loosen their collar comfortably and read it through again.
This to me spells pleasure in capitals all the way through: plain
appreciation, pure and simple, neither more nor less."

[Illustration: "I'm tired of reading about life and hearing about life. I
want to live it" (_Page 66_)]

Again silence followed, but a far different silence than before. Of that
difference the three in the room were each acutely conscious; yet no one
made comment. They merely waited, waited until, without preface, the girl
completed the tacit agreement.

"And pleasure to me," she said slowly, "means something different than it
does to either of you. In a way, with you both pleasure is active. With
me it's passive." She laughed shortly, almost nervously. "Maybe I'm lazy,
I don't know; but I've worked so long that I'm weary to death of
commonplace and repression and denial and--dinginess. I want to be a free
individual and have leisure and opportunity to feel things, not to do
them. I'm selfish, hopelessly selfish, morbidly selfish; but I am as I
am. I'm like the plant that's raised in a cellar and can't leave because
its roots are sunk there deep. I want to be transplanted perforce out
into the sunshine. I'm hungry for it, hungry. I've caught glimpses of
things beyond through my cellar window, but glimpses only. I repeat, I
want to feel unhampered. I know pretty things and artistic things when I
see them, and I want them: to wear, to live among, to look at. I want to
travel, to hear real music, to feel real operas and know real plays--not
imitations. I'm tired of reading about life and hearing about life. I
want to live it, be a part of it--not a distant spectator. That is what
pleasure means to me now; to escape the tyranny of repression and of
pennies and be free--free!"

For the third time silence fell; a silence that lasted longer far than
before, a silence which each was loth to break. While she was speaking,
at first Armstrong had shifted about in his chair restlessly; at the
last, his hands deep in his pockets, he had sat still. Once he had looked
at her, peculiarly, the tolerant half smile still on his lips; but she
had not returned the look, and bit by bit it vanished. That was all.

For a minute perhaps, until it became awkward at least, the silence
lasted--to be broken finally by the girl herself. Slowly she arose from
her seat and, tall, slender, deliberately graceful, came from her place
in the shadow into the light.

"I'm a