CHAPTER XXIX

by Sinclair Lewis

　　SHE had walked up the railroad track with Hugh, this Sunday afternoon.She saw Erik Valborg coming, in an ancient highwater suit, trampingsullenly and alone, striking at the rails with a stick. For a secondshe unreasoningly wanted to avoid him, but she kept on, and she serenelytalked about God, whose voice, Hugh asserted, made the humming in thetelegraph wires. Erik stared, straightened. They greeted each other with"Hello.""Hugh, say how-do-you-do to Mr. Valborg.""Oh, dear me, he's got a button unbuttoned," worried Erik, kneeling.Carol frowned, then noted the strength with which he swung the baby inthe air."May I walk along a piece with you?""I'm tired. Let's rest on those ties. Then I must be trotting back."They sat on a heap of discarded railroad ties, oak logs spotted withcinnamon-colored dry-rot and marked with metallic brown streaks whereiron plates had rested. Hugh learned that the pile was the hiding-placeof Injuns; he went gunning for them while the elders talked ofuninteresting things.The telegraph wires thrummed, thrummed, thrummed above them; the railswere glaring hard lines; the goldenrod smelled dusty. Across the trackwas a pasture of dwarf clover and sparse lawn cut by earthy cow-paths;beyond its placid narrow green, the rough immensity of new stubble,jagged with wheat-stacks like huge pineapples.Erik talked of books; flamed like a recent convert to any faith. Heexhibited as many titles and authors as possible, halting only toappeal, "Have you read his last book? Don't you think he's a terriblystrong writer?"She was dizzy. But when he insisted, "You've been a librarian; tellme; do I read too much fiction?" she advised him loftily, ratherdiscursively. He had, she indicated, never studied. He had skipped fromone emotion to another. Especially--she hesitated, then flung it athim--he must not guess at pronunciations; he must endure the nuisance ofstopping to reach for the dictionary."I'm talking like a cranky teacher," she sighed."No! And I will study! Read the damned dictionary right through." Hecrossed his legs and bent over, clutching his ankle with both hands. "Iknow what you mean. I've been rushing from picture to picture, like akid let loose in an art gallery for the first time. You see, it's soawful recent that I've found there was a world--well, a world wherebeautiful things counted. I was on the farm till I was nineteen. Dad isa good farmer, but nothing else. Do you know why he first sent me off tolearn tailoring? I wanted to study drawing, and he had a cousin that'dmade a lot of money tailoring out in Dakota, and he said tailoring wasa lot like drawing, so he sent me down to a punk hole called Curlew,to work in a tailor shop. Up to that time I'd only had three months'schooling a year--walked to school two miles, through snow up to myknees--and Dad never would stand for my having a single book exceptschoolbooks."I never read a novel till I got 'Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall' outof the library at Curlew. I thought it was the loveliest thing in theworld! Next I read 'Barriers Burned Away' and then Pope's translation ofHomer. Some combination, all right! When I went to Minneapolis, justtwo years ago, I guess I'd read pretty much everything in that Curlewlibrary, but I'd never heard of Rossetti or John Sargent or Balzac orBrahms. But----Yump, I'll study. Look here! Shall I get out of thistailoring, this pressing and repairing?""I don't see why a surgeon should spend very much time cobbling shoes.""But what if I find I can't really draw and design? After fussing aroundin New York or Chicago, I'd feel like a fool if I had to go back to workin a gents' furnishings store!""Please say 'haberdashery.'""Haberdashery? All right. I'll remember." He shrugged and spread hisfingers wide.She was humbled by his humility; she put away in her mind, to take outand worry over later, a speculation as to whether it was not she whowas naive. She urged, "What if you do have to go back? Most of us do! Wecan't all be artists--myself, for instance. We have to darn socks, andyet we're not content to think of nothing but socks and darning-cotton.I'd demand all I could get--whether I finally settled down to