see the brilliantined black heads of the two proprietors bending over
their boards, and sometimes they would be lifted to smile at her as she
passed. The Pappas Brothers were evidently as happy in this drab
environment as they had ever been on the sunny mountain slopes of Hellas,
and Janet sometimes wondered at this, for she had gathered from her
education in the Charming public school that Greece was beautiful.

She was one of the unfortunate who love beauty, who are condemned to
dwell in exile, unacquainted with what they love. Desire was incandescent
within her breast. Desire for what? It would have been some relief to
know. She could not, like Lise, find joy and forgetfulness at dance
halls, at the "movies," at Slattery's Riverside Park in summer, in "joy
rides" with the Max Wylies of Hampton. And beside, the Max Wylies were
afraid of her. If at times she wished for wealth, it was because wealth
held the magic of emancipation from surroundings against which her soul
revolted. Vividly idealized but unconfided was the memory of a seaside
village, the scene of one of the brief sojourns of her childhood, where
the air was fragrant with the breath of salt marshes, where she recalled,
through the vines of a porch, a shining glimpse of the sea at the end of
a little street....

Next to Pappas Brothers was the grey wooden building of Mule Spinners'
Hall, that elite organization of skilled labour, and underneath it the
store of Johnny Tiernan, its windows piled up with stoves and stovepipes,
sheet iron and cooking utensils. Mr. Tiernan, like the Greeks, was happy,
too: unlike the Greeks, he never appeared to be busy, and yet he throve.
He was very proud of the business in which he had invested his savings,
but he seemed to have other affairs lying blithely on his mind, affairs
of moment to the community, as the frequent presence of the huge
policemen, aldermen, and other important looking persons bore witness. He