My other roommate was of the Madonna type.  In our class she would have been called an invalid.  Her hands trembled, she was constantly in pain, and her nerves were rebellious without frequent doses of bromide.  We found her one night lying in a heap on the bed, her moans having called us to her aid.  It was the pain in her back that never stopped, the ache between her shoulders, the din of the machines in her ears, the vibration, the strain of incessant hours upon her tired nerves.  We fixed her up as best we could, and the next day at quarter before seven she was, like the rest of us, bending over her machine again.  She had been a school-teacher, after passing the necessary examination at the Geneseo Normal School.  She could not say why school-teaching was uncongenial to her, except that the children “made her nervous” and she wanted to try factory work.  Her father was a cheese manufacturer up in the Genesee Valley.  She might have lived quietly at home, but she disliked to be a dependent.  She was of the mystic, sentimental type.  She had a broad forehead, straight auburn hair, a clear-cut mouth, whose sharp curves gave it sweetness.  Though her large frame indicated clearly an Anglo-Saxon lineage, there was nothing of the sport about her.  She had never learned to skate or swim, but she could sit and watch the hills all day long.  Her clothes had an esthetic touch.  Mingled with her nervous determination there was a sentimental yearning.  She was an idealist, impelled by some controlling emotion which was the mainspring of her life.

Little by little we became friends.  Our common weariness brought us often together after supper in a listless, confidential mood before the parlour stove.  We let the conversation drift inevitably toward the strong current that was marking her with a touch of melancholy, like all those of her type whose emotional natures are an enchanted mirror, reflecting visions that have no place in reality.  We talked about blondes and brunettes, tall men and short men, our favourite man’s name; and gradually the impersonal became personal, the ideal took form.  Her voice, like a broken lute that might have given sweet sounds, related the story.  It was inevitable that she should love a dreamer like herself.  Nature had imbued her with a hopeless yearning.  She slipped a gold locket from a chain on her throat.  It framed her hero’s picture, the source of her courage, the embodiment of her heroic energy:  a man of thirty, who had failed at everything; good-looking, refined, a personage in real life who resembled the inhabitants of her enchanted mirror.  In the story she told there were stars and twilight, summer evenings, walks, talks, hopes and vague projects.  Any practical questions I felt ready to ask would have sounded coarse.  The little school-teacher with shattered nerves embodied a hope that was more to her than meat and drink and money.  She was of those who do not live by bread alone.