strangers, he had come more or
+less to rely on her instinctive judgment; while the implied appeal of his
+manner on such occasions emphasized the pleasurable sense of his
+dependence, of her own usefulness.  Besides, she had been curious about
+the `survey' at the time it was first mentioned, she wished to hear
+Ditmar's views concerning it.  Mr. Siddons proved to be a small and
+sallow young man with a pointed nose and bright, bulbous brown eyes like
+a chipmunk's.  Indeed, he reminded one of a chipmunk.  As he whisked
+himself in and seized Ditmar's hand he gave a confused impression of
+polite self-effacement as well as of dignity and self-assertion; he had
+the air of one who expects opposition, and though by no means desiring
+it, is prepared to deal with it.  Janet smiled.  She had a sudden impulse
+to drop the heavy book that lay on the corner of the desk to see if he
+would jump.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Ditmar?" he said.  "I've been hoping to have this
+pleasure."
+
+"My secretary, Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar.
+
+Mr. Siddons quivered and bowed.  Ditmar, sinking ponderously into his
+chair, seemed suddenly, ironically amused, grinning at Janet as he opened
+a drawer of his desk and offered the visitor a cigar.
+
+"Thanks, I don't smoke," said Mr. Siddons.
+
+Ditmar lit one for himself.
+
+"Now, what can I do for you?" he asked.
+
+"Well, as I wrote you in my letter, I was engaged to make as thorough an
+examination as possible of the living conditions and housing of the
+operatives in the city of Hampton.  I'm sure you'd be interested in
+hearing something of the situation we found."
+
+"I suppose you've been through our mills," said Ditmar.
+
+"No, the fact is--"
+
+"You ought to go through.  I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a
+slight emphasis on the pronoun.  "We rather pride ourselves on making
+things comfortable and healthy for our people."
+
+"I've no doubt of it--in fact, I've been so informed.  It's because of
+your concern for the welfare of your workers in the mills that I ventured
+to come and talk to you of how most of them live when they're at home,"
+replied Siddons, as Janet thought, rather neatly.  "Perhaps, though
+living in Hampton, you don't quite realize what the conditions are.  I
+know a man who has lived in Boston ten years and who hasn't ever seen the
+Bunker Hill monument."
+
+"The Bunker Hill monument's a public affair," retorted Ditmar, "anybody
+can go there who has enough curiosity and interest.  But I don't see how
+you can expect me to follow these people home and make them clean up
+their garbage and wash their babies.  I shouldn't want anybody to
+interfere with my private affairs."
+
+"But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public
+menace?" Siddons objected.  "Mr. Ditmar, I've seen block after block of
+tenements ready to crumble.  There are no provisions for foundations,
+thickness of walls, size of timbers and columns, and if these houses had
+been deliberately erected to make a bonfire they couldn't have answered
+the purpose better.  If it were not for the danger to life and the pity
+of making thousands of families homeless, a conflagration would be a
+blessing, although I believe the entire north or south side of the city
+would go under certain conditions.  The best thing you could do would be
+to burn whole rows of these tenements, they are ideal breeding grounds
+for disease.  In the older sections of the city you've got hundreds of
+rear houses here, houses moved back on the lots, in some extreme cases
+with only four-foot courts littered with refuse,--houses without light,
+without ventilation, and many of the rooms where these people are cooking
+and eating and sleeping are so damp and foul they're not fit to put dogs
+in.  You've got some blocks with a density of over five hundred to the
+acre, and your average density is considerably over a hundred."
+
+"Are things any worse than in any other manufacturing city?" asked
+Ditmar.
+
+"That isn't the point," said Siddons.  "The point is that they're bad,
+they're dangerous, they're inhuman.  If you could go into these tenements
+as I have done and see the way some of these people live, it would make
+you sick the Poles and Lithuanians and Italians especially.  You wouldn't
+treat cattle that way.  In some households of five rooms, including the
+kitchen, I found as many as fourteen, fifteen, and once seventeen people
+living.  You've got an alarming infant death-rate."
+
+"Isn't it because these people want to live that way?" Ditmar inquired.
+"They actually like it, they wouldn't be happy in anything but a
+pig-sty--they had 'em in Europe.  And what do you expect us to do?  Buy
+land and build flats for them?  Inside of a month they'd have all the
+woodwork stripped off for kindling, the drainage stopped up, the bathtubs
+filled with ashes.  I know, because it's been tried."
