re shaking a dream out of her
eyes.

"I wasn't asleep," she denied. They moved on in the increasing crowd.

"Men and women," Dorn muttered. "The street's full of men and women
going somewhere."

"Except us," the girl cried. Her eyes, alight, were thrusting against
the cold, amused smile of his face. He would be late. Anna would be
waiting. An anniversary. Anniversaries were somehow important. They
revived interest in events which had died. But it was nice to drift in a
crowd beside a girl who admired him. What did he think of her? Nothing
... nothing. She seemed to warm him into a deeper sleep. It was a relief
to be admired for one's silence. Admired, not loved. Love was a bore.
Anna loved him, bored him. Her love was an applause that did not wait
for him to perform--an unreasonable ovation.

He looked at the girl again. She was walking beside him, vivid eyes,
dark lips--almost unaware of him, as if he had become a part of the
dream that lived within her.

CHAPTER V

When she was a child she used to see a face in the dark as she was
falling asleep. It was crude and misshapen, and leered at her, filling
her heart with fear. Later, people had become like that to her.

When she was eighteen Rachel came to Chicago and studied art at an art
school. She learned nothing and forgot nothing. She read books in
English and in Russian--James, Conrad, Brusov, Tolstoi. Her reading
failed to remove her repugnance to the touch of life. Instead, it lured
her further from realities. She did not like to meet people or to hear
them talk. At twenty she was able to earn her living by drawing posters
for a commercial art firm and making occasional illustrations for
magazines designed for female consumption.

As she matured, the repugnance to life that lay like a disease in her
nerves, developed dangerously. She would sit in her room in the evening
staring out of the window at the darkened city and thinking of people.
There was an endless swathing of people, buildings, faces, words, that
wound itself tightly about her. She would cover her face suddenly and
whisper, "Oh, I must go away. I must."

She hurried through dragging days as if she were running away. But there
were things she could not escape. Men smiled at her and established
themselves as friends. Women were easy to get rid of. One had only to be
frank and women vanished. But this same frankness, she found, had an
opposite effect upon men. Insults likewise served on