ecame really a smile as he said: "What a lot of things you and I would
find to talk about."

"We must--" Katie began impetuously, but halted and flushed. "We must go
on with our story," was what it came to.

"I haven't any story, except just the story of that look. Though it holds
the story of love and hate and a hundred other things you and I would
disagree about. And I don't know that I can convey to you--you of the
sunny paths--what the look conveyed to me. But imagine a crowd, a crazed
crowd, all pushing to the center, and then in the center a face thrown
back so you can see it for just an instant before it sinks to
suffocation. If you can fancy that look--the last gasp for breath of one
caught--squeezed--just going down--a hatred of the crowd that got her
there, just to suffocate her--and perhaps one last wild look at the hills
out beyond the crowd. If you can get _that_--that fear, suffocation,
terror--and don't forget the hate--yet like the dog you've kicked that
grieved--'How could you--when it was a pat I wanted!'--"

"I know it in the dog language," said Katie quiveringly.

"Then imagine the dog crazed with thirst tied just out of reach of a
leaping, dancing brook--"

"Oh--please. That's too plain."

"It hurts when applied to dogs, does it?" he asked roughly.

"But they're so helpless--and they love us so!"

"And _they're_ so helpless--and they hate because they weren't let love."

"But surely there aren't many--such looks. Not many who feel
they're--going down. Why such things couldn't _be_--in this
beautiful world."

"Such," he said smilingly, "has ever been the philosophy of sunny paths."

"You needn't talk to me like that!" she retorted angrily. "I guess I saw
the look as well as you did--and did a little more to banish it than you
did, too."

"True. I was just coming to that thing of my not having done anything.
Perhaps it was a case of fools rushing in where angels feared to
tread. You mustn't mind being called a fool in any sentence so
preposterous as to call me an angel. You see one who had never been in
the crowd would say--'Why don't you get out?' It would be droll,
wouldn't it, to have some one on a far hill call--'But why don't you
come over here?' Don't you see how that must appeal to the sense of
humor of the one about to go down?"

She made no reply. The thing that hurt her was that he seemed to enjoy
hurting her.

"You see I've been in the crowd," he said more simply and less b