he sound of his voice, if he called her "little Flower of the
House," she would never have the strength to go. So she stood in the
doorway and looked at him much as one looks at a sun, till wherever else
one looks, one sees the same sun against the sky.

In the formless shadow she made a great obeisance, spreading out her
arms and pressing the palms of her hands against the floor.

"O my Lord and Master," she said, with her lips against the boards of
the floor, softly, so that none might hear her--"O my Lord and Master, I
go. Even a small wife may unbar the gates of heaven."

First, before she went, she cast the two kitchen gods, green and gold,
of ancient plaster, into the embers of the fire. There in the morning
the cook-rice amahs found the onyx stones that had been their eyes. The
house was still unlocked, the gate-keeper at the feast. Like a shadow
she moved along the wall and through the gate. The smell of the lilies
blew past her. Drums and chants echoed up the road, and the sounds of
manifold feastings. She crept away down by the wall, where the moon laid
a strip of blackness, crept away to unbar the gates of heaven for her
lord and master.

AN AWAKENING[3]

[Note 3: Copyright, 1918, by Margaret C. Anderson. Copyright, 1919,
by The John Lane Company.]

BY SHERWOOD ANDERSON

From _The Little Review_

Belle Carpenter had a dark skin, grey eyes and thick lips. She was tall
and strong. When black thoughts visited her she grew angry and wished
she were a man and could fight someone with her fists. She worked in the
millinery shop kept by Mrs. Nate McHugh and during the day sat trimming
hats by a window at the rear of the store. She was the daughter of Henry
Carpenter, bookkeeper in the First National Bank of Winesburg, Ohio, and
lived with him in a gloomy old house far out at the end of Buckeye
Street. The house was surrounded by pine trees and there was no grass
beneath the trees. A rusty tin eaves-trough had slipped from its
fastenings at the back of the house and when the wind blew it beat
against the roof of a small shed, making a dismal drumming noise that
sometimes persisted all through the night.

When she was a young girl Henry Carpenter made life almost unbearable
for his daughter, but as she emerged from girlhood into womanhood he
lost his power over her. The bookkeeper's life was made up of
innumerable little pettinesses. When he went to the bank in the morning
he stepped into a closet a