Through the drawn blinds the lights in the second storey gleamed yellow.  A dim lamp burned in the deep vestibule, as in a sanctuary.  And then, as though some supernaturally penetrating ray had pierced a square hole in the lower walls, a glimpse of the interior was revealed to her, of the living room at the north end of the house.  Two figures chased one another around the centre table—­Ditmar’s children!  Was Ditmar there?  Impelled irresistibly by a curiosity overcoming repugnance and fear, she went forward slowly across the street, gained the farther pavement, stepped over the concrete coping, and stood, shivering violently, on the lawn, feeling like an interloper and a thief, yet held by morbid fascination.  The children continued to romp.  The boy was strong and swift, the girl stout and ungainly in her movements, not mistress of her body; he caught her and twisted her arm, roughly—­Janet could hear her cries through the window-=when an elderly woman entered, seized him, struggling with him.  He put out his tongue at her, but presently released his sister, who stood rubbing her arm, her lips moving in evident recrimination and complaint.  The faces of the two were plain now; the boy resembled Ditmar, but the features of the girl, heavy and stamped with self-indulgence, were evidently reminiscent of the woman who had been his wife.  Then the shade was pulled down, abruptly; and Janet, overcome by a sense of horror at her position, took to flight....

When, after covering the space of a block she slowed down and tried to imagine herself as established in that house, the stepmother of those children, she found it impossible.  Despite the fact that her attention had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the farther wall, the music rack.  Evidently the girl was learning to play.  She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot:  she was aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the woman who had been her mother had possessed—­that in her, Janet, had lacked the advantages of development.  Could it—­could it ever be developed now?  Had this love which had come to her brought her any nearer to the unknown realm of light she craved?...

CHAPTER XI

Though December had come, Sunday was like an April day before whose sunlight the night-mists of scruples and morbid fears were scattered and dispersed.  And Janet, as she fared forth from the Fillmore Street flat, felt resurging in her the divine recklessness that is the very sap of life.  The future, save of the immediate hours to come, lost its power over her.  The blue and white beauty of the sky proclaimed all things possible for the strong; and the air was vibrant with the sweet music of bells, calling her to happiness.  She was going to meet happiness, to meet love—­to meet Ditmar!  The trolley