* * *

The room occupied by Louise was on the second floor of
the Hardy house, and her window looked out upon an
orchard. There was a stove in the room and every
evening young John Hardy carried up an armful of wood
and put it in a box that stood by the wall. During the
second month after she came to the house, Louise gave
up all hope of getting on a friendly footing with the
Hardy girls and went to her own room as soon as the
evening meal was at an end.

Her mind began to play with thoughts of making friends
with John Hardy. When he came into the room with the
wood in his arms, she pretended to be busy with her
studies but watched him eagerly. When he had put the
wood in the box and turned to go out, she put down her
head and blushed. She tried to make talk but could say
nothing, and after he had gone she was angry at herself
for her stupidity.

The mind of the country girl became filled with the
idea of drawing close to the young man. She thought
that in him might be found the quality she had all her
life been seeking in people. It seemed to her that
between herself and all the other people in the world,
a wall had been built up and that she was living just
on the edge of some warm inner circle of life that must
be quite open and understandable to others. She became
obsessed with the thought that it wanted but a
courageous act on her part to make all of her
association with people something quite different, and
that it was possible by such an act to pass into a new
life as one opens a door and goes into a room. Day and
night she thought of the matter, but although the thing
she wanted so earnestly was something very warm and
close it had as yet no conscious connection with sex.
It had not become that definite, and her mind had only
alighted upon the person of John Hardy because he was
at hand and unlike his sisters had not been unfriendly
to her.

The Hardy sisters, Mary and Harriet, were both older
than Louise. In a certain kind of knowledge of the
world they were years older. They lived as all of the
young women of Middle Western towns lived. In those
days young women did not go out of our towns to Eastern
colleges and ideas in regard to social classes had
hardly begun to exist. A daughter of a laborer was in
much the same social position as a daughter of a farmer
or a merchant, and there were no leisure classes. A
girl was "nice" or she was "not nice." If a nice girl,
she had a young man who