They drifted one by one into their opulent homes, bidding one another a
careless or a sentimental good-by, and Gora, throwing her head as far back
on her shoulders as it would go without dislocation, stalked down to the
unfashionable end of Taylor Street and up to the solitude of her bedroom
under the eaves of the cottage.

On the following day she had lingered in the school yard until the other
girls were out of sight, then climbing the almost perpendicular hill so
rapidly that she arrived on the crest with little breath and a pain in her
side, she had sauntered deliberately up and down before the imposing homes
of her schoolmates, staring at them with angry and puzzled eyes, her young
soul in tumult. It was the old inarticulate cry of class, of the unchosen
who seeks the reason and can find none.



III


As she had a tendency not only to brood but to work out her own problems it
was several days before she demanded an explanation of her mother.

Mrs. Dwight, a prematurely gray and wrinkled woman, who had once
been handsome with good features and bright coloring, and who wore a
deliberately cheerful expression that Gora often wanted to wipe off, was
sitting in the dining-room making a skirt for her daughter; which, Gora
reflected bitterly, was sure to be too long on one side if not in front.

Mrs. Dwight's smile faded as she looked at the somber face and huddled
figure in the worn leather arm-chair in which Mr. Dwight spent his silent