_ FOR a month which was one suspended moment of doubt she
saw Erik only casually, at an Eastern Star dance, at the shop,
where, in the presence of Nat Hicks, they conferred with
immense particularity on the significance of having one or two
buttons on the cuff of Kennicott's New Suit. For the benefit
of beholders they were respectably vacuous.
Thus barred from him, depressed in the thought of Fern,
Carol was suddenly and for the first time convinced that she
loved Erik.
She told herself a thousand inspiriting things which he would
say if he had the opportunity; for them she admired him,
loved him. But she was afraid to summon him. He understood,
he did not come. She forgot her every doubt of him,
and her discomfort in his background. Each day it seemed
impossible to get through the desolation of not seeing him.
Each morning, each afternoon, each evening was a compartment
divided from all other units of time, distinguished by a sudden
"Oh! I want to see Erik!" which was as devastating as
though she had never said it before.
There were wretched periods when she could not picture
him. Usually he stood out in her mind in some little moment--
glancing up from his preposterous pressing-iron, or running on
the beach with Dave Dyer. But sometimes he had vanished;
he was only an opinion. She worried then about his appearance:
Weren't his wrists too large and red? Wasn't his nose
a snub, like so many Scandinavians? Was he at all the graceful
thing she had fancied? When she encountered him on the
street she was as much reassuring herself as rejoicing in his
presence. More disturbing than being unable to visualize him
was the darting remembrance of some intimate aspect: his
face as they had walked to the boat together at the picnic;
the ruddy light on his temples, neck-cords, flat cheeks.
On a November evening when Kennicott was in the country
she answered the bell and was confused to find Erik at the
door, stooped, imploring, his hands in the pockets of his
topcoat. As though he had been rehearsing his speech he instantly
besought:
"Saw your husband driving away. I've got to see you. I
can't stand it. Come for a walk. I know! People might
see us. But they won't if we hike into the country. I'll wait
for you by the elevator. Take as long as you want to--oh,
come quick!"
"In a few minutes," she promised.
She murmured, "I'll just talk to him for a quarter of an
hour and come home." She put an her tweed coat and rubber
overshoes, considering how honest and hopeless are rubbers,
how clearly their chaperonage proved that she wasn't going
to a lovers' tryst.
She found him in the shadow of the grain-elevator, sulkily
kicking at a rail of the side-track. As she came toward him
she fancied that his whole body expanded. But he said nothing,
nor she; he patted her sleeve, she returned the pat, and they
crossed the railroad tracks, found a road, clumped toward
open country.
"Chilly night, but I like this melancholy gray," he said.
"Yes."
They passed a moaning clump of trees and splashed along
the wet road. He tucked her hand into the side-pocket of his
overcoat. She caught his thumb and, sighing, held it exactly
as Hugh held hers when they went walking. She thought
about Hugh. The current maid was in for the evening, but
was it safe to leave the baby with her? The thought was
distant and elusive.
Erik began to talk, slowly, revealingly. He made for her a
picture of his work in a large tailor shop in Minneapolis: the
steam and heat, and the drudgery; the men in darned vests
and crumpled trousers, men who "rushed growlers of beer"
and were cynical about women, who laughed at him and played
jokes on him. "But I didn't mind, because I could keep away
from them outside. I used to go to the Art Institute and the
Walker Gallery, and tramp clear around Lake Harriet, or hike
out to the Gates house and imagine it was a chateau in Italy
and I lived in it. I was a marquis and collected tapestries--
that was after I was wounded in Padua. The only really bad
time was when a tailor named Finkelfarb found a diary I was
trying to keep and he read it aloud in the shop--it was a
bad fight." He laughed. "I got fined five dollars. But that's
all gone now. Seems as though you stand between me and
the gas stoves--the long flames with mauve edges, licking up
around the irons and making that sneering sound all day--
aaaaah!"
Her fingers tightened about his thumb as she perceived the
hot low room, the pounding of pressing-irons, the reek of
scorched cloth, and Erik among giggling gnomes. His fingertip
crept through the opening of her glove and smoothed her
palm. She snatched her hand away, stripped off her glove,
tucked her hand back into his.
He was saying something about a "wonderful person." In
her tranquillity she let the words blow by and heeded only the
beating wings of his voice.
She was conscious that he was fumbling for impressive
speech.
"Say, uh--Carol, I've written a poem about you."
"That's nice. Let's hear it."
