which had driven Aunt Constance to conceal
the paper after the second week. I guessed that they might smile at the
simplicity of my heart could they see it. Meaning of existence! Why, they
were reared in it! The naturalness of natural people and of natural acts
struck me like a blow, and I withdrew, whipped, into myself. My adventure
grew smaller. But I recalled its ecstasies. I dwelt on the romantic
perfection of Diaz. It seemed to me amazing, incredible, that Diaz, the
glorious and incomparable Diaz, had loved me--_me_! out of all the
ardent, worshipping women that the world contained. I wondered if he had
wakened up, and I felt sorry for him. So far, I had not decided how soon,
if at all, I should communicate with him. My mind was incapable of
reaching past the next few hours--the next hour.

We stopped at a station surrounded by the evidences of that tireless,
unceasing, and tremendous manufacturing industry which distinguishes the
Five Towns, and I was left alone in the compartment. The train rumbled on
through a landscape of fiery furnaces, and burning slag-heaps, and foul
canals reflecting great smoking chimneys, all steeped in the mild
sunshine. Could the toil-worn agents of this never-ending and gigantic
productiveness find time for love? Perhaps they loved quickly and forgot,
like animals. Thoughts such as these lurked sinister and carnal, strange
beasts in the jungle of my poor brain. Then the train arrived at
Shawport, and I was obliged to get out. I say 'obliged,' because I
violently wished not to get out. I wished to travel on in that train to
some impossible place, where things were arranged differently.

The station clock showed only five minutes to seven. I was astounded. It
seemed to me that all the real world had been astir and busy for hours.
And this extraordinary activity went on every morning while Aunt
Constance and I lay in our beds and thought well of ourselves.

I shivered, and walked quickly up the street. I had positively not
noticed that I was cold. I had scarcely left the station before Fred
Ryley appeared in front of me. I saw that his face was swollen. My
heart stopped. Of course, he would tell Ethel.... He passed me
sheepishly without stopping, merely raising his hat, and murmuring the
singular words:

'We're both very, very sorry.'

What in the name of Heaven could they possibly know, he and Ethel? And
what right had he to ...? Did he smile furtively? Fred Ryley had
sometimes a st