had left that district twenty-eight years
ago, and had married, and lived in Chicago somewhere, he had heard, and
was prosperous. He wasted no time in idle regrets. He had been a fool,
and he paid the price of fools. Bella, slamming noisily about the room,
never suspected the presence in the untidy place of a third person--a
sturdy girl of twenty-two or three, very wholesome to look at, and with
honest, intelligent eyes and a serene brow.

"It'll get worse an' worse all the time," Bella's whine went on.
"Everybody says the war'll last prob'ly for years an' years. You can't
make out alone. Everything's goin' to rack and ruin. You could rent out
the farm for a year, on trial. The Burdickers'd take it and glad. They
got those three strappin' louts that's all flat-footed or slab-sided or
cross-eyed or somethin', and no good for the army. Let them run it on
shares. Maybe they'll even buy, if things turn out. Maybe Dike'll never
come b--"

But at the look on his face then, and at the low growl of unaccustomed
rage that broke from him, even she ceased her clatter.

* * * * *

They moved to Chicago in the early spring. The look that had been on Ben
Westerveld's face when he drove Dike to the train that carried him to
camp was stamped there again--indelibly this time, it seemed. Calhoun
County, in the spring, has much the beauty of California. There is a
peculiar golden light about it, and the hills are a purplish haze. Ben
Westerveld, walking down his path to the gate, was more poignantly
dramatic than any figure in a rural play. He did not turn to look back,
though, as they do in a play. He dared not.

They rented a flat in Englewood, Chicago, a block from Minnie's. Bella
was almost amiable these days. She took to city life as though the past
thirty years had never been. White kid shoes, delicatessen stores, the
movies, the haggling with peddlers, the crowds, the crashing noise, the
cramped, unnatural mode of living necessitated by a four-room flat--all
these urban adjuncts seemed as natural to her as though she had been
bred in the midst of them.

She and Minnie used to spend whole days in useless shopping. Theirs was
a respectable neighbourhood of well-paid artisans, bookkeepers, and
small shopkeepers. The women did their own housework in drab garments
and soiled boudoir caps that hid a multitude of unkempt heads. They
seemed to find a deal of time for amiable, empty gabbling. Any time fr