the door a shattering slam.

Anna was very hard to live with in those next three days. Even Baby,
the new puppy, the pride of Anna's heart, a present from her friend
the widow, Mrs. Lehntman--even this pretty little black and tan felt
the heat of Anna's scorching flame. And Edgar, who had looked forward
to these days, to be for him filled full of freedom and of things to
eat--he could not rest a moment in Anna's bitter sight.

On the third day, Anna and Edgar went to the Wadsmith country home.
The blue dressings out of the two rooms remained behind.

All the way, Edgar sat in front with the colored man and drove. It was
an early spring day in the South. The fields and woods were heavy from
the soaking rains. The horses dragged the carriage slowly over the
long road, sticky with brown clay and rough with masses of stones
thrown here and there to be broken and trodden into place by passing
teams. Over and through the soaking earth was the feathery new spring
growth of little flowers, of young leaves and of ferns. The tree tops
were all bright with reds and yellows, with brilliant gleaming whites
and gorgeous greens. All the lower air was full of the damp haze
rising from heavy soaking water on the earth, mingled with a warm and
pleasant smell from the blue smoke of the spring fires in all the open
fields. And above all this was the clear, upper air, and the songs of
birds and the joy of sunshine and of lengthening days.

The languor and the stir, the warmth and weight and the strong feel
of life from the deep centres of the earth that comes always with the
early, soaking spring, when it is not answered with an active fervent
joy, gives always anger, irritation and unrest.

To Anna alone there in the carriage, drawing always nearer to the
struggle with her mistress, the warmth, the slowness, the jolting over
stones, the steaming from the horses, the cries of men and animals and
birds, and the new life all round about were simply maddening. "Baby!
if you don't lie still, I think I kill you. I can't stand it any more
like this."

At this time Anna, about twenty-seven years of age, was not yet all
thin and worn. The sharp bony edges and corners of her head and face
were still rounded out with flesh, but already the temper and the
humor showed sharply in her clean blue eyes, and the thinning was
begun about the lower jaw, that was so often strained with the upward
pressure of resolve.

To-day, alone there in the carri