She could not go on enduring the hidden derision.  She wanted to flee.  She wanted to hide in the generous indifference of cities.  She practised saying to Kennicott, “Think perhaps I’ll run down to St. Paul for a few days.”  But she could not trust herself to say it carelessly; could not abide his certain questioning.

Reform the town?  All she wanted was to be tolerated!

She could not look directly at people.  She flushed and winced before citizens who a week ago had been amusing objects of study, and in their good-mornings she heard a cruel sniggering.

She encountered Juanita Haydock at Ole Jenson’s grocery.  She besought, “Oh, how do you do!  Heavens, what beautiful celery that is!”

“Yes, doesn’t it look fresh.  Harry simply has to have his celery on Sunday, drat the man!”

Carol hastened out of the shop exulting, “She didn’t make fun of me. . . .  Did she?”

In a week she had recovered from consciousness of insecurity, of shame and whispering notoriety, but she kept her habit of avoiding people.  She walked the streets with her head down.  When she spied Mrs. McGanum or Mrs. Dyer ahead she crossed over with an elaborate pretense of looking at a billboard.  Always she was acting, for the benefit of every one she saw—­and for the benefit of the ambushed leering eyes which she did not see.

She perceived that Vida Sherwin had told the truth.  Whether she entered a store, or swept the back porch, or stood at the bay-window in the living-room, the village peeped at her.  Once she had swung along the street triumphant in making a home.  Now she glanced at each house, and felt, when she was safely home, that she had won past a thousand enemies armed with ridicule.  She told herself that her sensitiveness was preposterous, but daily she was thrown into panic.  She saw curtains slide back into innocent smoothness.  Old women who had been entering their houses slipped out again to stare at her—­in the wintry quiet she could hear them tiptoeing on their porches.  When she had for a blessed hour forgotten the searchlight, when she was scampering through a chill dusk, happy in yellow windows against gray night, her heart checked as she realized that a head covered with a shawl was thrust up over a snow-tipped bush to watch her.

She admitted that she was taking herself too seriously; that villagers gape at every one.  She became placid, and thought well of her philosophy.  But next morning she had a shock of shame as she entered Ludelmeyer’s.  The grocer, his clerk, and neurotic Mrs. Dave Dyer had been giggling about something.  They halted, looked embarrassed, babbled about onions.  Carol felt guilty.  That evening when Kennicott took her to call on the crochety Lyman Casses, their hosts seemed flustered at their arrival.  Kennicott jovially hooted, “What makes you so hang-dog, Lym?” The Casses tittered feebly.