m simply _miserable_ because I
want to do something nice for you."

She stared at her aunt with swimming eyes, and Aunt Janet, quite at a
loss to understand the outbreak, could not get outside her wall.

"You will find it's much better to rule love out, Marcella," said Aunt
Janet gently, holding the girl's hand in hers, which was cold. "It is
better not to pity anyone or love anyone. Oh yes, I know you pity me,
child. But love and pity have exactly doubled the pain of the world,
because, in addition to the tragedy of the person you love is your own
tragic desire to do something for them. You take my advice,
Marcella--don't love. Rule love out--"

"Oh my goodness--acid drops," whispered Marcella to herself as she sat
down to think out this astonishing heresy.

From that day she had been filled with a choked pity for Aunt Janet--and
now, suddenly, as she sat with the jam spoon full, poised over her plate
she saw herself getting like that--slyly eating acid drops because she
was ashamed to admit so small, so amiable a weakness, having conquered
all the big ones.

She dropped the spoon with a clatter and pushed the pot away from her.

"Acid drops," she whispered to herself.

"You may as well eat it up, Marcella. It only means you won't have any
to-morrow. Neither Jean nor I want it--and the pot can be washed and put
away then."

"No--no. I don't want it," cried the girl passionately. "Aunt Janet, I
want to go away."

Her eyes were sparkling, her breath coming fast and short.

"Go away?"

"Yes. I can't stay here. What's to happen to me if I do? Oh what's to
happen to me?"

"You'll be happier staying here till you drop out of life," said the
woman, looking at her intently.

"Oh no--no! I'd rather be smashed up and killed--like grandfather was,"
cried Marcella passionately.

"Yes, I suppose one would--at eighteen," Aunt Janet mused reminiscently.
"But where can you go?"

"Oh anywhere--I don't care. I'll go anywhere--now--to-night. Aunt, I'm
not cruel and unkind, am I, to want to go away? I'll come back to you.
I'll be kinder when I come back," she cried anxiously. "I can't stop
here and be petrified."

For two days Aunt Janet thought and pondered while Marcella raged about
Ben Grief with the wings of all the swifts and swallows on earth in her
feet. She faced many things these two days--she planned many things. She
was like a generalissimo arranging details of the taking of the enemy's
entrenchments befor