ledge among people
who were not destitute of the instinct.

He exaggerated the importance of the fact with the sensitiveness of a
man to whom aesthetic cultivation was all-important. It appeared to him
a far greater evil than it was; it was odious to him, like a vice; it
was almost a crime. He spent a very miserable time in the Fine Arts
Department of the Pymantoning County Agricultural Fair; and in a kind
of horrible fascination he began to review the collection in detail, to
guess its causes in severalty and to philosophize its lamentable
consequences.

III.

In this process Ludlow discovered that there was more of the Fine Arts
Department than he had supposed at first. He was aware of some women
who had come into the next aisle or section, and presently he overheard
fragments of their talk.

A girl's voice said passionately: "I don't care! I shan't leave them
here for folks to make remarks about! I knew they wouldn't take the
premium, and I hope you're satisfied now, mother."

"Well, you're a very silly child," came in an older voice, suggestive
of patience and amiability. "Don't tear them, anyway!"

"I shall! I don't care if I tear them all to pieces."

There was a sound of quick steps, and of the angry swirl of skirts, and
the crackling and rending of paper.

"There, now!" said the older voice. "You've dropped one."

"I don't care! I hope they'll trample it under their great stupid
hoofs."

The paper, whatever it was, came skating out under the draped tabling
in the section where Ludlow stood, arrested in his sad employment by
the unseen drama, and lay at his feet. He picked it up, and he had only
time to glance at it before he found himself confronted by a fiercely
tearful young girl who came round the corner of his section, and
suddenly stopped at sight of him. With one hand she pressed some
crumpled sheets of paper against, her breast; the other she stretched
toward Ludlow.

"Oh! will you----" she began, and then she faltered; and as she turned
her little head aside for a backward look over her shoulder, she made
him, somehow, think of a hollyhock, by the tilt of her tall, slim,
young figure, and by the colors of her hat from which her face
flowered; no doubt the deep-crimson silk waist she wore, with its
petal-edged ruffle flying free down her breast, had something to do
with his fantastic notion. She was a brunette, with the lightness and
delicacy that commonly go with the beauty of a bl