you. Some people even like it. A man who came
here from the city to die of lung trouble sat for
weeks looking up Greenstream valley; he couldn't
get enough morning or evening."

"But I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm going
to live, too; I've decided--"

"What?"

"To stop teaching. When the term's over, in a
few weeks, I'm going to take the money I make and
go to New York. It will be just enough to get me
there and buy me a pretty hat, with a few dollars
over. I am going with those into a cafe and get a
bottle of champagne, and pick out the man with
the best clothes. I'll tell him I'm a poor school-teacher
from the South who came to New York to
meet a man who promised to marry me, but who had
not kept his word. I'll tell him that I'm good -- I
can, you know; no man has ever fooled anything out
of me -- and that I bought wine to get the courage to
kill myself."

"It sounds right smart," he admitted; "you can
do it too, you can lie like hell. But," he added importantly,
"I don't know that I will let you." This,
he assured himself, was purely experimental. He
had decided nothing; his course in the future was
hidden from him absolutely. He thought discontentedly
of his home, of the imagined long, dun vista
of years.

[[246]]

p245 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p246w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p247

v?