designingfrocks or building temples or pressing pants. What if you do drop back?You'll have had the adventure. Don't be too meek toward life! Go! You'reyoung, you're unmarried. Try everything! Don't listen to Nat Hicks andSam Clark and be a 'steady young man'--in order to help them makemoney. You're still a blessed innocent. Go and play till the Good Peoplecapture you!""But I don't just want to play. I want to make something beautiful. God!And I don't know enough. Do you get it? Do you understand? Nobody elseever has! Do you understand?""Yes.""And so----But here's what bothers me: I like fabrics; dinky things likethat; little drawings and elegant words. But look over there at thosefields. Big! New! Don't it seem kind of a shame to leave this and goback to the East and Europe, and do what all those people have beendoing so long? Being careful about words, when there's millions ofbushels off wheat here! Reading this fellow Pater, when I've helped Dadto clear fields!""It's good to clear fields. But it's not for you. It's one of ourfavorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds,and high mountains make high purpose. I thought that myself, when Ifirst came to the prairie. 'Big--new.' Oh, I don't want to deny theprairie future. It will be magnificent. But equally I'm hanged if I wantto be bullied by it, go to war on behalf of Main Street, be bullied andBULLIED by the faith that the future is already here in the present, andthat all of us must stay and worship wheat-stacks and insist thatthis is 'God's Country'--and never, of course, do anything originalor gay-colored that would help to make that future! Anyway, you don'tbelong here. Sam Clark and Nat Hicks, that's what our big newness hasproduced. Go! Before it's too late, as it has been for--for some of us.Young man, go East and grow up with the revolution! Then perhaps youmay come back and tell Sam and Nat and me what to do with the land we'vebeen clearing--if we'll listen--if we don't lynch you first!"He looked at her reverently. She could hear him saying,"I've always wanted to know a woman who would talk to me like that."Her hearing was faulty. He was saying nothing of the sort. He wassaying:"Why aren't you happy with your husband?""I--you----""He doesn't care for the 'blessed innocent' part of you, does he!""Erik, you mustn't----""First you tell me to go and be free, and then you say that I'mustn't'!""I know. But you mustn't----You must be more impersonal!"He glowered at her like a downy young owl. She wasn't sure but shethought that he muttered, "I'm damned if I will." She considered withwholesome fear the perils of meddling with other people's destinies, andshe said timidly, "Hadn't we better start back now?"He mused, "You're younger than I am. Your lips are for songs aboutrivers in the morning and lakes at twilight. I don't see how anybodycould ever hurt you. . . . Yes. We better go."He trudged beside her, his eyes averted. Hugh experimentally took histhumb. He looked down at the baby seriously. He burst out, "All right.I'll do it. I'll stay here one year. Save. Not spend so much money onclothes. And then I'll go East, to art-school. Work on the side-tailorshop, dressmaker's. I'll learn what I'm good for: designing clothes,stage-settings, illustrating, or selling collars to fat men. Allsettled." He peered at her, unsmiling."Can you stand it here in town for a year?""With you to look at?""Please! I mean: Don't the people here think you're an odd bird? (Theydo me, I assure you!)""I don't know. I never notice much. Oh, they do kid me about not beingin the army--especially the old warhorses, the old men that aren't goingthemselves. And this Bogart boy. And Mr. Hicks's son--he's a horriblebrat. But probably he's licensed to say what he thinks about hisfather's hired man!""He's beastly!"They were in town. They passed Aunt Bessie's house. Aunt Bessie andMrs. Bogart were at the window, and Carol saw that they were staring sointently that they answered her wave only with the stiffly raised handsof automatons. In the next block Mrs. Dr. Westlake was gaping from herporch. Carol said with an embarrassed quaver:"I want to run in and see Mrs. Westlake. I'll say good-by here."She avoided his eyes.Mrs. Westlake was