a
prison-cell, for the sake of a new sensation.

"You can't understand, I say. You are this, and I--I am the
life-prisoner in the cell beyond, peering at you through the bars,
viewing you and your mock imprisonment."

Once more the speaker was in motion, to and fro, to and fro, in the
shuttle-trail. "The chief difference is, that the life-prisoner has a
hope of pardon; I have none--absolutely none."

"Mollie"--pleadingly, "you mustn't. I'll ask Jack to give Steve a
place at home, and you can go--"

"Go!" The bitterness of her heart welled up and vibrated in the word.
"Go! We can't go, now or ever. It's death to Steve if we leave. I've
got to stay here, month after month, year after year, dragging my life
out until I grow gray-haired--until I die!" She halted, her arms
tensely folded, her breath coming quick. Only the intensity of her
emotion saved the attitude from being histrionic. In a sudden
outburst, she fiercely apostrophized:

"Oh, Dakota! I hate you, I hate you! Because I am a woman, I hate you!
Because I would live in a house, and not in this endless dreary waste
of a dead world, I hate you! Because your very emptiness and solitude
are worse than a prison, because the calls of the living things that
creep and fly over your endless bosom are more mournful than death
itself, I hate you! Because I would be free, because I respect sex,
because of the disdain for womanhood that dwells in your crushing
silence, I hate--oh, my God, how I hate you!" She threw her arms wide,
in a frantic gesture of rebellion.

"I want but this," she cried passionately: "to be free; free, as I was
at home, in God's country. And I can never be so here--never, never,
never! Oh, Annie, I'm homesick--desperately, miserably homesick! I
wish to Heaven I were dead!"

Annie Warren, child-woman that she was, was helpless, when face to
face with the unusual. Her senses were numbed, paralyzed. One thought
alone suggested itself.

"But"--haltingly--"for Steve's sake--certainly, for him--"

"Stop! As you love me, stop!" Again no suggestion of the histrionic in
the passionate voice. "Don't say that now. I can't stand it. I--oh, I
don't mean that! Forget that I said it. I'm not responsible this
morning. Please leave me."

She was prostrate on the bed at last, her whole body a-tremble.

"But--Mollie--"

"Go--go!" cried Mollie, wildly. "Please go!"

Awed to silence, Annie Warren stared helplessly a moment, then
gathered her shawl about h