"Damn it, don't be so casual about it! Can't you take me
seriously?"
"My dear boy, if I took you seriously----! I don't want
us to be hurt more than--more than we will be. Tell me the
poem. I've never had a poem written about me!"
"It isn't really a poem. It's just some words that I love
because it seems to me they catch what you are. Of course
probably they won't seem so to anybody else, but----
Well----
Little and tender and merry and wise
With eyes that meet my eyes.
Do you get the idea the way I do?"
"Yes! I'm terribly grateful!" And she was grateful--
while she impersonally noted how bad a verse it was.
She was aware of the haggard beauty in the lowering night.
Monstrous tattered clouds sprawled round a forlorn moon;
puddles and rocks glistened with inner light. They were passing
a grove of scrub poplars, feeble by day but looming now
like a menacing wall. She stopped. They heard the branches
dripping, the wet leaves sullenly plumping on the soggy earth.
"Waiting--waiting--everything is waiting," she whispered.
She drew her hand from his, pressed her clenched fingers
against her lips. She was lost in the somberness. "I am
happy--so we must go home, before we have time to become
unhappy. But can't we sit on a log for a minute and just
listen?"
"No. Too wet. But I wish we could build a fire, and you
could sit on my overcoat beside it. I'm a grand fire-builder!
My cousin Lars and me spent a week one time in a cabin
way up in the Big Woods, snowed in. The fireplace was filled
with a dome of ice when we got there, but we chopped it out,
and jammed the thing full of pine-boughs. Couldn't we build
a fire back here in the woods and sit by it for a while?"
She pondered, half-way between yielding and refusal. Her
head ached faintly. She was in abeyance. Everything, the
night, his silhouette, the cautious-treading future, was as
undistinguishable as though she were drifting bodiless in a Fourth
Dimension. While her mind groped, the lights of a motor car
swooped round a bend in the road, and they stood farther
apart. "What ought I to do?" she mused. "I think----
Oh, I won't be robbed! I AM good! If I'm so enslaved that
I can't sit by the fire with a man and talk, then I'd better
be dead!"
The lights of the thrumming car grew magically; were upon
them; abruptly stopped. From behind the dimness of the
windshield a voice, annoyed, sharp: "Hello there!"
She realized that it was Kennicott.
The irritation in his voice smoothed out. "Having a walk?"
They made schoolboyish sounds of assent.
"Pretty wet, isn't it? Better ride back. Jump up in front
here, Valborg."
His manner of swinging open the door was a command.
Carol was conscious that Erik was climbing in, that she was
apparently to sit in the back, and that she had been left to
open the rear door for herself. Instantly the wonder which
had flamed to the gusty skies was quenched, and she was
Mrs. W. P. Kennicott of Gopher Prairie, riding in a squeaking
old car, and likely to be lectured by her husband.
She feared what Kennicott would say to Erik. She bent
toward them. Kennicott was observing, "Going to have some
rain before the night 's over, all right."
"Yes," said Erik.
"Been funny season this year, anyway. Never saw it with
such a cold October and such a nice November. 'Member
we had a snow way back on October ninth! But it certainly
was nice up to the twenty-first, this month--as I remember it,
not a flake of snow in November so far, has there been? But
I shouldn't wonder if we'd be having some snow 'most any
time now."
"Yes, good chance of it," said Erik.
"Wish I'd had more time to go after the ducks this fall.
By golly, what do you think?" Kennicott sounded appealing.
"Fellow wrote me from Man Trap Lake that he shot seven
mallards and couple of canvas-back in one hour!"
"That must have been fine," said Erik.
Carol was ignored. But Kennicott was blustrously cheerful.
He shouted to a farmer, as he slowed up to pass the frightened
team, "There we are--schon gut!" She sat back, neglected,
frozen, unheroic heroine in a drama insanely undramatic. She
made a decision resolute and enduring. She would tell
Kennicott---- What would she tell him? She could not say that
she loved Erik. DID she love him? But she would have it
out. She was not sure whether it was pity for Kennicott's
blindness, or irritation at his assumption that he was enough
to fill any woman's life, which prompted her, but she knew
that she was out of the trap, that she could be frank; and she
was exhilarated with the adventure of it. . .while in
front he was entertaining Erik:
"Nothing like an hour on a duck-pass to make you relish
your victuals and---- Gosh, this machine hasn't got the
power of a fountain pen. Guess the cylinders are jam-cram-full
of carbon again. Don't know but what maybe I'll have to
put in another set of piston-rings."
