ow stairway, that
her feet grew leaden. In spite of the fact that Hannah was a good
housekeeper and prided herself on cleanliness, the tiny flat reeked with
the smell of cooking, and Janet, from the upper hall, had a glimpse of
a thin, angular woman with a scrawny neck, with scant grey hair tightly
drawn into a knot, in a gingham apron covering an old dress bending
over the kitchen stove. And occasionally, despite a resentment that fate
should have dealt thus inconsiderately with the family, Janet felt pity
welling within her. After supper, when Lise had departed with her best
young man, Hannah would occasionally, though grudgingly, permit Janet to
help her with the dishes.

"You work all day, you have a right to rest."

"But I don't want to rest," Janet would declare, and rub the dishes the
harder. With the spirit underlying this protest, Hannah sympathized.
Mother and daughter were alike in that both were inarticulate, but Janet
had a secret contempt for Hannah's uncomplaining stoicism. She loved
her mother, in a way, especially at certain times,--though she often
wondered why she was unable to realize more fully the filial affection
of tradition; but in moments of softening, such as these, she was filled
with rage at the thought of any woman endowed with energy permitting
herself to be overtaken and overwhelmed by such a fate as Hannah's:
divorce, desertion, anything, she thought, would have been
better--anything but to be cheated out of life. Feeling the fires of
rebellion burning hotly within her,--rebellion against environment and
driving necessity she would glance at her mother and ask herself whether
it were possible that Hannah had ever known longings, had ever been
wrung by inexpressible desires,--desires in which the undiscovered
spiritual was so alarmingly compounded with the undiscovered physical.
She would have died rather than speak to Hannah of these unfulfilled
experiences, and the mere thought of confiding them to any person
appalled her. Even if there existed some wonderful, understanding being
to whom she might be able thus to empty her soul, the thought of the
ecstasy of that kenosis was too troubling to be dwelt upon.

She had tried reading, with unfortunate results,--perhaps because no
Virgil had as yet appeared to guide her through the mysteries of that
realm. Her schooling had failed to instil into her a discriminating
taste for literature; and when, on occasions, she had entered the Public
L