new from the utter frankness of it that
he was not making love, not even being impertinent. She had no fear of
him, only of her inexperience in handling so strange a situation.

"You make a man feel there is everything in tossing aside all I've
attained, merely to settle down as a respectable citizen." He was
staring through the tree-tops again, hands clasped over one knee. "I
could make a way for myself, a good way, without all this fever, with a
woman like you to hold me straight. I know what I can do." A forlorn
smile wrinkled his face not unpleasantly. "But there are two
insuperable obstacles. The Workers wouldn't let me--and the woman
wouldn't have me. . . . That's why I grow desperate sometimes, why I--"

She questioned with her eyes his continued silence. "I won't tell,"
she promised gently, "but perhaps you'd better say no more."

He did not seem to hear her, and she was cudgelling her inexperience
for some smooth retreat, when he broke out explosively:

"I'm the product of over-sudden civilisation, like a thin-blooded man
plunging into cold water. From the crude half-lights of my own country
I leaped at one bound into the brilliance of civilisation's beam, as it
is found in America. And I couldn't stand it--few of us can. We get
numb to everything but our own discomfort. And knowing we're bound for
life, we struggle and beat our wings against things as we find them, in
a panic because they differ so from things we were born to. We're like
a bird in a room. It may be a cosy, warm and friendly room, but the
bird wants only to get out in the cold. . . . The human tide we're
plunged in from the very first day ignores us, or tramples us, or
drives us like cattle, forgetting that we are numb and bewildered,
panic stricken, unable to think beyond primal emotions. . . .

"If we could only have a year's apprenticeship where sympathy holds our
hands! If only we could enter the new state by a gradient instead of a
plunge! But there is no isle between, no one to lead us gently to the
light. . . . And few of us would pause to be led. And so we struggle,
and in the struggling hurt ourselves or are hurt. We strike out--and
are struck back by stronger force than ourselves. And so we tumble
back to sullen silence, watching and planning to beat that force as we
may. . . . And there I am."

The hopelessness of his tone held appealing hands to her. She longed
to help him, yet knew not how. And suddenl