He stopped on Main Street and clucked hospitably, "There,
that'll give you just a block to walk. G' night."
Carol was in suspense. Would Erik sneak away?
He stolidly moved to the back of the car, thrust in his hand,
muttered, "Good night--Carol. I'm glad we had our walk."
She pressed his hand. The car was flapping on. He was
hidden from her--by a corner drug store on Main Street!
Kennicott did not recognize her till he drew up before the
house. Then he condescended, "Better jump out here and
I'll take the boat around back. Say, see if the back door is
unlocked, will you?" She unlatched the door for him. She
realized that she still carried the damp glove she had stripped
off for Erik. She drew it on. She stood in the center of the
living-room, unmoving, in damp coat and muddy rubbers.
Kennicott was as opaque as ever. Her task wouldn't be anything
so lively as having to endure a scolding, but only an
exasperating effort to command his attention so that he would
understand the nebulous things she had to tell him, instead
of interrupting her by yawning, winding the clock, and going
up to bed. She heard him shoveling coal into the furnace. He
came through the kitchen energetically, but before he spoke
to her he did stop in the hall, did wind the clock.
He sauntered into the living-room and his glance passed
from her drenched hat to her smeared rubbers. She could
hear--she could hear, see, taste, smell, touch--his "Better
take your coat off, Carrie; looks kind of wet." Yes, there it
was:
"Well, Carrie, you better----" He chucked his own coat
on a chair, stalked to her, went on with a rising tingling voice,
"----you better cut it out now. I'm not going to do the out-
raged husband stunt. I like you and I respect you, and I'd
probably look like a boob if I tried to be dramatic. But I think
it's about time for you and Valborg to call a halt before you get
in Dutch, like Fern Mullins did."
"Do you----"
"Course. I know all about it. What d' you expect in a
town that's as filled with busybodies, that have plenty of time
to stick their noses into other folks' business, as this is? Not
that they've had the nerve to do much tattling to me, but
they've hinted around a lot, and anyway, I could see for myself
that you liked him. But of course I knew how cold you were,
I knew you wouldn't stand it even if Valborg did try to hold
your hand or kiss you, so I didn't worry. But same time, I
hope you don't suppose this husky young Swede farmer is as
innocent and Platonic and all that stuff as you are! Wait
now, don't get sore! I'm not knocking him. He isn't a bad
sort. And he's young and likes to gas about books. Course
you like him. That isn't the real rub. But haven't you just
seen what this town can do, once it goes and gets moral on
you, like it did with Fern? You probably think that two
young folks making love are alone if anybody ever is, but
there's nothing in this town that you don't do in company
with a whole lot of uninvited but awful interested guests.
Don't you realize that if Ma Westlake and a few others got
started they'd drive you up a tree, and you'd find yourself so
well advertised as being in love with this Valborg fellow that
you'd HAVE to be, just to spite 'em!"
"Let me sit down," was all Carol could say. She drooped
on the couch, wearily, without elasticity.
He yawned, "Gimme your coat and rubbers," and while
she stripped them off he twiddled his watch-chain, felt the
radiator, peered at the thermometer. He shook out her wraps
in the hall, hung them up with exactly his usual care. He
pushed a chair near to her and sat bolt up. He looked like
a physician about to give sound and undesired advice.
Before he could launch into his heavy discourse she
desperately got in, "Please! I want you to know that I was
going to tell you everything, tonight."
"Well, I don't suppose there's really much to tell."
"But there is. I'm fond of Erik. He appeals to something
in here." She touched her breast. "And I admire him. He
isn't just a `young Swede farmer.' He's an artist----"
"Wait now! He's had a chance all evening to tell you
what a whale of a fine fellow he is. Now it's my turn. I can't
talk artistic, but---- Carrie, do you understand my work?"
He leaned forward, thick capable hands on thick sturdy thighs,
mature and slow, yet beseeching. "No matter even if you are
cold, I like you better than anybody in the world. One time
I said that you were my soul. And that still goes. You're
all the things that I see in a sunset when I'm driving in from
the country, the things that I like but can't make poetry of.
