you're a man, and no man really does understand; but to a woman
it's the one thing supreme. You think I've got one now, have had all my
life; but you don't know. Father and I live here. We keep up appearances
the best we can; we both have pride. He holds his position in the
University; out of charity every one knows, although no one is cruel
enough to tell him so. We manage to get along somehow and keep the roof
tight; but it isn't living, it isn't home. It's a perpetual struggle to
make ends meet. His time of usefulness is past, as yours will be past
when you're his age; and it's been past for years. I never admitted this
to a human being before, but I'm telling it to you because it's true.
We've kept up this--fight for years, ever since I can remember, it seems
to me. We've never had income enough to go around. I haven't had a new
dress in a year. I haven't the heart to ask for it. Everything I have has
been darned and patched and turned until it won't turn again. It isn't
poverty such as they have on the East Side, because it isn't frank and
open and aboveboard; but it's genteel poverty in the best street of the
town: University Row. It's worse, Steve, because it's unadmitted,
eternally concealed, hopeless. It isn't a physical hunger, but again a
worse one: an artistic hunger. I'm a college graduate with letters on the
end of my name when I choose to use them. I've mixed with people, seen
the niceties of life that only means can give, couldn't help seeing them;
and they're all beyond my reach, even the common ones. If I didn't know
anything different I shouldn't feel the lack; but I do know. I'm not even
to blame for knowing. It was inevitable, thrust upon me. I'm the hungry
child outside the baker's window. I can look and look--and that is all."

The voice ceased. Frankly, unhesitatingly, the face came out of the
shadow and remained there.

"I think you understand now what I mean, Steve, unmistakably. I suppose,
too, you think me selfish and artificial and horrid, and I shan't deny
it. I am as I am and I want things. To pretend that I don't would be to
lie--and I won't lie to you whatever happens. I simply won't. We both
know what your place in the University means; I perhaps better than you,
because I've seen my father's experience. I don't often get bitter, but I
come very near it when I look back and think how my mother had to plan
and scrimp. I feel like condemning the whole University to the bottomless
pit. I