So she was thrown at Erik.

III

She awoke at ebb-time, at three of the morning, woke sharply and fully; and sharply and coldly as her father pronouncing sentence on a cruel swindler she gave judgment: 

“A pitiful and tawdry love-affair.

“No splendor, no defiance.  A self-deceived little woman whispering in corners with a pretentious little man.

“No, he is not.  He is fine.  Aspiring.  It’s not his fault.  His eyes are sweet when he looks at me.  Sweet, so sweet.”

She pitied herself that her romance should be pitiful; she sighed that in this colorless hour, to this austere self, it should seem tawdry.

Then, in a very great desire of rebellion and unleashing of all her hatreds, “The pettier and more tawdry it is, the more blame to Main Street.  It shows how much I’ve been longing to escape.  Any way out!  Any humility so long as I can flee.  Main Street has done this to me.  I came here eager for nobilities, ready for work, and now——­Any way out.

“I came trusting them.  They beat me with rods of dullness.  They don’t know, they don’t understand how agonizing their complacent dullness is.  Like ants and August sun on a wound.

“Tawdry!  Pitiful!  Carol—­the clean girl that used to walk so fast!—­sneaking and tittering in dark corners, being sentimental and jealous at church suppers!”

At breakfast-time her agonies were night-blurred, and persisted only as a nervous irresolution.

IV

Few of the aristocrats of the Jolly Seventeen attended the humble folk-meets of the Baptist and Methodist church suppers, where the Willis Woodfords, the Dillons, the Champ Perrys, Oleson the butcher, Brad Bemis the tinsmith, and Deacon Pierson found release from loneliness.  But all of the smart set went to the lawn-festivals of the Episcopal Church, and were reprovingly polite to outsiders.

The Harry Haydocks gave the last lawn-festival of the season; a splendor of Japanese lanterns and card-tables and chicken patties and Neapolitan ice-cream.  Erik was no longer entirely an outsider.  He was eating his ice-cream with a group of the people most solidly “in”—­the Dyers, Myrtle Cass, Guy Pollock, the Jackson Elders.  The Haydocks themselves kept aloof, but the others tolerated him.  He would never, Carol fancied, be one of the town pillars, because he was not orthodox in hunting and motoring and poker.  But he was winning approbation by his liveliness, his gaiety—­the qualities least important in him.

When the group summoned Carol she made several very well-taken points in regard to the weather.

Myrtle cried to Erik, “Come on!  We don’t belong with these old folks.  I want to make you ’quainted with the jolliest girl, she comes from Wakamin, she’s staying with Mary Howland.”

Carol saw him being profuse to the guest from Wakamin.  She saw him confidentially strolling with Myrtle.  She burst out to Mrs. Westlake, “Valborg and Myrtle seem to have quite a crush on each other.”