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“We women, we like to do things for men. Poor men! We swoop on you when you’re defenseless and fuss over you and insist on reforming you. But it’s so pitifully deep in us. You’ll be the one thing in which I haven’t failed. Do something definite! Even if it’s just selling cottons. Sell beautiful cottons—caravans from China—”

“Carol! Stop! You do love me!”

“I do not! It’s just———Can’t you understand? Everything crushes in on me so, all the gaping dull people, and I look for a way out——Please go. I can’t stand any more. Please!”

He was gone. And she was not relieved by the quiet of the house. She was empty and the house was empty and she needed him. She wanted to go on talking, to get this threshed out, to build a sane friendship. She wavered down to the living-room, looked out of the bay-window. He was not to be seen. But Mrs. Westlake was. She was walking past, and in the light from the corner arc-lamp she quickly inspected the porch, the windows. Carol dropped the curtain, stood with movement and reflection paralyzed. Automatically, without reasoning, she mumbled, “I will see him again soon and make him understand we must be friends. But—The house is so empty. It echoes so.”

II

Kennicott had seemed nervous and absent-minded through that supper-hour, two evenings after. He prowled about the living-room, then growled:

“What the dickens have you been saying to Ma Westlake?”

Carol’s book rattled. “What do you mean?”

“I told you that Westlake and his wife were jealous of us, and here you been chumming up to them and—From what Dave tells me, Ma Westlake has been going around town saying you told her that you hate Aunt Bessie, and that you fixed up your own room because I snore, and you said Bjornstam was too good for Bea, and then, just recent, that you were sore on the town because we don’t all go down on our knees and beg this Valborg fellow to come take supper with us. God only knows what else she says you said.”

“It’s not true, any of it! I did like Mrs. Westlake, and I’ve called on her, and apparently she’s gone and twisted everything I’ve said—”

“Sure. Of course she would. Didn’t I tell you she would? She’s an old cat, like her pussyfooting, hand-holding husband. Lord, if I was sick, I’d rather have a faith-healer than Westlake, and she’s another slice off the same bacon. What I can’t understand though—”

She waited, taut.

“—is whatever possessed you to let her pump you, bright a girl as you are. I don’t care what you told her—we all get peeved sometimes and want to blow off steam, that’s natural—but if you wanted to keep it dark, why didn’t you advertise it in the Dauntless, or get a megaphone and stand on top of the hotel and holler, or do anything besides spill it to her!”

“I know. You told me. But she was so motherly. And I didn’t have any woman—Vida’s become so married and proprietary.”

“Well next time you’ll have better sense.”

He patted her head, flumped down behind his newspaper, said nothing more.

Enemies leered through the windows, stole on her from the hall. She had no one save Erik. This kind good man Kennicott—he was an elder brother. It was Erik, her fellow outcast, to whom she wanted to run for sanctuary. Through her storm she was, to the eye, sitting quietly with her fingers between the pages of a baby-blue book on home-dressmaking. But her dismay at Mrs. Westlake’s treachery had risen to active dread. What had the woman said of her and Erik? What did she know? What had she seen? Who else would join in the baying hunt? Who else had seen her with Erik? What had she to fear from the Dyers, Cy Bogart, Juanita, Aunt Bessie? What precisely had she answered to Mrs. Bogart’s questioning?

All next day she was too restless to stay home, yet as she walked the streets on fictitious errands she was afraid of every person she met. She waited for them to speak; waited with foreboding. She repeated, “I mustn’t ever see Erik again.” But the words did not register. She had no ecstatic indulgence in the sense of guilt