usekeeper and
prided herself on cleanliness, the tiny flat reeked with the smell of
cooking, and Janet, from the upper hall, had a glimpse of a thin, angular
woman with a scrawny neck, with scant grey hair tightly drawn into a
knot, in a gingham apron covering an old dress bending over the kitchen
stove. And occasionally, despite a resentment that fate should have dealt
thus inconsiderately with the family, Janet felt pity welling within her.
After supper, when Lise had departed with her best young man, Hannah
would occasionally, though grudgingly, permit Janet to help her with the
dishes.

"You work all day, you have a right to rest."

"But I don't want to rest," Janet would declare, and rub the dishes the
harder. With the spirit underlying this protest, Hannah sympathized.
Mother and daughter were alike in that both were inarticulate, but Janet
had a secret contempt for Hannah's uncomplaining stoicism. She loved her
mother, in a way, especially at certain times,--though she often wondered
why she was unable to realize more fully the filial affection of
tradition; but in moments of softening, such as these, she was filled
with rage at the thought of any woman endowed with energy permitting
herself to be overtaken and overwhelmed by such a fate as Hannah's:
divorce, desertion, anything, she thought, would have been
better--anything but to be cheated out of life. Feeling the fires of
rebellion burning hotly within her,--rebellion against environment and
driving necessity she would glance at her mother and ask herself whether
it were possible that Hannah had ever known longings, had ever been wrung
by inexpressible desires,--desires in which the undiscovered spiritual
was so alarmingly compounded with the undiscovered physical. She would
have died rather than speak to Hannah of these unfulfilled experiences,
and the mere thought of confiding them to any person appalled her. Even
if there existed some wonderful, understanding being to whom she might be
able thus to empty her soul, the thought of the ecstasy of that kenosis
was too troubling to be dwelt upon.

She had tried reading, with unfortunate results,--perhaps because no
Virgil had as yet appeared to guide her through the mysteries of that
realm. Her schooling had failed to instil into her a discriminating taste
for literature; and when, on occasions, she had entered the Public
Library opposite the Common it had been to stare hopelessly at rows of
books whose auth