That did not change at all, unless the interest in his eyes grew warmer.
The sympathy she saw there gave Annesley a new and passionate desire to
defend herself. If he had shown disgust, she would not have cared to try,
she thought.

"I told you it was horrid, and not interesting or romantic," she
dashed on. "But I was desperate. Mrs. Ellsworth is awful! I don't
suppose you ever met such a woman. She's not cruel about starving my
body. It's only my soul she starves. What business have _I_ with a soul,
except in church, where it's proper to think about such things? But she
nags--_nags_! She makes my hair feel as if it were turning gray at the
roots, and my face drying up--like an apple.

"I wasn't nineteen when I came to her. I'm twenty-three now, and I feel
_old_--desiccated, thanks to those piling-up hundreds of days with her.
They've killed my spirit. I used to be different. I can feel it. I can
see it in the mirror. It isn't only the passing days, but having nothing
better to look forward to. I'm too cowardly--or too religious or
something, to kill myself, even if I knew how to, decently. But the
deadliness of it all, the airlessness of her house and her heart!

"A man couldn't imagine it. She's made me forget not only my own youth,
but that there's youth in the world. Why, at first I was so wild I should
have loved to say dreadful things, or strike her. But now I haven't the
spirit left to feel like that. My blood's turning white. The other day
when I was reading aloud to Mrs. Ellsworth (I read a lot: the stupidest
parts of the papers and the silliest books, that turn my brain to fluff)
I caught sight of an advertisement in the Personal Column.

"I stopped just in time and didn't read it out. Only a glimpse I had, for