out of
his chair. "Look out of that window." He followed the pointing of her
finger to a high bluff covered with oaks, to which the withered brown
foliage still clung, though other trees were bare. "That's Duck Rock.
Well, there's a spot there where the water's thirty foot deep. What do
you think of that?"

He moved back from the window, but remained standing. "I think that it
doesn't matter to you and me whether it's thirty foot deep or sixty or a
hundred."

"It matters to me. In thirty foot of water I'd go down like a stone; and
then it'd be all over. After that nothing but--sleep." Her eyes held him
again. "_You_ don't believe there'll be anything after it but sleep, do
you?"

He dodged that question, too. "But you do."

"I was brought up an orthodox Congregational--but what's the good? All
I've ever got out of it was rainbows; and what I've wanted is solid.
I've wanted to do something, and be something, and have something--and
not be pushed back and trampled out of sight by people who used to hire
out to my folks and can treat me like dirt to-day, just because they've
got the money. Why haven't I got it, too? I'm fit for it. I had good
schooling. Louisa Thorley--your own mother, that is--and me went to
school together. Your father ran away with her and she died when you
were born. We went to school to old Miss Brand--aunt to Bessie Brand
that's now Bessie Willoughby and holds her head so high. Poor as church
mice they was in those days. But then every one was poor. We was all
poor together--and happy. And now some are poor and some are rich--and
there's upper classes and lower classes--and everything's got
uneven--and I'm sick of it."

To calm her excitement he talked to her with the inspiration of young
earnestness, getting his reward in an attention accorded perhaps for the
very reason that the earnestness was young. "I think I must run off
now," he finished, when he thought her slightly comforted, "but I'll
send you something I want you to take at once. You'll take a
tablespoonful in half a glass of water--"

The rebellious spirit revived, though less bitterly. "And it'll do me as
much good as a dose of your uncle's rainbows. What I want is what I
shall never get--or sleep."

"Well, you'll get sleep," he said, smiling and holding out his hand.
"You'll sleep to-night--and I'll come again to-morrow."

He was at the door when she called out: "Do you know what our Matt got
his three years for? It was for s