Didn't I
think that might be nice?

"Didn't I think it might be--_nice?_ Oh Katie--you'd have to know what
that day had been--what so many days--all days--had been.

"I looked down the street. The car was coming at last--packed--men
hanging on outside--everybody looking so hot--so dreadful. 'Oh you
mustn't get in that car,' he said.

"Beautiful things were beckoning to me--things I was to be taken to in an
automobile--I had never been in an automobile. It seemed I was being
rescued, carried away to a land of beautiful things, far away from
crowded street cars, from the heat and the work that make you do things
you hate yourself for doing.

"_Was_ it so common, Katie? So low? What I felt wasn't--what I dreamed as
we went along that beautiful drive beside the lake.

"For I dreamed that the city of dreadful things was being left behind.
The fairy prince had come for me. He was taking me to the things of
dreams, things which lately had seemed to slip out beyond even dreams.

"It was just as he had said--A little table under a tree--a breeze from
the lake--music--the lovely things to eat and the beautiful happy people.
Of course I wasn't dressed as much as they were, so we sat at a little
table half hidden in one corner--Oh I thought it was so wonderful!

"And he saw I thought it wonderful and that interested him, pleased him.
Maybe it was new to him. I think he likes things that are new to him.
Anyhow, he was very gentle and lovely to me that night. He told me I was
beautiful--that nothing in the world had ever been so beautiful as my
eyes. You know how he would say it, the different ways he would have of
saying it beautifully. And I want to say again--if it seems beautiful to
you--Why, Katie, I had never had anything.

"Going home he kissed me--

"When I went home that night the world was all different. The world was
too wonderful for even thoughts. Too beautiful to believe it could be
the world.

"I was in the arms of the wonderful new beauty of the world. Something in
my heart which had been crouching down afraid and cold and sad grew warm
and live and glad. Life grew so lovely; and as the days went on I think I
grew lovely too. He said so; said love was making me radiant--that I was
wonderful--that I was a child of love.

"Those days when I was in the dream, folded in the dream, days before any
of it fell away, they were golden days, singing days--days there are no
words for.

"We saw each other often. H