Do you realize what my job is? I go round twenty-four hours
a day, in mud and blizzard, trying my damnedest to heal
everybody, rich or poor. You--that 're always spieling about
how scientists ought to rule the world, instead of a bunch
of spread-eagle politicians--can't you see that I'm all the
science there is here? And I can stand the cold and the bumpy
roads and the lonely rides at night. All I need is to have you
here at home to welcome me. I don't expect you to be
passionate--not any more I don't--but I do expect you to
appreciate my work. I bring babies into the world, and save
lives, and make cranky husbands quit being mean to their
wives. And then you go and moon over a Swede tailor because
he can talk about how to put ruchings on a skirt! Hell of a
thing for a man to fuss over!"
She flew out at him: "You make your side clear. Let me
give mine. I admit all you say--except about Erik. But is
it only you, and the baby, that want me to back you up, that
demand things from me? They're all on me, the whole town!
I can feel their hot breaths on my neck! Aunt Bessie and
that horrible slavering old Uncle Whittier and Juanita and
Mrs. Westlake and Mrs. Bogart and all of them. And you
welcome them, you encourage them to drag me down into their
cave! I won't stand it! Do you hear? Now, right now, I'm
done. And it's Erik who gives me the courage. You say he
just thinks about ruches (which do not usually go on skirts,
by the way!). I tell you he thinks about God, the God that
Mrs. Bogart covers up with greasy gingham wrappers! Erik
will be a great man some day, and if I could contribute one
tiny bit to his success----"
"Wait, wait, wait now! Hold up! You're assuming that
your Erik will make good. As a matter of fact, at my age he'll
be running a one-man tailor shop in some burg about the size
of Schoenstrom."
"He will not!"
"That's what he's headed for now all right, and he's twenty-
five or -six and---- What's he done to make you think he'll
ever be anything but a pants-presser?"
"He has sensitiveness and talent----"
"Wait now! What has he actually done in the art line?
Has he done one first-class picture or--sketch, d' you call it?
Or one poem, or played the piano, or anything except gas
about what he's going to do?"
She looked thoughtful.
"Then it's a hundred to one shot that he never will. Way
I understand it, even these fellows that do something pretty
good at home and get to go to art school, there ain't more
than one out of ten of 'em, maybe one out of a hundred, that
ever get above grinding out a bum living--about as artistic
as plumbing. And when it comes down to this tailor, why,
can't you see--you that take on so about psychology--can't
you see that it's just by contrast with folks like Doc McGanum
or Lym Cass that this fellow seems artistic? Suppose you'd
met up with him first in one of these reg'lar New York studios!
You wouldn't notice him any more 'n a rabbit!"
She huddled over folded hands like a temple virgin shivering
on her knees before the thin warmth of a brazier. She could
not answer.
Kennicott rose quickly, sat on the couch, took both her
hands. "Suppose he fails--as he will! Suppose he goes back
to tailoring, and you're his wife. Is that going to be this
artistic life you've been thinking about? He's in some bum
shack, pressing pants all day, or stooped over sewing, and
having to be polite to any grouch that blows in and jams a
dirty stinking old suit in his face and says, `Here you, fix
this, and be blame quick about it.' He won't even have enough
savvy to get him a big shop. He'll pike along doing his own
work--unless you, his wife, go help him, go help him in the
shop, and stand over a table all day, pushing a big heavy iron.
Your complexion will look fine after about fifteen years of
baking that way, won't it! And you'll be humped over like
an old hag. And probably you'll live in one room back of
the shop. And then at night--oh, you'll have your artist--
sure! He'll come in stinking of gasoline, and cranky from
hard work, and hinting around that if it hadn't been for you,
he'd of gone East and been a great artist. Sure! And you'll
be entertaining his relatives---- Talk about Uncle Whit!
You'll be having some old Axel Axelberg coming in with manure
on his boots and sitting down to supper in his socks and yelling
at you, `Hurry up now, you vimmin make me sick!' Yes,
and you'll have a squalling brat every year, tugging at you
while you press clothes, and you won't love 'em like you do
Hugh up-stairs, all downy and asleep----"
"Please! Not any more!"
Her face was on his knee.
He bent to kiss her neck. "I don't want to be unfair. I
guess love is a great thing, all right. But think it would stand
much of that kind of stuff? Oh, honey, am I so bad? Can't
you like me at all? I've--I've been so fond of you!"
She snatched up his hand, she kissed it. Presently she
sobbed, "I won't ever see him again. I can't, now. The
hot living-room behind the tailor shop---- I don't love him
enough for that. And you are---- Even if I were sure of
him, sure he was the real thing, I don't think I could actually
leave you. This marriage, it weaves people together. It's
not easy to break, even when it ought to be broken."