affable. Carol felt that she was expected to explain;and while she was mentally asserting that she'd be hanged if she'dexplain, she was explaining:"Hugh captured that Valborg boy up the track. They became such goodfriends. And I talked to him for a while. I'd heard he was eccentric,but really, I found him quite intelligent. Crude, but he reads--readsalmost the way Dr. Westlake does.""That's fine. Why does he stick here in town? What's this I hear abouthis being interested in Myrtle Cass?""I don't know. Is he? I'm sure he isn't! He said he was quite lonely!Besides, Myrtle is a babe in arms!""Twenty-one if she's a day!""Well----Is the doctor going to do any hunting this fall?"IIThe need of explaining Erik dragged her back into doubting. For all hisardent reading, and his ardent life, was he anything but a small-townyouth bred on an illiberal farm and in cheap tailor shops? He had roughhands. She had been attracted only by hands that were fine and suave,like those of her father. Delicate hands and resolute purpose. But thisboy--powerful seamed hands and flabby will."It's not appealing weakness like his, but sane strength that winanimate the Gopher Prairies. Only----Does that mean anything? Or amI echoing Vida? The world has always let 'strong' statesmen andsoldiers--the men with strong voices--take control, and what have thethundering boobies done? What is 'strength'?"This classifying of people! I suppose tailors differ as much asburglars or kings."Erik frightened me when he turned on me. Of course he didn't meananything, but I mustn't let him be so personal."Amazing impertinence!"But he didn't mean to be."His hands are FIRM. I wonder if sculptors don't have thick hands, too?"Of course if there really is anything I can do to HELP the boy----"Though I despise these people who interfere. He must be independent."IIIShe wasn't altogether pleased, the week after, when Erik was independentand, without asking for her inspiration, planned the tennis tournament.It proved that he had learned to play in Minneapolis; that, next toJuanita Haydock, he had the best serve in town. Tennis was well spokenof in Gopher Prairie and almost never played. There were three courts:one belonging to Harry Haydock, one to the cottages at the lake, andone, a rough field on the outskirts, laid out by a defunct tennisassociation.Erik had been seen in flannels and an imitation panama hat, playing onthe abandoned court with Willis Woodford, the clerk in Stowbody's bank.Suddenly he was going about proposing the reorganization of the tennisassociation, and writing names in a fifteen-cent note-book bought forthe purpose at Dyer's. When he came to Carol he was so excited overbeing an organizer that he did not stop to talk of himself and AubreyBeardsley for more than ten minutes. He begged, "Will you get some ofthe folks to come in?" and she nodded agreeably.He proposed an informal exhibition match to advertise the association;he suggested that Carol and himself, the Haydocks, the Woodfords, andthe Dillons play doubles, and that the association be formed fromthe gathered enthusiasts. He had asked Harry Haydock to be tentativepresident. Harry, he reported, had promised, "All right. You bet. Butyou go ahead and arrange things, and I'll O.K. 'em." Erik planned thatthe match should be held Saturday afternoon, on the old public courtat the edge of town. He was happy in being, for the first time, part ofGopher Prairie.Through the week Carol heard how select an attendance there was to be.Kennicott growled that he didn't care to go.Had he any objections to her playing with Erik?No; sure not; she needed the exercise. Carol went to the match early.The court was in a meadow out on the New Antonia road. Only Erik wasthere. He was dashing about with a rake, trying to make the courtsomewhat less like a plowed field. He admitted that he had stage frightat the thought of the coming horde. Willis and Mrs. Woodford arrived,Willis in home-made knickers and black sneakers through at the toe;then Dr. and Mrs. Harvey Dillon, people as harmless and grateful as theWoodfords.Carol was embarrassed and excessively agreeable, like the bishop's ladytrying not to feel out of place at a Baptist bazaar.They waited.The match was scheduled