its cloud of dust, among the wretched buildings of the Flats, Helen
stood there, on the lower step of the zigzag stairway, looking after
them. She was thinking, or perhaps she was wondering a little at
herself. She might even have been living again for the moment those
old-house days when, with her brother and Mary and Charlie Martin, she
had played there on these same steps.

Those old-house days had been joyous and carefree. Her school years,
too, had been filled with delightful and satisfying activities. After
her graduation she had been content with the gayeties and triumphs of
the life to which she had been arbitrarily removed by her father and
the new process, and for which she had been educated. She had felt the
need of nothing more. Then came the war, and, in her brother's
enlistment and in her work with the various departments of the women
forces at home, she had felt herself a part of the great world
movement. But now when the victorious soldiers--brothers and
sweethearts and husbands and friends--had returned, and the days of
excited rejoicing were past, life had suddenly presented to her a
different front. It would have been hard to find in all Millsburgh, not
excepting the most wretched home in the Flats, a more unhappy and
discontented person than this young woman who was so unanimously held
to have everything in the world that any one could possibly desire.

Slowly she turned to climb the zigzag stairway to the Interpreter's
hut.




CHAPTER III