She was one of the unfortunate who love beauty, who are condemned to dwell in exile, unacquainted with what they love.  Desire was incandescent within her breast.  Desire for what?  It would have been some relief to know.  She could not, like Lise, find joy and forgetfulness at dance halls, at the “movies,” at Slattery’s Riverside Park in summer, in “joy rides” with the Max Wylies of Hampton.  And beside, the Max Wylies were afraid of her.  If at times she wished for wealth, it was because wealth held the magic of emancipation from surroundings against which her soul revolted.  Vividly idealized but unconfided was the memory of a seaside village, the scene of one of the brief sojourns of her childhood, where the air was fragrant with the breath of salt marshes, where she recalled, through the vines of a porch, a shining glimpse of the sea at the end of a little street....

Next to Pappas Brothers was the grey wooden building of Mule Spinners’ Hall, that elite organization of skilled labour, and underneath it the store of Johnny Tiernan, its windows piled up with stoves and stovepipes, sheet iron and cooking utensils.  Mr. Tiernan, like the Greeks, was happy, too:  unlike the Greeks, he never appeared to be busy, and yet he throve.  He was very proud of the business in which he had invested his savings, but he seemed to have other affairs lying blithely on his mind, affairs of moment to the community, as the frequent presence of the huge policemen, aldermen, and other important looking persons bore witness.  He hailed by name Italians, Greeks, Belgians, Syrians, and “French”; he hailed Janet, too, with respectful cheerfulness, taking off his hat.  He possessed the rare, warm vitality that is irresistible.  A native of Hampton, still in his thirties, his sharp little nose and twinkling blue eyes proclaimed the wisdom that is born and not made; his stiff hair had a twist like the bristles in the cleaning rod of a gun.

He gave Janet the odd impression that he understood her.  And she did not understand herself!

By the time she reached the Common the winter sun, as though red from exertion, had begun to dispel the smoke and heavy morning mists.  She disliked winter, the lumpy brown turf mildewed by the frost, but one day she was moved by a quality, hitherto unsuspected, in the delicate tracery against the sky made by the slender branches of the great elms and maples.  She halted on the pavement, her eyes raised, heedless of passers-by, feeling within her a throb of the longing that could be so oddly and unexpectedly aroused.

Her way lay along Faber Street, the main artery of Hampton, a wide strip of asphalt threaded with car tracks, lined on both sides with incongruous edifices indicative of a rapid, undiscriminating, and artless prosperity.  There were long stretches of “ten foot” buildings, so called on account of the single story, their height deceptively enhanced by the superimposition of huge and gaudy signs, one on