The woman's face was bitter, her body tense.

"I'll grow old and die in places like this," she
continued passionately; "I'll grow old and die in
pokey, little schools, and wear prim calico dresses,
with a remade old white mull for commencements.
I'll never hear anything but twice two, and Persia
is bounded on the north by, -- with all the world
beyond, Paris and London and Egypt, for the lucky.
I want to live," she cried to Gordon Makimmon,
idly curious, to the still branches of the apple trees,
the vista of village half-hid in dusty foliage. "I
want to see things, things different, not these dumb,
depressing mountains. I want to see life!"

Gordon had a swift memory of a city street grey
in a reddening flood of dawn, of his own voice in a
reddening flood of dawn, of his own voice mumbling
out of an overwhelming, nauseous desperation
that same determination, desire. "Perhaps," he
ventured, "you wouldn't think so much of it when
you'd seen it."

"Wouldn't I?" she exclaimed; "oh, wouldn't I?
-- smart crowds and gay streets and shops on fire
with jewels. That's where I belong; I'd show them;
I've got a style, if I only had a chance! I've got a
figure... shoulders."

He appraised in a veiled glance her physical pretensions.
He discovered, to his surprise, that she
had "shoulders"; her body resembled her hands, it

[[135]]

p134 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p135w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p136

v?