ved in the pictures.

"And there was music--such music as I had never heard before, even though
it came out of a box. They had the songs of the grand opera singers. And
as I listened--I tell you I was called!--I don't care how silly it
sounds--I was called by the voices that had sung into that box. For this
was real--if the life hadn't been there it couldn't have been caught into
the pictures and the box. It proved--I thought--that all the lovely
things I had dreamed were true. I had only to go and find them. People
were walking upon those streets. Then I could walk on those streets. And
those people were laughing--and talking to each other. Everybody seemed
to have friends. Everybody was happy! And all of that really _was_. The
pictures were alive. Alive with the things that there were out beyond the
nothingness of Centralia.

"The man played something from an opera and showed pictures of beautiful
people going into a beautiful place to listen to that very music. He said
that the very next night in Chicago those people would be going into that
place to listen to those very voices.

"Katie, I don't believe you'll laugh at me when I tell you that my teeth
fairly chattered when first it came to me that I must be one of those
people! It was something all different from the longing for fun--oh it
was something big--terrible--it _had_ to be. It was the same feeling of
its having to be that I had about Tono.

"Though probably that feeling would have passed away if it hadn't been
for my father. He came there and found me, and--humiliated me. And after
we got home--" Ann was holding herself tight, but after a moment she
relaxed to say with an attempted laugh: "It wasn't all being 'called.'
Part of it was being driven.

"Then there was another thing. The treasurer of the missionary society
came that night with some money--eighteen dollars--I was to send off the
next day. It was that money started me out to find my Something
Somewhere."

"Oh _Ann_!" whispered Katie, drawing back. "But of course," she added,
"you paid it back just as soon as you could?"

"I _never_ paid it back! If I had eighteen _million_ dollars, I'd _never_
pay it back! I _like_ to think of not paying it back!"

Katie's face hardened. "I can't understand that."

"No," sobbed Ann, "you'd have to have lived a long time in nothingness to
understand that--and some other things, too." She looked at her
strangely. "There's more coming, Katie, that you won't