+
+Tilted back in his chair, he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling,
+and his eyes sought Janet's.  She avoided them, resenting a little the
+assumption of approval she read in them.  Her mind, sensitive to new
+ideas, had been keenly stimulated as she listened to Siddons, who began
+patiently to dwell once more on the ill effect of the conditions he had
+discovered on the welfare of the entire community.  She had never thought
+of this.  She was surprised that Ditmar should seem to belittle it.
+Siddons was a new type in her experience. She could understand and to a
+certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing exasperation with him;
+he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he spent most of
+his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off Ditmar's
+objections he was forever indulging in such maddening phrases as, "Before
+we come to that, let me say a word just here."  Ditmar hated words. His
+outbursts, his efforts to stop the flow of them were not unlike the
+futile charges of a large and powerful animal harassed by a smaller and
+more agile one.  With nimble politeness, with an exasperating air of
+deference to Ditmar's opinions, Mr. Siddons gave ground, only to return
+to the charge; yet, despite a manner and method which, when contrasted to
+Ditmar's, verged on the ludicrous, Mr. Siddons had a force and fire of
+his own, nervous, almost fanatical: when he dwelt on the misery he had
+seen, and his voice trembled from the intensity of his feeling, Janet
+began to be moved.  It was odd, considering the struggle for existence of
+her own family, that these foreigners had remained outside the range of
+her sympathy.
+
+"I guess you'll find," Ditmar had interrupted peremptorily, "I guess
+you'll find, if you look up the savings banks statistics, these people
+have got millions tucked away.  And they send a lot of it to the other
+side, they go back themselves, and though they live like cattle, they
+manage to buy land. Ask the real estate men.  Why, I could show you a
+dozen who worked in the mills a few years ago and are capitalists
+to-day."
+
+"I don't doubt it, Mr. Ditmar," Siddons gracefully conceded.  "But what
+does it prove?  Merely the cruelty of an economic system based on
+ruthless competition. The great majority who are unable to survive the
+test pay the price.  And the community also pays the price, the state and
+nation pay it.  And we have this misery on our consciences.  I've no
+doubt you could show me some who have grown rich, but if you would let me
+I could take you to families in desperate want, living in rooms too dark
+to read in at midday in clear weather, where the husband doesn't get more
+than seven dollars a week when the mills are running full time, where the
+woman has to look out for the children and work for the lodgers, and even
+with lodgers they get into debt, and the woman has to go into the mills
+to earn money for winter clothing.  I've seen enough instances of this
+kind to offset the savings bank argument.  And even then, when you have a
+family where the wife and older children work, where the babies are put
+out to board, where there are three and four lodgers in a room, why do
+you suppose they live that way?  Isn't it in the hope of freeing
+themselves ultimately from these very conditions?  And aren't these
+conditions a disgrace to Hampton and America?"
+
+"Well, what am I to do about it?" Ditmar demanded.
+
+"I see that these operatives have comfortable and healthful surroundings
+in the mill, I've spent money to put in the latest appliances.  That's
+more than a good many mills I could mention attempt."
+
+"You are a person of influence, Mr. Ditmar, you have more influence than
+any man in Hampton.  You can bring pressure to bear on the city council
+to enforce and improve the building ordinances, you can organize a
+campaign of public opinion against certain property owners."
+
+"Yes," retorted Ditmar, "and what then?  You raise the rents, and you
+won't get anybody to live in the houses.  They'll move out to settlements
+like Glendale full of dirt and vermin and disease and live as they're
+accustomed to.  What you reformers are actually driving at is that we
+should raise wages--isn't it? If we raised wages they'd live like rats
+anyway.  I give you credit for sincerity, Mr. Siddons, but I don't want
+you to think I'm not as much interested in the welfare of these people as
+you and the men behind you.  The trouble is, you only see one side of
+this question.  When you're in my position, you're up against hard facts.
+We can't pay a dubber or a drawing tender any more than he's worth,
+whether he has a wife or children in the mills or whether he hasn't.
+We're in competition with other mills, we're in competition with the
+South.  We can't regulate the cost of living.  We do our best to make
+things right in the mills, and that's all we can do.  We can't afford to
+be sentimental about life.  Competition's got to be the rule, the world's
+made that way.  Some are efficient and some aren't.  Good God, any man
+who's had anything to do with hiring labour and running a plant has that
+drummed into him hard.  You talk about ordinances, laws--there are enough
+laws and ordinances in this city and in this state right now.  If we have
+any more the mills will have to shut down, and these people will
+starve--all of 'em." Ditmar's chair came down on its four legs, and he
+flung his cigar away.  "Send me a copy of your survey when it's
+published.  I'll look it over."
