On that night, while all Millings was preparing itself for the Greelys' dance, while Dickie, bent close to his cracked mirror, was tying his least crumpled tie with not too steady fingers, while Jim was applying to his brown crest a pomade sent to him by a girl in Cheyenne, while Babe was wondering anxiously whether green slippers could be considered a match or a foil to a dress of turquoise blue, while Girlie touched her cream-gold hair with cream-padded finger-tips, Sheila Arundel prowled about her room with hot anger and cold fear in her heart.

Nothing, perhaps, in all this mysterious world is so inscrutable a mystery as the mind of early youth. It crawls, the beetle creature, in a hard shell, hiding the dim, inner struggle of its growing wings, moving numbly as if in a torpid dream. It has forgotten the lively grub stage of childhood, and it cannot foresee the dragon-fly adventure just ahead. This blind, dumb, numb, imprisoned thing, an irritation to the nerves of every one who has to deal with it, suffers. First it suffers darkly and dimly the pain growth, and then it suffers the sharp agony of a splitting shell, the dazzling wounds of light, the torture of first moving its feeble wings. It drags itself from its shell, it clings to its perch, it finds itself born anew into the world.

When Sheila had left the studio with Sylvester, she was not yet possessed of wings. Now, the shell was cracking, the dragon-fly adventure about to begin. To a changed world, changed stars—the heavens above and the earth beneath were strange to her that night.

It had begun, this first piercing contact of reality, rudely enough. Mrs. Hudson had helped to split the protecting shell which had saved Sheila's growing dreams. Perhaps "Momma" had her instructions, perhaps it was only her own disposition left by her knowing husband to do his trick for him. Sheila had not overstated the unhappiness that Mrs. Hudson's evident dislike had caused her. In fact, she had greatly understated it. From the first moment at the station, when the hard eyes had looked her over and the harsh voice had asked about "the girl's trunk," Sheila's sensitiveness had begun to suffer. It was not easy, even with Babe's good-humored help, to go down into the kitchen and submit to Mrs. Hudson's hectoring. "Momma" had all the insolence of the underdog. Of her daughters, as of her husband, she was very much afraid. They all bullied her, Babe with noisy, cheerful effrontery—"sass" Sylvester called it—and Girlie with a soft, unyielding tyranny that had the smothering pressure of a large silk pillow. Girlie was tall and serious and beautiful, the proud possessor of what Millings called "a perfect form." She was inexpressibly slow and untidy, vain and ignorant and self-absorbed. At this time her whole being was centered upon the attentions of Jim Greely, with whom she was "keeping company." With Jim Greely in her mind, she had looked Sheila over, thin and weary Sheila in her shabby black dress, and had decided that here no danger threatened. Nevertheless she did not take chances. Sheila had been in Millings a fortnight and had not met the admirable Jim. Her attempt that morning to send the note to Dickie by Jim was exactly the action that led to the painful splitting of her shell.

She had seen from her window Sylvester's departure after breakfast. There was something in his grim, angular figure, moving carefully over the icy pavement in the direction of the hotel, that gave her a pang for Dickie. She was sure that Hudson was going to be very disagreeable in spite of her attempt to soften his anger. And she was sorry that Dickie, with his odd, wistful, friendly face and his eyes so wide and youthful and apologetic for their visions, should think that she was angry or disgusted. She wrote her letter in a little glow of rescue, and was proud of the tact of that reference to his "fall down the steps"—for she reasoned that the self-esteem of any boy of nineteen must suffer poignantly over the memory of being knocked down by his father before the eyes of a strange girl. She wrote her note and ran down the stairs, then stopped to wonder how she could get it promptly to Dickie. It was intended as a poultice to be applied after the "bawling-out," and she could not very well take it to him herself. She knew that he worked in the hotel, and the hotel was just around the corner. All that was needed was a messenger.

She was standing, pink of cheek and vague of eye, fingering her apron like a cottage child and nibbling at the corner of her envelope, the light from a window on the stairs falling on the jewel-like polish of her hair, when Girlie opened the door of the "parlor" and came out into the hall. Girlie saw her and half-closed the door. Her lazy eyes, as reflective and receptive and inexpressive as small meadow pools under a summer sky, rested upon Sheila. In the parlor a pleasant baritone voice was singing,

"Treat me nice, Miss Mandy Jane,
Treat me nice.
Don't you know I'se not to blame,
Lovers all act just the same,
Treat me nice…"

Girlie's fingers tightened on the doorknob.

"What do you want, Sheila?" she asked, and into the slow, gentle tones of her voice something had crept, something sinuous and subtle, something that slid into the world with Lilith for the eternal torment of earth's daughters.

"I want to send this note to your brother," said Sheila with the simplicity of the aristocrat. "Is that Mr. Greely? Is he going past the hotel?"

She took a step toward Jim, but Girlie held out her soft long hand.

"Give it to me. I'll ask him."

Sheila surrendered the note.

"You'd better get back to the dishes," said Girlie over her shoulder.
"Momma's kind of rushed this morning. She's helping Babe with her party
dress. I wouldn't 'a' put in my time writing notes to Dickie to-day if
I'd 'a' been you. Sort of risky."

She slid in through the jealous door and Sheila hurried along the hall to the kitchen where there was an angry clash and clack of crockery.

