Who can count the price this woman has paid for her nervousness? At
fifty, with a scrawny, under-nourished body, the wrinkled remnants of
beauty, she suffers actual weakness and distress. Quick prostration
follows all effort, excepting when she is fired by excitement. All
ability to reason in the face of desire is gone; she is dominated by
emotions which become each year more unattractive; even the air-
castles are tumbled into ruins. Her husband is a slave--used as a
convenience. Her waning best is for those who attract her, her growing
worst for those who offend. One child's life is maimed by indulgence,
the other's by injustice. She has reached that moral depravity which
fails to recognize and accept any truth which is opposed to her
wishes. As she looks back over the vista of years, filled with many
activities, no monument of wholesome constructiveness remains; she has
blighted what she touched. Lena Platt, a wilful, spoiled, selfish
hysteric!




CHAPTER IV

WRECKING A GENERATION


The afternoon's heat was intense; it was reflecting in shimmering
waves from everything motionless, this breathless September day in
Donaldsville, Texas. Main Street is a half-mile long, unpainted "box-
houses" fringe either end and cluster unkemptly to the west, forming
the "city's" thickly populated "darky town." Near the station stands