burned in the deep vestibule, as in a sanctuary. And then, as
though some supernaturally penetrating ray had pierced a square hole in
the lower walls, a glimpse of the interior was revealed to her, of
the living room at the north end of the house. Two figures chased one
another around the centre table--Ditmar's children! Was Ditmar there?
Impelled irresistibly by a curiosity overcoming repugnance and fear,
she went forward slowly across the street, gained the farther pavement,
stepped over the concrete coping, and stood, shivering violently, on
the lawn, feeling like an interloper and a thief, yet held by morbid
fascination. The children continued to romp. The boy was strong and
swift, the girl stout and ungainly in her movements, not mistress of her
body; he caught her and twisted her arm, roughly--Janet could hear her
cries through the window-=when an elderly woman entered, seized him,
struggling with him. He put out his tongue at her, but presently
released his sister, who stood rubbing her arm, her lips moving in
evident recrimination and complaint. The faces of the two were plain
now; the boy resembled Ditmar, but the features of the girl, heavy and
stamped with self-indulgence, were evidently reminiscent of the woman
who had been his wife. Then the shade was pulled down, abruptly; and
Janet, overcome by a sense of horror at her position, took to flight....

When, after covering the space of a block she slowed down and tried to
imagine herself as established in that house, the stepmother of those
children, she found it impossible. Despite the fact that her attention
had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had
included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the
farther wall, the music rack. Evidently the girl was learning to play.
She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot: she was
aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the
woman who had been her mother had possessed--that in her, Janet,
had lacked the advantages of development. Could it--could it ever be
developed now? Had this love which had come to her brought her any
nearer to the unknown realm of light she craved?...

CHAPTER XI

Though December had come, Sunday was like an April day before whose
sunlight the night-mists of scruples and morbid fears were scattered and
dispersed. And Janet, as she fared forth from the Fillmore Street flat,
felt resurging in her the