for three. As spectators there assembled oneyouthful grocery clerk, stopping his Ford delivery wagon to stare fromthe seat, and one solemn small boy, tugging a smaller sister who had acareless nose."I wonder where the Haydocks are? They ought to show up, at least," saidErik.Carol smiled confidently at him, and peered down the empty road towardtown. Only heat-waves and dust and dusty weeds.At half-past three no one had come, and the grocery boy reluctantly gotout, cranked his Ford, glared at them in a disillusioned manner, andrattled away. The small boy and his sister ate grass and sighed.The players pretended to be exhilarated by practising service, but theystartled at each dust-cloud from a motor car. None of the cars turnedinto the meadow-none till a quarter to four, when Kennicott drove in.Carol's heart swelled. "How loyal he is! Depend on him! He'd come,if nobody else did. Even though he doesn't care for the game. The olddarling!"Kennicott did not alight. He called out, "Carrie! Harry Haydock 'phonedme that they've decided to hold the tennis matches, or whatever you call'em, down at the cottages at the lake, instead of here. The bunch aredown there now: Haydocks and Dyers and Clarks and everybody. Harrywanted to know if I'd bring you down. I guess I can take the time--comeright back after supper."Before Carol could sum it all up, Erik stammered, "Why, Haydock didn'tsay anything to me about the change. Of course he's the president,but----"Kennicott looked at him heavily, and grunted, "I don't know a thingabout it. . . . Coming, Carrie?""I am not! The match was to be here, and it will be here! You can tellHarry Haydock that he's beastly rude!" She rallied the five who hadbeen left out, who would always be left out. "Come on! We'll toss tosee which four of us play the Only and Original First Annual TennisTournament of Forest Hills, Del Monte, and Gopher Prairie!""Don't know as I blame you," said Kennicott. "Well have supper at homethen?" He drove off.She hated him for his composure. He had ruined her defiance. She feltmuch less like Susan B. Anthony as she turned to her huddled followers.Mrs. Dillon and Willis Woodford lost the toss. The others played outthe game, slowly, painfully, stumbling on the rough earth, muffing theeasiest shots, watched only by the small boy and his sniveling sister.Beyond the court stretched the eternal stubble-fields. The fourmarionettes, awkwardly going through exercises, insignificant in the hotsweep of contemptuous land, were not heroic; their voices did not ringout in the score, but sounded apologetic; and when the game was overthey glanced about as though they were waiting to be laughed at.They walked home. Carol took Erik's arm. Through her thin linen sleeveshe could feel the crumply warmth of his familiar brown jersey coat. Sheobserved that there were purple and red gold threads interwoven with thebrown. She remembered the first time she had seen it.Their talk was nothing but improvisations on the theme: "I never didlike this Haydock. He just considers his own convenience." Aheadof them, the Dillons and Woodfords spoke of the weather and B. J.Gougerling's new bungalow. No one referred to their tennis tournament.At her gate Carol shook hands firmly with Erik and smiled at him.Next morning, Sunday morning, when Carol was on the porch, the Haydocksdrove up."We didn't mean to be rude to you, dearie!" implored Juanita. "Iwouldn't have you think that for anything. We planned that Will and youshould come down and have supper at our cottage.""No. I'm sure you didn't mean to be." Carol was super-neighborly. "ButI do think you ought to apologize to poor Erik Valborg. He was terriblyhurt.""Oh. Valborg. I don't care so much what he thinks," objected Harry."He's nothing but a conceited buttinsky. Juanita and I kind of figuredhe was trying to run this tennis thing too darn much anyway.""But you asked him to make arrangements.""I know, but I don't like him. Good Lord, you couldn't hurt hisfeelings! He dresses up like a chorus man--and, by golly, he looks likeone!