t anger and cold fear in her heart.

Nothing, perhaps, in all this mysterious world is so inscrutable a
mystery as the mind of early youth. It crawls, the beetle creature, in a
hard shell, hiding the dim, inner struggle of its growing wings, moving
numbly as if in a torpid dream. It has forgotten the lively grub stage of
childhood, and it cannot foresee the dragon-fly adventure just ahead.
This blind, dumb, numb, imprisoned thing, an irritation to the nerves of
every one who has to deal with it, suffers. First it suffers darkly and
dimly the pain growth, and then it suffers the sharp agony of a splitting
shell, the dazzling wounds of light, the torture of first moving its
feeble wings. It drags itself from its shell, it clings to its perch, it
finds itself born anew into the world.

When Sheila had left the studio with Sylvester, she was not yet possessed
of wings. Now, the shell was cracking, the dragon-fly adventure about to
begin. To a changed world, changed stars--the heavens above and the earth
beneath were strange to her that night.

It had begun, this first piercing contact of reality, rudely enough. Mrs.
Hudson had helped to split the protecting shell which had saved Sheila's
growing dreams. Perhaps "Momma" had her instructions, perhaps it was only
her own disposition left by her knowing husband to do his trick for him.
Sheila had not overstated the unhappiness that Mrs. Hudson's evident
dislike had caused her. In fact, she had greatly understated it. From the
first moment at the station, when the hard eyes had looked her over and
the harsh voice had asked about "the girl's trunk," Sheila's
sensitiveness had begun to suffer. It was not easy, even with Babe's
good-humored help, to go down into the kitchen and submit to Mrs.
Hudson's hectoring. "Momma" had all the insolence of the underdog. Of her
daughters, as of her husband, she was very much afraid. They all bullied
her, Babe with noisy, cheerful effrontery--"sass" Sylvester called
it--and Girlie with a soft, unyielding tyranny that had the smothering
pressure of a large silk pillow. Girlie was tall and serious and
beautiful, the proud possessor of what Millings called "a perfect form."
She was inexpressibly slow and untidy, vain and ignorant and
self-absorbed. At this time her whole being was centered upon the
attentions of Jim Greely, with whom she was "keeping company." With Jim
Greely in her mind, she had looked Sheila over, thin and weary Sheila in
her s