t's an awesome thing, isn't it, to be living in a world darkened on
one side by the servant question and on the other by the appendix, like
Scylla and Charybdis?"

She found herself sitting down to face the mysteries of a meal whose
type was different from any hitherto met in her brief experience of
life. Her internal summing up was, "Of course I can't make any
impression on Mr. Lenox. He likes the other kind of woman."

She looked at Mrs. Lenox, a woman of restraint and dark hair and
straight lines, and contrasted her with herself, a thing of curves and
sunshine colors. She did not know that a man never cares for a type of
woman, but only for woman in the concrete. Poor little Lena! When the
evening was over and she found herself at last in her too-splendid
bedroom, she put arms and head down on the dressing-table and sobbed.
These people were simple where she was complicated and complicated where
she was simple. It was all uncomfortable and different. She thought of
Jim Nolan's unfrilled conversation, of his clumsy, rather inane
compliments, of his primitive amoeba-like type of humor. She saw the
whole course of her life of mean shifts and wranglings with her mother;
and though its moral niggardliness was unappreciated, its physical
meagerness sickened her in contrast to the ease and beauty of these
newer scenes. She must climb out of that life, somehow, by hook or
crook; if this were the alternative, she must grow to its likeness, no
matter how the birth-pangs hurt. She would face it. She would even
rejoice in the opportunity to study these women and mold herself to
their outward form of _bien aise_. She would--she would. Faint and
far-away voices came to her, and she wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Lenox were
discussing her and laughing, as she would do in their place, at her
gaucheries. The meaner you are yourself, the easier it is to believe in
the meanness of others. It was the most godlike of men who taught the
godliness of all men. Lena could not imagine that these people could
either like or respect her unless she were molded after their pattern
and had as much as they had.

And Miss Elton! She hated Miss Elton for that irritating calmness, for
that easy appropriation of the good things of life. She hated with a
hate that tingled her spine and shook her small body. The tragedy of
littleness made her grit her teeth as she thought of the unconscious
girl now going to bed in the next room.

"I'll get even with her s