--but he's nothing but a Swede farm boy, and these foreigners, theyall got hides like a covey of rhinoceroses .""But he IS hurt!""Well----I don't suppose I ought to have gone off half-cocked, and notjollied him along. I'll give him a cigar. He'll----"Juanita had been licking her lips and staring at Carol. She interruptedher husband, "Yes, I do think Harry ought to fix it up with him. YouLIKE him, DON'T you, Carol??"Over and through Carol ran a frightened cautiousness. "Like him? Ihaven't an -dea. He seems to be a very decent young man. I just feltthat when he'd worked so hard on the plans for the match, it was a shamenot to be nice to him.""Maybe there's something to that," mumbled Harry; then, at sight ofKennicott coming round the corner tugging the red garden hose by itsbrass nozzle, he roared in relief, "What d' you think you're trying todo, doc?"While Kennicott explained in detail all that he thought he was tryingto do, while he rubbed his chin and gravely stated, "Struck me the grasswas looking kind of brown in patches--didn't know but what I'd give ita sprinkling," and while Harry agreed that this was an excellentidea, Juanita made friendly noises and, behind the gilt screen of anaffectionate smile, watched Carol's face.IVShe wanted to see Erik. She wanted some one to play with! There wasn'teven so dignified and sound an excuse as having Kennicott's trouserspressed; when she inspected them, all three pairs looked discouraginglyneat. She probably would not have ventured on it had she not spied NatHicks in the pool-parlor, being witty over bottle-pool. Erik was alone!She fluttered toward the tailor shop, dashed into its slovenly heatwith the comic fastidiousness of a humming bird dipping into a drytiger-lily. It was after she had entered that she found an excuse.Erik was in the back room, cross-legged on a long table, sewing a vest.But he looked as though he were doing this eccentric thing to amusehimself."Hello. I wonder if you couldn't plan a sports-suit for me?" she saidbreathlessly.He stared at her; he protested, "No, I won't! God! I'm not going to be atailor with you!""Why, Erik!" she said, like a mildly shocked mother.It occurred to her that she did not need a suit, and that the ordermight have been hard to explain to Kennicott.He swung down from the table. "I want to show you something." Herummaged in the roll-top desk on which Nat Hicks kept bills, buttons,calendars, buckles, thread-channeled wax, shotgun shells, samples ofbrocade for "fancy vests," fishing-reels, pornographic post-cards,shreds of buckram lining. He pulled out a blurred sheet of Bristol boardand anxiously gave it to her. It was a sketch for a frock. It was notwell drawn; it was too finicking; the pillars in the background weregrotesquely squat. But the frock had an original back, very low, witha central triangular section from the waist to a string of jet beads atthe neck."It's stunning. But how it would shock Mrs. Clark!""Yes, wouldn't it!""You must let yourself go more when you're drawing.""Don't know if I can. I've started kind of late. But listen! What do youthink I've done this two weeks? I've read almost clear through a Latingrammar, and about twenty pages of Caesar.""Splendid! You are lucky. You haven't a teacher to make you artificial.""You're my teacher!"There was a dangerous edge of personality to his voice. She was offendedand agitated. She turned her shoulder on him, stared through the backwindow, studying this typical center of a typical Main Street block,a vista hidden from casual strollers. The backs of the chiefestablishments in town surrounded a quadrangle neglected, dirty, andincomparably dismal. From the front, Howland & Gould's grocery was smugenough, but attached to the rear was a lean-to of storm streaked pinelumber with a sanded tar roof--a staggering doubtful shed behind whichwas a heap of ashes, splintered packing-boxes, shreds of excelsior,crumpled straw-board, broken olive-bottles, rotten fruit, and utterlydisintegrated vegetables: orange carrots turning black, and potatoeswith ulcers. The rear of the Bon Ton Store was grim with blisteredblack-painted iron shutters, under them a pile of once glossy redshirt-boxes, now a pulp from recent rain.As seen from Main Street, Oleson & McGuire's Meat Market had a sanitaryand virtuous expression with its new tile counter, fresh sawdust on thefloor, and a hanging veal cut in rosettes. But she