"And do you want to break it?"
"No!"
He lifted her, carried her up-stairs, laid her on her bed,
turned to the door.
"Come kiss me," she whimpered.
He kissed her lightly and slipped away. For an hour she
heard him moving about his room, lighting a cigar, drumming
with his knuckles on a chair. She felt that he was a bulwark
between her and the darkness that grew thicker as the delayed
storm came down in sleet.
II
He was cheery and more casual than ever at breakfast. All
day she tried to devise a way of giving Erik up. Telephone?
The village central would unquestionably "listen in." A
letter? It might be found. Go to see him? Impossible.
That evening Kennicott gave her, without comment, an
envelope. The letter was signed "E. V."
I know I can't do anything but make trouble for you, I think.
I am going to Minneapolis tonight and from there as soon as I can
either to New York or Chicago. I will do as big things as I can.
I I can't write I love you too much God keep you.
Until she heard the whistle which told her that the
Minneapolis train was leaving town, she kept herself from thinking,
from moving. Then it was all over. She had no plan nor
desire for anything.
When she caught Kennicott looking at her over his newspaper
she fled to his arms, thrusting the paper aside, and for
the first time in years they were lovers. But she knew that she
still had no plan in life, save always to go along the same
streets, past the same people, to the same shops.
III
A week after Erik's going the maid startled her by
announcing, "There's a Mr. Valborg down-stairs say he vant to
see you."
She was conscious of the maid's interested stare, angry at
this shattering of the calm in which she had hidden. She
crept down, peeped into the living-room. It was not Erik
Valborg who stood there; it was a small, gray-bearded, yellow-
faced man in mucky boots, canvas jacket, and red mittens.
He glowered at her with shrewd red eyes.
"You de doc's wife?"
"Yes."
"I'm Adolph Valborg, from up by Jefferson. I'm Erik's
father."
"Oh!" He was a monkey-faced little man, and not gentle.
"What you done wit' my son?"
"I don't think I understand you."
"I t'ink you're going to understand before I get t'rough!
Where is he?"
"Why, really---- I presume that he's in Minneapolis."
"You presume!" He looked through her with a
contemptuousness such as she could not have imagined. Only an
insane contortion of spelling could portray his lyric whine, his
mangled consonants. He clamored, "Presume! Dot's a fine
word! I don't want no fine words and I don't want no more
lies! I want to know what you KNOW!"
"See here, Mr. Valborg, you may stop this bullying right
now. I'm not one of your farmwomen. I don't know where
your son is, and there's no reason why I should know." Her
defiance ran out in face of his immense flaxen stolidity. He
raised his fist, worked up his anger with the gesture, and
sneered:
"You dirty city women wit' your fine ways and fine dresses!
A father come here trying to save his boy from wickedness,
and you call him a bully! By God, I don't have to take
nothin' off you nor your husband! I ain't one of your hired
men. For one time a woman like you is going to hear de trut'
about what you are, and no fine city words to it, needer."
"Really, Mr. Valborg----"
"What you done wit' him? Heh? I'll yoost tell you what
you done! He was a good boy, even if he was a damn fool.
I want him back on de farm. He don't make enough money
tailoring. And I can't get me no hired man! I want to take
him back on de farm. And you butt in and fool wit' him and
make love wit' him, and get him to run away!"
"You are lying! It's not true that---- It's not true, and
if it were, you would have no right to speak like this."
"Don't talk foolish. I know. Ain't I heard from a fellow
dot live right here in town how you been acting wit' de boy?
I know what you done! Walking wit' him in de country!
Hiding in de woods wit' him! Yes and I guess you talk about
religion in de woods! Sure! Women like you--you're worse
dan street-walkers! Rich women like you, wit' fine husbands
and no decent work to do--and me, look at my hands, look
how I work, look at those hands! But you, oh God no, you
mustn't work, you're too fine to do decent work. You got
to play wit' young fellows, younger as you are, laughing and
rolling around and acting like de animals! You let my son
alone, d' you hear?" He was shaking his fist in her face. She
could smell the manure and sweat. "It ain't no use talkin' to
women like you. Get no trut' out of you. But next time I
go by your husband!"
