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