no
romance floating around in dishpans and washtubs, or in factories and
hash-joints.'

"When she was eighteen she married--a man who was going up to Juneau to
start a restaurant. He had a few dollars saved, and appeared prosperous.
She didn't love him--she was emphatic about that, but she was all tired
out, and she wanted to get away from the unending drudgery. Besides,
Juneau was in Alaska, and her yearning took the form of a desire to see
that wonderland. But little she saw of it. He started the restaurant,
a little cheap one, and she quickly learned what he had married her
for..... to save paying wages. She came pretty close to running the
joint and doing all the work from waiting to dishwashing. She cooked
most of the time as well. And she had four years of it.

"Can't you picture her, this wild woods creature, quick with every old
primitive instinct, yearning for the free open, and mowed up in a vile
little hash-joint and toiling and moiling for four mortal years?

"'There was no meaning in anything,' she said. 'What was it all about!
Why was I born! Was that all the meaning of life--just to work and work
and be always tired!--to go to bed tired and to wake up tired, with
every day like every other day unless it was harder?' She had heard talk
of immortal life from the gospel sharps, she said, but she could
not reckon that what she was doin' was a likely preparation for her
immortality.

"But she still had her dreams, though more rarely. She had read a few
books--what, it is pretty hard to imagine, Seaside Library novels most
likely; yet they had been food for fancy. 'Sometimes,' she said, 'when
I was that dizzy from the heat of the cooking that if I didn't take
a breath of fresh air I'd faint, I'd stick my head out of the kitchen
window, and close my eyes and see most wonderful things. All of a sudden
I'd be traveling down a country road, and everything clean and quiet,
no dust, no dirt; just streams ripplin' down sweet meadows, and lambs
playing, breezes blowing the breath of flowers, and soft sunshine over
everything; and lovely cows lazying knee-deep in quiet pools, and young
girls bathing in a curve of stream all white and slim and natural--and
I'd know I was in Arcady. I'd read about that country once, in a book.
And maybe knights, all flashing in the sun, would come riding around a
bend in the road, or a lady on a milk-white mare, and in the distance
I could see the towers of a castle rising, or I just