now viewed a backroom with a homemade refrigerator of yellow smeared with black grease.A man in an apron spotted with dry blood was hoisting out a hard slab ofmeat.Behind Billy's Lunch, the cook, in an apron which must long ago havebeen white, smoked a pipe and spat at the pest of sticky flies. In thecenter of the block, by itself, was the stable for the three horses ofthe drayman, and beside it a pile of manure.The rear of Ezra Stowbody's bank was whitewashed, and back of it wasa concrete walk and a three-foot square of grass, but the window wasbarred, and behind the bars she saw Willis Woodford cramped over figuresin pompous books. He raised his head, jerkily rubbed his eyes, and wentback to the eternity of figures.The backs of the other shops were an impressionistic picture of dirtygrays, drained browns, writhing heaps of refuse."Mine is a back-yard romance--with a journeyman tailor!"She was saved from self-pity as she began to think through Erik's mind.She turned to him with an indignant, "It's disgusting that this is allyou have to look at."He considered it. "Outside there? I don't notice much. I'm learning tolook inside. Not awful easy!""Yes. . . . I must be hurrying."As she walked home--without hurrying--she remembered her father sayingto a serious ten-year-old Carol, "Lady, only a fool thinks he's superiorto beautiful bindings, but only a double-distilled fool reads nothingbut bindings."She was startled by the return of her father, startled by a suddenconviction that in this flaxen boy she had found the gray reticent judgewho was divine love, perfect under-standing. She debated it, furiouslydenied it, reaffirmed it, ridiculed it. Of one thing she was unhappilycertain: there was nothing of the beloved father image in WillKennicott.VShe wondered why she sang so often, and why she found so many pleasantthings--lamplight seen though trees on a cool evening, sunshine on brownwood, morning sparrows, black sloping roofs turned to plates of silverby moonlight. Pleasant things, small friendly things, and pleasantplaces--a field of goldenrod, a pasture by the creek--and suddenlya wealth of pleasant people. Vida was lenient to Carol at thesurgical-dressing class; Mrs. Dave Dyer flattered her with questionsabout her health, baby, cook, and opinions on the war.Mrs. Dyer seemed not to share the town's prejudice against Erik. "He'sa nice-looking fellow; we must have him go on one of our picnics sometime." Unexpectedly, Dave Dyer also liked him. The tight-fisted littlefarceur had a confused reverence for anything that seemed to him refinedor clever. He answered Harry Haydock's sneers, "That's all right now!Elizabeth may doll himself up too much, but he's smart, and don't youforget it! I was asking round trying to find out where this Ukraine is,and darn if he didn't tell me. What's the matter with his talking sopolite? Hell's bells, Harry, no harm in being polite. There's someregular he-men that are just as polite as women, prett' near."Carol found herself going about rejoicing, "How neighborly the town is!"She drew up with a dismayed "Am I falling in love with this boy? That'sridiculous! I'm merely interested in him. I like to think of helping himto succeed."But as she dusted the living-room, mended a collar-band, bathed Hugh,she was picturing herself and a young artistan Apollo nameless andevasive--building a house in the Berkshires or in Virginia; exuberantlybuying a chair with his first check; reading poetry together, andfrequently being earnest over valuable statistics about labor; tumblingout of bed early for a Sunday walk, and chattering (where Kennicottwould have yawned) over bread and butter by a lake. Hugh was in herpictures, and he adored the young artist, who made castles of chairs andrugs for him. Beyond these playtimes she saw the "things I could do forErik"--and she admitted that Erik did partly make up the image of heraltogether perfect artist.In panic she insisted on being attentive to Kennicott, when he wanted tobe left alone to read the newspaper.VIShe needed new clothes. Kennicott had promised, "We'll have a good tripdown to the Cities in the fall, and take plenty of time for it, and youcan get your new glad-rags then." But as she examined her