Then her new life began, the rapture ceased, and Myra Craig, like so many others, found that her existence in the city was just as narrow as it had been in the town.  In some ways, more narrow.  She was quite without friends, quite without neighborhood.  Her day consisted in teaching from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M., correcting papers and planning lessons and making reports until well into the evening, sometimes until late in the night, and meeting at meals unfriendly people that she disliked.  Her class was composed of rather stupid, rather dirty children.  They smelled—­a thing she never forgave them.  And what could one woman do with fifty or sixty children?  The class was at least three times too big for real teaching, and so almost inevitably a large part of the work became routine—­a grind that spoiled her temper and embittered her heart.  Her fellow-teachers were an ignorant lot; the principal himself she thought the biggest lump of stupidity she had ever met—­a man demanding letter-perfection and caring not one rap for the growth of children.  Her week-ends were her only relief, and she used these partly for resting and partly in going to theater and concert.

Such for ten years—­with summers spent at home—­was Myra’s life.  It was bounded by a few familiar streets; it was largely routine; it was hard and bitter; and it had no future.  It was anything but what she had dreamed.  New York was anything but what she had dreamed.  She never saw again that Vision of the City; never felt again that throb of life, that sense of pioneering and of human power.  And yet in those years Myra had developed.  She was thrown back on books for friendship, and through these and through hard work and through very routine she developed personality—­grew sensitive, mentally quick, metropolitan.  She had, as it were, her own personal flavor—­one felt in her presence a difference, a uniqueness quite precious and exquisite.

And then one day she had gone to the printery and met a man, who was homely, rough, simple, and, in spite of her revulsion from these qualities, was immensely drawn to him.  Something deeper than the veneer of her culture overpowered her.  She had almost forgotten sex in the aridity of those ten years; she had almost become a dried old maid; but now by the new color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes, the fresh rapidity of her blood, and through the wonder of the world having become more light, as if there were two suns in the sky instead of one—­yes, through the fact that she lived now at ten human-power instead of one—­her heart told her exultingly, “You are a woman.”

Girlhood had come again, but girlhood made all woman by immense tenderness, by the up-rush of a wild love, and by the awakening of all her instincts of home and mating and child-bearing.  And then had come that mad, wind-blown twilight at the riverside when the spirit of life had drenched her and she had become grave, tender, and wrought of all lovely power.  Joe was just a boy then to her, and her great woman-heart drew him in and sheltered him in the sacred warmth of her being.  In that moment she had reached the highest point of her womanhood, a new unfolding, a new release.  And then had come horror, and he had been swept away from her—­one glimpse of his numb, ghastly face, and he was gone.