ome
day but----Please, dear nebulous Lord, not now! Bearded sniffy old
men sitting and demanding that we bear children. If THEY had to bear
them----! I wish they did have to! Not now! Not till I've got hold of
this job of liking the ash-pile out there! . . . I must shut up. I'm
mildly insane. I'm going out for a walk. I'll see the town by myself. My
first view of the empire I'm going to conquer!"

She fled from the house.

She stared with seriousness at every concrete crossing, every
hitching-post, every rake for leaves; and to each house she devoted all
her speculation. What would they come to mean? How would they look six
months from now? In which of them would she be dining? Which of these
people whom she passed, now mere arrangements of hair and clothes, would
turn into intimates, loved or dreaded, different from all the other
people in the world?

As she came into the small business-section she inspected a broad-beamed
grocer in an alpaca coat who was bending over the apples and celery on a
slanted platform in front of his store. Would she ever talk to him? What
would he say if she stopped and stated, "I am Mrs. Dr. Kennicott. Some
day I hope to confide that a heap of extremely dubious pumpkins as a
window-display doesn't exhilarate me much."

(The grocer was Mr. Frederick F. Ludelmeyer, whose market is at the
corner of Main Street and Lincoln Avenue. In supposing that only she was
observant Carol was ignorant, misled by the indifference of cities. She
fancied that she was slipping through the streets invisible; but when
she had passed, Mr. Ludelmeyer puffed into the store and coughed at his
clerk, "I seen a young woman, she come along the side street. I bet she
iss Doc Kennicott's new bride, good-looker, nice legs, but she wore a
hell of a plain suit, no style, I wonder will she pay cash, I bet she
goes to Howland & Gould's more as she does here, what you done with the
poster for Fluffed Oats?")

II

When Carol had walked for thirty-two minutes she had completely covered
the town, east and west, north and south; and she stood at the corner of
Main Street and Washington Avenue and despaired.

Main Street with its two-story brick shops, its story-and-a-half wooden
residences, its muddy expanse from concrete walk to walk, its huddle
of Fords and lumber-wagons, was too small to absorb her. The broad,
straight, unenticing gashes of the streets let in the grasping prairie
on every side. She realized the v