thinks a woman
has no business in by-paths. Our opposing beliefs do not make for
placid friendship.

It is Selwyn's indifference to life, to its problems and struggles
and many-sidedness, that makes me at times impatient with him beyond
restraint. In his profession he is successful. His ambition makes
him work, but a weariness of things, of the unworthwhileness of human
effort, the futility of striving, the emptiness of achievement,
possesses him frequently, and in his dark days he pays the penalty of
his points of view. If only he could see, could understand--.

I turned from the window and again sat down in my corner of the sofa
and motioned him to take his seat.

"Don't let's argue to-night. I'm pretty tired and argument would do
no good. We'd just say things we shouldn't. You said just now you
doubted if you knew why I was here. I may not be sure of all my
reasons, but one of them is, I wanted to get away from--there." My
hand made motion in a vague direction intended for my former
neighborhood.

"Do you find this section of the city a satisfactory change?"
Selwyn's tone was ironic. He looked for a moment into the eyes I
raised to his, then turned away and, hands in his pockets, began to
walk up and down the room. When he spoke again his voice had changed.

"Don't mind anything I say to-night. I shouldn't have come. I'm a
bit raw yet that you should have done this without telling me. You
have a right to do as you choose, of course, only--. Besides getting
away from your old life--were there other reasons?"

"Not very definite ones." Into my face came surge of color, and,
turning, I cut off the light in the lamp behind me. "When one is in
a parade one can't see what it looks like, very often doesn't
understand where it is going. I want to see the one I was in, see
from the sidewalk the kind of human beings who are in it, and what
they are doing with their time and energies and opportunities and
knowledge and preparedness and--oh, with all the things that make
their position in life a more responsible one than--than the people's
down here."

"Was it necessary to come to Scarborough Square to watch--your
parade? One can stand off anywhere."

"But I don't want just to stand off. I want to see with the eyes of
the people who look at us, the people who don't approve of us, though
they envy us. We're so certain they're a hard lot to deal with, to
do for, to make anything of--these people we