+
+"Well, what do you think of the nerve of a man like that?"  Ditmar
+exploded, when Mr. Siddons had bowed himself out.  "Comes in here to
+advise me that it's my business to look out for the whole city of
+Hampton.  I'd like to see him up against this low-class European labour
+trying to run a mill with them.  They're here one day and there the next,
+they don't know what loyalty is.  You've got to drive 'em--if you give
+'em an inch they'll jump at your throat, dynamite your property.  Why,
+there's nothing I wouldn't do for them if I could depend on them, I'd
+build 'em houses, I'd have automobiles to take 'em home.  As it is, I do
+my best, though they don't deserve it,--in slack seasons I run half time
+when I oughtn't to be running at all."
+
+His tone betrayed an effort of self-justification, and his irritation had
+been increased by the suspicion in Janet of a certain lack of the
+sympathy on which he had counted.  She sat silent, gazing searchingly at
+his face.
+
+"What's the matter?"  he demanded.  "You don't mean to say you agree with
+that kind of talk?"
+
+"I was wondering--" she began.
+
+"What?"
+
+"If you were--if you could really understand those who are driven to work
+in order to keep alive?"
+
+"Understand them!  Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Because--because you're on top, you've always been successful, you're
+pretty much your own master--and that makes it different.  I'm not
+blaming you--in your place I'd be the same, I'm sure.  But this man,
+Siddons, made me think. I've lived like that, you see, I know what it is,
+in a way."
+
+"Not like these foreigners!" he protested.
+
+"Oh, almost as bad," she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped
+suddenly in his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the
+startled air of the male who has inadvertently touched off one of the
+many hidden springs in the feminine emotional mechanism.  "How do you
+know what it is to live in a squalid, ugly street, in dark little rooms
+that smell of cooking, and not be able to have any of the finer,
+beautiful things in life?  Unless you'd wanted these things as I've
+wanted them, you couldn't know.  Oh, I can understand what it would feel
+like to strike, to wish to dynamite men like you!"
+
+"You can!" he exclaimed in amazement.  "You!"
+
+"Yes, me.  You don't understand these people, you couldn't feel sorry for
+them any more than you could feel sorry for me.  You want them to run
+your mills for you, you don't want to know how they feel or how they
+live, and you just want me--for your pleasure."
+
+He was indeed momentarily taken aback by this taunt, which no woman in
+his experience had had the wit and spirit to fling at him, but he was not
+the type of man to be shocked by it.  On the contrary, it swept away his
+irritation, and as a revelation of her inner moltenness stirred him to a
+fever heat as he approached and stood over her.
+
+"You little--panther!" he whispered.  "You want beautiful things, do you?
+Well, I'll give 'em to you.  I'll take care of you."
+
+"Do you think I want them from you?" she retorted, almost in tears.  "Do
+you think I want anybody to take care of me?  That shows how little you
+know me.  I want to be independent, to do my work and pay for what I
+get."
+
+Janet herself was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings.
+Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would
+indeed have despised him.  The ruthlessness of his laugh--the laugh of
+the red-blooded man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook
+her with a wild appeal. "What do I care about any others--I want you!"
+such was its message.  And against this paradoxical wish to be conquered,
+intensified by the magnetic field of his passion, battled her
+self-assertion, her pride, her innate desire to be free, to escape now
+from a domination the thought of which filled her with terror.  She felt
+his cheek brushing against her hair, his fingers straying along her arm;
+for the moment she was hideously yet deliciously powerless.  Then the
+emotion of terror conquered--terror of the unknown--and she sprang away,
+dropping her note-book and running to the window, where she stood
+swaying.
+
+"Janet, you're killing me," she heard him say.  "For God's sake, why
+can't you trust me?"
+
+She did not answer, but gazed out at the primrose lights beginning to
+twinkle fantastically in the distant mills.  Presently she turned.
+Ditmar was in his chair.  She crossed the room to the electric switch,
+turning on the flood of light, picked up her tote-book and sat down
+again.
+
+"Don't you intend to answer your letters?"  she asked.
+
+He reached out gropingly toward the pile of his correspondence, seized
+the topmost letter, and began to dictate, savagely.  She experienced a
+certain exultation, a renewed and pleasurable sense of power as she took
+down his words.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS
+
+But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace
+Exorbitant price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained
+Foreigners.  I never could see why the government lets 'em all come
+Hitherto he had held rigidly to that relativity
+Perhaps she feared to break the charm of that memory
+The seventh commandment was only relative
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V1 by
+Winston Churchill
+
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