ound it! Now you have found it!' my heart kept singing.

"When all the other people left I left too--in a dream. For it had
passed into a dream--into a beautiful dream that was going to shelter it
for me forever.

"I stood around watching the beautiful people getting into their
carriages. And I couldn't make myself believe that it was in the same
world with Centralia.

"Then after a while it occurred to me that all those people were going
home. Everybody was going home.

"At first I wasn't frightened. Something inside me was singing over and
over the songs of the opera. I was too far in my dream to be much
frightened.

"Then all at once I got--oh, so tired. And cold. And so frightened I did
not know what to do. My dream seemed to have taken wings and flown away.
All the beautiful laughing people had gone. It was just as if I woke up.
And I was on the strange streets all alone. Only some noisy men who
frightened me.

"I hid in a doorway till those men got by. And then I saw a woman
coming. She was all alone, too. She had on a dress that rustled and
lovely white furs, and did not seem at all frightened.

"I stepped out and asked her to please tell me where to go for the night.

"Some time I'll tell you about her, too. Now I'll just tell you that it
ended with her taking me home with her to stay all night. She made a lot
of fun of me--and said things to me I didn't understand--and swore at
me--and told me to 'cut it' and go back to the cornfields--but I was
crying then, and she took me with her.

"She kept up her queer kind of talk, but I was so tired that the minute I
was in bed I went to sleep.

"The next morning she told me I had got to go back to the woods. I said I
would if there were any woods. But there weren't. She laughed and said
more queer things. She asked me why I had come, and I told her. First she
laughed. Then she sat there staring at me--blinking. And what she said
was: 'Poor little fool. Poor little greenhorn.'

"She asked me what I was going to do, and I said work, so I could stay
there and go to the opera and see beautiful things. She asked me what
kind of a job I was figuring on and told me there was only one kind would
let me in for that. I asked her what it was and she said it was _her_
line. I asked her if she thought I was fitted for it, and she looked at
me--a look I didn't understand at all--and said she guessed the men she
worked for would think so. I asked her if she'd say a good w