cuse me." The relief of the assistant
was a joyful thing. "That means that you have three minutes more, Mrs.
Spence. We usually utilize these last moments for driving home the main
thought of the lesson. Very important, of course, to leave some
concrete idea--sorry, I must hurry."

Desire felt that she must hurry, too. She hadn't even time to wonder
what a concrete idea might be. One can't wonder about anything in three
minutes.

"Children," she began. "We haven't learned much about Moses. But the
main idea of this lesson is that he was a very good man and a great
patriot. He had been brought up in a King's palace, yet when the time
came for him to choose, he left the beautiful home of the mother who
had adopted him and went to his own people. His Own People," she
repeated slowly. "Do you understand that?" The class sat stolidly
silent. Desire's eye rested again upon the little girl with the prim
mouth.

"Ma says 'dopting anyone's a terrible risk," said the prim one. "Like
as not they'll never say thank yuh." ...

CHAPTER XXIII

"And that," said Desire later in the day as she related her experiences
to the professor, "that was the idea with which I left them! I shan't
have to teach again, shall I, Benis?"

Her husband smiled. "No. I should think more would be a superfluity."

"They'll say I'm a heathen. I know they will. You don't realize how
serious it is. Think how your prestige will suffer."

"It has suffered already. Only yesterday Mrs. Walkem, the laundress,
told Aunt that your--er--peculiarities were a judgment on me for
'tryin' to find out them things in folkses minds which God has hid away
a-purpose.'"

"But I'm in earnest, Benis--more or less."

"Let it be less, then. My dear girl, you don't really think that
Bainbridge disturbs me?"

"N-no. But it disturbs me. A little. I am so different from all these
people, your friends. And being different is rather--lonely."

"It is," he agreed. "But it is also stimulating."

"I used to think," she went on, following her own thought, "that I was
different because my life was different. I thought that if I could ever
live with people, just as we live here, with everything normal and
everyday, the strangeness would drop away. But it hasn't. I am still
outside."

"Everyone is, though you are young to realize it. Our social life is
very deceiving. Most of us wake up some day to find ourselves alone in
a desert."

Desire swung the hammock gently with