possible that Hannah had ever known longings, had ever been wrung by inexpressible desires,—­desires in which the undiscovered spiritual was so alarmingly compounded with the undiscovered physical.  She would have died rather than speak to Hannah of these unfulfilled experiences, and the mere thought of confiding them to any person appalled her.  Even if there existed some wonderful, understanding being to whom she might be able thus to empty her soul, the thought of the ecstasy of that kenosis was too troubling to be dwelt upon.

She had tried reading, with unfortunate results,—­perhaps because no Virgil had as yet appeared to guide her through the mysteries of that realm.  Her schooling had failed to instil into her a discriminating taste for literature; and when, on occasions, she had entered the Public Library opposite the Common it had been to stare hopelessly at rows of books whose authors and titles offered no clue to their contents.  Her few choices had not been happy, they had failed to interest and thrill...

Of the Bumpus family Lise alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement in the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims.  Lise went out into it, became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,—­a tendency Hannah found unaccountable, and against which even her stoicism was not wholly proof.  Scarce an evening went by without an expression of uneasiness from Hannah.

“She didn’t happen to mention where she was going, did she, Janet?” Hannah would query, when she had finished her work and put on her spectacles to read the Banner.

“To the movies, I suppose,” Janet would reply.  Although well aware that her sister indulged in other distractions, she thought it useless to add to Hannah’s disquietude.  And if she had little patience with Lise, she had less with the helpless attitude of her parents.

“Well,” Hannah would add, “I never can get used to her going out nights the way she does, and with young men and women I don’t know anything about.  I wasn’t brought up that way.  But as long as she’s got to work for a living I guess there’s no help for it.”

And she would glance at Edward.  It was obviously due to his inability adequately to cope with modern conditions that his daughters were forced to toil, but this was the nearest she ever came to reproaching him.  If he heard, he acquiesced humbly, and in silence:  more often than not he was oblivious, buried in the mazes of the Bumpus family history, his papers spread out on the red cloth of the dining-room table, under the lamp.  Sometimes in his simplicity and with the enthusiasm that demands listeners he would read aloud to them a letter, recently received from a distant kinsman, an Alpheus Bumpus, let us say, who had migrated to California in search of wealth and fame, and who had found neither.  In spite of age and misfortunes, the liberal attitude of these western members of the family was always a matter of perplexity to Edward.