He was marching into the hall. Carol flung herself on him,
her clenching hand on his hayseed-dusty shoulder. "You
horrible old man, you've always tried to turn Erik into a slave,
to fatten your pocketbook! You've sneered at him, and
overworked him, and probably you've succeeded in preventing his
ever rising above your muck-heap! And now because you can't
drag him back, you come here to vent---- Go tell my husband,
go tell him, and don't blame me when he kills you, when
my husband kills you--he will kill you----"
The man grunted, looked at her impassively, said one word,
and walked out.
She heard the word very plainly.
She did not quite reach the couch. Her knees gave way,
she pitched forward. She heard her mind saying, "You
haven't fainted. This is ridiculous. You're simply dramatizing
yourself. Get up." But she could not move. When
Kennicott arrived she was lying on the couch. His step
quickened. "What's happened, Carrie? You haven't got a
bit of blood in your face."
She clutched his arm. "You've got to be sweet to me, and
kind! I'm going to California--mountains, sea. Please don't
argue about it, because I'm going."
Quietly, "All right. We'll go. You and I. Leave the kid
here with Aunt Bessie."
"Now!"
"Well yes, just as soon as we can get away. Now don't
talk any more. Just imagine you've already started." He
smoothed her hair, and not till after supper did he continue:
"I meant it about California. But I think we better wait
three weeks or so, till I get hold of some young fellow released
from the medical corps to take my practice. And if people
are gossiping, you don't want to give them a chance by running
away. Can you stand it and face 'em for three weeks or so?"
"Yes," she said emptily.
IV
People covertly stared at her on the street. Aunt Bessie
tried to catechize her about Erik's disappearance, and it was
Kennicott who silenced the woman with a savage, "Say, are
you hinting that Carrie had anything to do with that fellow's
beating it? Then let me tell you, and you can go right out
and tell the whole bloomin' town, that Carrie and I took Val--
took Erik riding, and he asked me about getting a better job
in Minneapolis, and I advised him to go to it. . . .
Getting much sugar in at the store now?"
Guy Pollock crossed the street to be pleasant apropos of
California and new novels. Vida Sherwin dragged her to the
Jolly Seventeen. There, with every one rigidly listening, Maud
Dyer shot at Carol, "I hear Erik has left town."
Carol was amiable. "Yes, so I hear. In fact, he called
me up--told me he had been offered a lovely job in the city.
So sorry he's gone. He would have been valuable if we'd
tried to start the dramatic association again. Still, I wouldn't
be here for the association myself, because Will is all in from
work, and I'm thinking of taking him to California. Juanita--
you know the Coast so well--tell me: would you start in at
Los Angeles or San Francisco, and what are the best hotels?"
The Jolly Seventeen looked disappointed, but the Jolly
Seventeen liked to give advice, the Jolly Seventeen liked to
mention the expensive hotels at which they had stayed. (A
meal counted as a stay.) Before they could question her
again Carol escorted in with drum and fife the topic of Raymie
Wutherspoon. Vida had news from her husband. He had
been gassed in the trenches, had been in a hospital for two
weeks, had been promoted to major, was learning French.
She left Hugh with Aunt Bessie.
But for Kennicott she would have taken him. She hoped
that in some miraculous way yet unrevealed she might find
it possible to remain in California. She did not want to see
Gopher Prairie again.
The Smails were to occupy the Kennicott house, and quite
the hardest thing to endure in the month of waiting was the
series of conferences between Kennicott and Uncle Whittier
in regard to heating the garage and having the furnace flues
cleaned.
Did Carol, Kennicott inquired, wish to stop in Minneapolis
to buy new clothes?
"No! I want to get as far away as I can as soon as I can.
Let's wait till Los Angeles."
"Sure, sure! Just as you like. Cheer up! We're going
to have a large wide time, and everything 'll be different when
we come back."
V
Dusk on a snowy December afternoon. The sleeper which
would connect at Kansas City with the California train rolled
out of St. Paul with a chick-a-chick, chick-a-chick, chick-a-
chick as it crossed the other tracks. It bumped through the
factory belt, gained speed. Carol could see nothing but gray
fields, which had closed in on her all the way from Gopher
Prairie. Ahead was darkness.
"For an hour, in Minneapolis, I must have been near Erik.
He's still there, somewhere. He'll be gone when I come back.
I'll never know where he has gone."
As Kennicott switched on the seat-light she turned drearily
to the illustrations in a motion-picture magazine. _