understand. There is never any going back--and, sometimes, not much going
ahead," she ended, with an effort to laugh.

They stopped while the horse nibbled at a tall weed in the roadway. They
had got fairly into the prairie, and now at some distance on left and right
gawky Queen Anne houses appeared. But along their path the waste was
unbroken. The swamp on either side of the road was filled with birds, who
flew in and out and perched on the dry planks in the walks. An abandoned
electric-car track, raised aloft on a high embankment, crossed the avenue.
Here and there a useless hydrant thrust its head far above the muddy soil,
sometimes out of the swamp itself. They had left the lake behind them, but
the freshening evening breeze brought its damp breath across their faces.

"How came you to get into this spot?" the doctor asked, after his searching
eyes had roamed over the misty landscape, half swamp, half city suburb.

"I was transferred--about the time of the operation. My school is over
there," she pointed vaguely toward the southwest. "I could not afford to
live any distance from the school," she added bluntly. "Besides, I wanted
to be alone."

So she taught, Sommers reflected, yet she had none of the professional air,
the faded niceness of face and manner which he associated with the city
school-teacher.

"I haven't taught long," she volunteered, "only about a year. First I was
over by Lincoln Park, near where I had been living."

"Do you like the teaching?" Sommers asked.