al sources."

This was not illuminative. She had only added to his befuddlement and he
bent forward, soliciting some more lucid statement of her position.

"I had hoped to go ahead and never have to explain, for I fear that in
explaining I seem to be appraising myself too high; but you won't
believe that of me, will you? If I took one of these college positions
and proved efficient, and had good luck, I should keep on knowing all
the rest of my life about the same sort of people, for the girls who go
to college are from the more fortunate classes. There are exceptions,
but they are drawn largely from homes that have some cultivation, some
sort of background. The experiences of teachers in such institutions are
likely to cramp. It's all right later on, but at first, it seems to me
better to experiment in the wider circle. Now--" and she broke off with
a light laugh, eager that he should understand.

"It's not, then, your own advantage you consult; the self-denial appeals
to you; it's rather like--like a nun's vocation. You think the service
is higher!"

"Oh, it would be if I could render service! Please don't think I feel
that the world is waiting for me to set it right; I don't believe it's
so wrong! All I mean to say is that I don't understand a lot of things,
and that the knowledge I lack isn't something we can dig out of a
library, but that we must go to life for it. There's a good deal to
learn in a city like this that's still in the making. I might have gone
to New York, but there are too many elements there; it's all too big for
me. Here you can see nearly as many kinds of people, and you can get
closer to them. You can see how they earn their living, and you can even
follow them to church on Sunday and see what they get out of that!"

"I'm afraid," he replied, after deliberating a moment, "that you are
going to make yourself uncomfortable; you are cutting out a programme of
unhappiness."

"Why shouldn't I make myself uncomfortable for a little while? I have
never known anything but comfort."

"But that's your blessing; no matter how much you want to do it you
can't remove all the unhappiness in the world--not even by dividing with
the less fortunate. I've never been able to follow that philosophy."

"Maybe," she said, "you have never tried it!" She was seeking neither to
convince him nor to accomplish his discomfiture and to this end was
maintaining her share of the dialogue to the accompaniment of a smil