licking it. The Corot which hung next to this painting she did not like
or dislike; she never saw it.

But in that same room there was a picture--oh, that was the thing she
ran upstairs so fast to see! That was her picture. She imagined that
nobody cared for it but herself, and that it waited for her. That was a
picture indeed. She liked even the name of it, "The Song of the Lark."
The flat country, the early morning light, the wet fields, the look in
the girl's heavy face--well, they were all hers, anyhow, whatever was
there. She told herself that that picture was "right." Just what she
meant by this, it would take a clever person to explain. But to her the
word covered the almost boundless satisfaction she felt when she looked
at the picture.

Before Thea had any idea how fast the weeks were flying, before Mr.
Larsen's "permanent" soprano had returned to her duties, spring came;
windy, dusty, strident, shrill; a season almost more violent in Chicago
than the winter from which it releases one, or the heat to which it
eventually delivers one. One sunny morning the apple trees in Mrs.
Lorch's back yard burst into bloom, and for the first time in months
Thea dressed without building a fire. The morning shone like a holiday,
and for her it was to be a holiday. There was in the air that sudden,
treacherous softness which makes the Poles who work in the
packing-houses get drunk. At such times beauty is necessary, and in
Packingtown there is no place to get it except at the saloons, where one
can buy for a few hours the illusion of comfort, hope, love,--whatever
one most longs for.

Harsanyi had given Thea a ticket for the symphony concert that
afternoon, and when she looked out at the white apple trees her doubts
as to whether she ought to go vanished at once. She would make her work
light that morning, she told herself. She would go to the concert full
of energy. When she set off, after dinner, Mrs. Lorch, who knew Chicago
weather, prevailed upon her to take her cape. The old lady said that
such sudden mildness, so early in April, presaged a sharp return of
winter, and she was anxious about her apple trees.

The concert began at two-thirty, and Thea was in her seat in the
Auditorium at ten minutes after two--a fine seat in the first row of the
balcony, on the side, where she could see the house as well as the
orchestra. She had been to so few concerts that the great house, the
crowd of people, and the lights, all ha