s mild, and sat on the floor
with her chin resting upon the window-sill. Even the stars were
strangers. Where was this kindly world she had drawn so rosily in
fancy? Disillusion everywhere. The spinsters were not kind; they
were only curious because she was odd and wore a dress thirty years
out of date. Later, when they returned home, she would serve as the
topic of many conversations. Everybody looked askance at everybody
else. To escape one phase of loneliness she had plunged into
another, so vast that her courage sometimes faltered.

She recalled how she had stretched out her arms toward the magic
blue horizon. Just beyond there would be her heart's desire. And in
these crowded four weeks, what had she learned? That all horizons
were lies: that smiles and handshakes and goodbyes and welcomes
were lies: that there were really no to-morrows, only a treadmill
of to-days: and that out of these lies and mirages she had plucked
a bitter truth--she was alone.

She turned her cheek to the cold sill; and by and by the sill grew
warm and wet with tears. She wanted to stay where she was; but
tears were dangerous; the more she wept, the weaker she would
become defensively. She rose briskly, turned on the light, and
opened Les Miserables to the episode of the dark forest: where Jean
Valjean reaches out and takes Cosette's frightful pail from her
chapped little hands.

There must be persons tender and loving in this world. There must
be real Valjeans, else how could authors write about them?
Supposing some day she met one of these astonishing creators, who
could make one cry and laugh and forget, who could thrill one with
love and anger and tenderness?

Most of us have witnessed carnivals. Here are all our harlequins
and columbines of the spoken and written drama. They flash to and
fro, they thrill us with expectancy. Then, presto! What a dreary
lot they are when the revellers lay aside the motley!

Ruth had come from a far South Sea isle. The world had not passed
by but had gone around it in a tremendous half-circle. Many things
were only words, sounds; she could not construct these words and
sounds into objects; or, if she did, invariably missed the mark.
Her education was remarkable in that it was overdeveloped here and
underdeveloped there: the woman of thirty and the child of ten were
always getting in each other's way. Until she had left her island,
what she heard and what she saw were truths. And now she was
discove