even tender, in
her, it could never come up in her eyes or play upon her lips like
that she could never say it out sweetly and in due place everything
was a spasm with her; and nobody would ever look at her just as
Kenneth Kincaid looked at Rosamond then.

She said to herself, with her harsh, unsparing honesty, that it must
be a "hitch inside;" a cramp or an awkwardness born in her, that set
her eyes, peering and sharp, so near together, and put that knot
into her brows instead of their widening placidly, like Rosamond's,
and made her jerky in her speech. It was no use; she couldn't look
and behave, because she couldn't _be_; she must just go boggling and
kinking on, and--losing everything, she supposed.

The smiles went down, under a swift, bitter little cloud, and the
hard twist came into her face with the inward pinching she was
giving herself; and all at once there crackled out one of her sharp,
strange questions; for it was true that she could not do otherwise;
everything was sudden and crepitant with her.

"Why need all the good be done up in batches, I wonder? Why can't it
be spread round, a little more even? There must have been a good
deal left out somewhere, to make it come in a heap, so, upon you,
Miss Craydocke!"

Hazel looked up.

"I know what Desire means," she said. "It seemed just so to me,
_one_ way. Why oughtn't there to be _little_ homes, done-by-hand
homes, for all these little children, instead of--well--machining
them all up together?"

And Hazel laughed at her own conceit.

"It's nice; but then--it isn't just the way. If we were all brought
up like that we shouldn't know, you see!"

"You wouldn't want to be brought up in a platoon, Hazel?" said
Kenneth Kincaid. "No; neither should I."

"I think it was better," said Hazel, "to have my turn of being a
little child, all to myself; _the_ little child, I mean, with the
rest of the folks bigger. To make much of me, you know. I shouldn't
want to have missed that. I shouldn't like to be _loved_ in a
platoon."

"Nobody is meant to be," said Miss Craydocke.

"Then why--" began Asenath Scherman, and stopped.

"Why what, dear?"

"Revelations," replied Sin, laconically. "There are loads of people
there, all dressed alike, you know; and--well--it's platoony, I
think, rather! And down here, such a world-full; and the sky--full
of worlds. There doesn't seem to be much notion of one at a time, in
the general plan of things."

"Ah, but we've go