pitiful and tawdry love-affair.

"No splendor, no defiance. A self-deceived little woman whispering in
corners with a pretentious little man.

"No, he is not. He is fine. Aspiring. It's not his fault. His eyes are
sweet when he looks at me. Sweet, so sweet."

She pitied herself that her romance should be pitiful; she sighed that
in this colorless hour, to this austere self, it should seem tawdry.

Then, in a very great desire of rebellion and unleashing of all her
hatreds, "The pettier and more tawdry it is, the more blame to Main
Street. It shows how much I've been longing to escape. Any way out! Any
humility so long as I can flee. Main Street has done this to me. I came
here eager for nobilities, ready for work, and now----Any way out.

"I came trusting them. They beat me with rods of dullness. They don't
know, they don't understand how agonizing their complacent dullness is.
Like ants and August sun on a wound.

"Tawdry! Pitiful! Carol--the clean girl that used to walk so
fast!--sneaking and tittering in dark corners, being sentimental and
jealous at church suppers!"

At breakfast-time her agonies were night-blurred, and persisted only as
a nervous irresolution.

IV

Few of the aristocrats of the Jolly Seventeen attended the humble
folk-meets of the Baptist and Methodist church suppers, where the Willis
Woodfords, the Dillons, the Champ Perrys, Oleson the butcher, Brad Bemis
the tinsmith, and Deacon Pierson found release from loneliness. But all
of the smart set went to the lawn-festivals of the Episcopal Church, and
were reprovingly polite to outsiders.

The Harry Haydocks gave the last lawn-festival of the season; a splendor
of Japanese lanterns and card-tables and chicken patties and Neapolitan
ice-cream. Erik was no longer entirely an outsider. He was eating his
ice-cream with a group of the people most solidly "in"--the Dyers,
Myrtle Cass, Guy Pollock, the Jackson Elders. The Haydocks themselves
kept aloof, but the others tolerated him. He would never, Carol fancied,
be one of the town pillars, because he was not orthodox in hunting and
motoring and poker. But he was winning approbation by his liveliness,
his gaiety--the qualities least important in him.

When the group summoned Carol she made several very well-taken points in
regard to the weather.

Myrtle cried to Erik, "Come on! We don't belong with these old folks.
I want to make you 'quainted with the jolliest girl, she comes from
Wakami