hours
before, I was foolish enough to visit an anarchist friend, Marna. I was
awfully lonely and thought a little change would do me good. So I went
to Marna, but got there a little too late for supper. I must admit I was
hungry. I hinted to Marna that I was, said I'd been in town all day, and
things like that, but she did not catch on and I was stubborn and
wouldn't ask. Stephen was there, and for a moment I thought I might eat.
He had not had his supper, and he said that if Marna was not too tired
to cook, he would go and buy a steak. I tell you, the thought of that
steak was awfully nice and I had to put my handkerchief to my mouth to
keep the water from flowing over. I offered to cook it for him, but he
passed it up. I made one more desperate bluff and asked him if he would
get some beer for us! And I reached for my purse, and for one wild
moment I thought sure he had called my bluff and would really take my
only nickel, my carfare home. I nearly fell over with suspense, but in
the nick of time he went out, refusing my money. And I even taunted him,
asked him if he thought it was tainted!

"When the beer came, I drank most of it. Beer is a great filler, but of
course it went straight to my head and feet--that is, my head got light
and my feet heavy. But I managed to navigate to the street car and so on
home, where I found Katie, a cheerful fire and a delicious smell of
cookery and coffee.

"Now, I must make you a confession. During these six days I had some
thoughts of working, the only thing I could think of being a job as a
waitress. But when a vision of ham and pert females and more impertinent
males came to me my courage oozed away, and I did not even try. I don't
think I'll ever work again. Did you ever read Yeats' story 'Where There
is Nothing?'

"I love Marna, as you know, but when she talks to me about 'work,'
'health,' and the like, I feel like becoming even more solitary than I
am. She says I am not ambitious! Ye gods, I think I am ever so much more
ambitious than she! I am more ambitious to live in these little squalid
rooms than in the mansions of the rich. My kind of happiness--I mean
ideally--is not Marna's kind; and I am sure now that if I ever find it,
it will be in the slums. Here I can sit and muse, undisturbed by the
ambition of the world. Blake comes to me as an indulgent father to his
tired and fretful child and sings to me his sunflower song. If I were in
a castle I don't think even Blake c