wardrobe sheflung her ancient black velvet frock on the floor and raged, "They'redisgraceful. Everything I have is falling to pieces."There was a new dressmaker and milliner, a Mrs. Swiftwaite. It wassaid that she was not altogether an elevating influence in the way sheglanced at men; that she would as soon take away a legally appropriatedhusband as not; that if there WAS any Mr. Swiftwaite, "it certainly wasstrange that nobody seemed to know anything about him!" But she had madefor Rita Gould an organdy frock and hat to match universally admittedto be "too cunning for words," and the matrons went cautiously,with darting eyes and excessive politeness, to the rooms which Mrs.Swiftwaite had taken in the old Luke Dawson house, on Floral Avenue.With none of the spiritual preparation which normally precedes thebuying of new clothes in Gopher Prairie, Carol marched into Mrs.Swiftwaite's, and demanded, "I want to see a hat, and possibly ablouse."In the dingy old front parlor which she had tried to make smart with apier glass, covers from fashion magazines, anemic French prints, Mrs.Swiftwaite moved smoothly among the dress-dummies and hat-rests, spokesmoothly as she took up a small black and red turban. "I am sure thelady will find this extremely attractive.""It's dreadfully tabby and small-towny," thought Carol, while shesoothed, "I don't believe it quite goes with me.""It's the choicest thing I have, and I'm sure you'll find it suits youbeautifully. It has a great deal of chic. Please try it on," said Mrs.Swiftwaite, more smoothly than ever.Carol studied the woman. She was as imitative as a glass diamond. Shewas the more rustic in her effort to appear urban. She wore a severehigh-collared blouse with a row of small black buttons, whichwas becoming to her low-breasted slim neatness, but her skirt washysterically checkered, her cheeks were too highly rouged, her lips toosharply penciled. She was magnificently a specimen of the illiteratedivorcee of forty made up to look thirty, clever, and alluring.While she was trying on the hat Carol felt very condescending. She tookit off, shook her head, explained with the kind smile for inferiors,"I'm afraid it won't do, though it's unusually nice for so small a townas this.""But it's really absolutely New-Yorkish.""Well, it----""You see, I know my New York styles. I lived in New York for years,besides almost a year in Akron!""You did?" Carol was polite, and edged away, and went home unhappily.She was wondering whether her own airs were as laughable as Mrs.Swiftwaite's. She put on the eye-glasses which Kennicott had recentlygiven to her for reading, and looked over a grocery bill. Shewent hastily up to her room, to her mirror. She was in a mood ofself-depreciation. Accurately or not, this was the picture she saw inthe mirror:Neat rimless eye-glasses. Black hair clumsily tucked under a mauve strawhat which would have suited a spinster. Cheeks clear, bloodless. Thinnose. Gentle mouth and chin. A modest voile blouse with an edging oflace at the neck. A virginal sweetness and timorousness--no flare ofgaiety, no suggestion of cities, music, quick laughter."I have become a small-town woman. Absolute. Typical. Modest and moraland safe. Protected from life. GENTEEL! The Village Virus--the villagevirtuousness. My hair--just scrambled together. What can Erik see inthat wedded spinster there? He does like me! Because I'm the only womanwho's decent to him! How long before he'll wake up to me? . . . I'vewaked up to myself. . . . Am I as old as--as old as I am?"Not really old. Become careless. Let myself look tabby."I want to chuck every stitch I own. Black hair and pale cheeks--they'dgo with a Spanish dancer's costume--rose behind my ear, scarlet mantillaover one shoulder, the other bare."She seized the rouge sponge, daubed her cheeks, scratched at her lipswith the vermilion pencil until they stung, tore open her collar. Sheposed with her thin arms in the attitude of the fandango. She droppedthem sharply. She shook her head. "My heart doesn't dance," she said.She flushed as she fastened her blouse."At least I'm much more graceful than Fern Mullins. Heavens! When I camehere from the Cities, girls imitated me. Now I'm trying to imitate acity girl."