Mrs. Westlake glanced at her curiously before she mumbled, “Yes, don’t they.”

“I’m mad, to talk this way,” Carol worried.

She had regained a feeling of social virtue by telling Juanita Haydock “how darling her lawn looked with the Japanese lanterns” when she saw that Erik was stalking her.  Though he was merely ambling about with his hands in his pockets, though he did not peep at her, she knew that he was calling her.  She sidled away from Juanita.  Erik hastened to her.  She nodded coolly (she was proud of her coolness).

“Carol!  I’ve got a wonderful chance!  Don’t know but what some ways it might be better than going East to take art.  Myrtle Cass says——­I dropped in to say howdy to Myrtle last evening, and had quite a long talk with her father, and he said he was hunting for a fellow to go to work in the flour mill and learn the whole business, and maybe become general manager.  I know something about wheat from my farming, and I worked a couple of months in the flour mill at Curlew when I got sick of tailoring.  What do you think?  You said any work was artistic if it was done by an artist.  And flour is so important.  What do you think?”

“Wait!  Wait!”

This sensitive boy would be very skilfully stamped into conformity by Lyman Cass and his sallow daughter; but did she detest the plan for this reason?  “I must be honest.  I mustn’t tamper with his future to please my vanity.”  But she had no sure vision.  She turned on him: 

“How can I decide?  It’s up to you.  Do you want to become a person like Lym Cass, or do you want to become a person like—­yes, like me!  Wait!  Don’t be flattering.  Be honest.  This is important.”

“I know.  I am a person like you now!  I mean, I want to rebel.”

“Yes.  We’re alike,” gravely.

“Only I’m not sure I can put through my schemes.  I really can’t draw much.  I guess I have pretty fair taste in fabrics, but since I’ve known you I don’t like to think about fussing with dress-designing.  But as a miller, I’d have the means—­books, piano, travel.”

“I’m going to be frank and beastly.  Don’t you realize that it isn’t just because her papa needs a bright young man in the mill that Myrtle is amiable to you?  Can’t you understand what she’ll do to you when she has you, when she sends you to church and makes you become respectable?”

He glared at her.  “I don’t know.  I suppose so.”

“You are thoroughly unstable!”

“What if I am?  Most fish out of water are!  Don’t talk like Mrs. Bogart!  How can I be anything but ’unstable’—­wandering from farm to tailor shop to books, no training, nothing but trying to make books talk to me!  Probably I’ll fail.  Oh, I know it; probably I’m uneven.  But I’m not unstable in thinking about this job in the mill—­and Myrtle.  I know what I want.  I want you!”

“Please, please, oh, please!”

“I do.  I’m not a schoolboy any more.  I want you.  If I take Myrtle, it’s to forget you.”