The kitchen was furnished almost entirely with blue-flowered oilcloth; the tables were covered with it, the floor was covered with it, the shelves were draped in it. Cold struck up through the shining, clammy surface underfoot so that while Sheila's face burned from the heat of the stove her feet were icy. The back door was warped and let in a current of frosty air over its sill, a draught that circled her ankles like cold metal. On the table in the middle of the room, "Momma" had placed an enormous tin dish-pan piled high with dirty dishes, over which she was pouring the contents of the kettle. Steam rose in clouds, half-veiling her big, fierce face which, seen through holes in the vapor, was like that of a handsome, vulgar witch.

Through the steam she shot at Sheila a cruel look. "Aren't you planning to do any work to-day, Sheila?" she asked in her voice of harsh, monotonous accents. "Here it's nine o'clock and I ain't been able to do a stroke to Babe's dress. I dunno what you was designed for in this house—an ornament on the parlor mantel, I guess."

Sheila's heart suffered one of the terrible swift enlargements of angry youth. It seemed to fill her chest and stop her breath, forcing water into her eyes. She could not speak, went quickly up and took the kettle from "Momma's" red hand.

The table at which dish-washing was done, was inconveniently high. When the big dishpan with its piled dishes topped it, Sheila's arms and back were strained over her work. She usually pulled up a box on which she stood, but now she went to work blindly, her teeth clenched, her flexible red lips set close to cover them. The Celtic fire of her Irish blood gave her eyes a sort of phosphorescent glitter. "Momma" looked at her.

"Don't show temper!" she said. "What were you doin'? Upstairs work?"

"I was writing a letter," said Sheila in a low voice, beginning to wash the plates and shrinking at the pain of scalding water.

"Hmp! Writing letters at this hour! One of your friends back East? I thought it was about time somebody was looking you up. What do your acquaintance think of you comin' West with Sylly?"

Now that she was at liberty to put a "stroke" of work; on Babe's dress, "Momma" seemed in no particular hurry to do so. She stood in the middle of the kitchen wrapping her great bony arms in her checked apron and staring at Sheila. Her eyes were like Girlie's turned to stone, as blank and blind as living eyes can be.

Sheila did not answer. She was white and her hands shook.

"Hmp!" said "Momma" again. "We aren't goin' to talk about our acquaintance, are we? Well, some folks' acquaintance don't bear talkin' about; they're either too fine or they ain't the kind that gets into decent conversation." She walked away.

Sheila did her work, holding her anger and her misery away from her, refusing to look at them, to analyze their cause. It was a very busy day. The help Babe usually gave, and "Momma's" more effectual assistance, were not to be had. Sheila cleaned up the kitchen, swept the dining-room, set the table and cooked the supper. Her exquisite French omelette and savory baked tomatoes were reviled. The West knows no cooking but its own, and, like all victims of uneducated taste, it prefers the familiar bad to the unfamiliar good.

"You've spoiled a whole can of tomatoes," said Babe.

Sylvester laughed good-humoredly: "Oh, well, Miss Sheila, you'll learn!" This, to Sheila, whose omelette had been taught her by Mimi Lolotte and whose baked tomatoes, delicately flavored with onion, were something to dream about. And she had toasted the bread golden brown and buttered it, and she had made a delectable vegetable soup! She had never before been asked to cook a meal at Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue and she was eager to please Sylvester. His comment, "You'll learn," fairly took her breath. She would not sit down with them at the table, but hurried back into the kitchen, put her scorched cheek against some cold linoleum, and cried.

By the time dinner was over and more dishes ready to be washed, the cook's wounded pride was under control. Her few tears had left no marks on her face. Babe, helping her, did not even know that there had been a shower.

Babe was excited; her chewing was more energetic even than usual. It smacked audibly.

"Say, Sheila, wot'll you wear to-night?" she yelled above the clatter.

"Wear?" repeated Sheila.

"To the dance, you silly! What did you think I meant—to bed?"

Sheila's tired pallor deepened a little. "I am not going to the dance."

"Not going?" Babe put down a plate. "What do you mean? Of course you're going! You've gotta go. Say—Momma, Pap, Girlie"—she ran, at a sort of sliding gallop across the oilcloth through the swinging door into the dining-room—"will you listen to this? Sheila says she's not going to the dance!"

"Well," said "Momma" audibly, "she'd better. I'm agoin' to put out the fires, and the house'll be about 12 below."

Sylvester murmured, "Oh, we must change that."

And Girlie said nothing.

"Well," vociferated Babe. "I call it too mean for words. I've just set my heart on her meeting some of the folks and getting to know Millings. She's been here a whole two weeks and she hasn't met a single fellow but Dickie, and he don't count, and she hasn't even got friendly with any of the girls. And I wanted her to see one of our real swell affairs. Why—just for the credit of Millings, she's gotta go."

"Why fuss her about it, if she don't want to?" Girlie's soft voice was poured like oil on the troubled billows of Babe's outburst.

"I'll see to her," Sylvester's chair scraped the floor as he rose. "I know how to manage girls. Trust Poppa!"

He pushed through the door, followed by Babe. Sheila looked up at him helplessly. She had her box under her feet, and so was not entirely hidden by the dishpan. She drew up her head and faced him.

"Mr. Hudson," she began—"please! I can't go to a dance. You know
I can't—"

"Nonsense!" said Pap. "In the bright lexicon of youth there's no such word as 'can't.' Say, girl, you can and you must. I won't have Babe crying her eyes out and myself the most unpopular man in Millings. Say, leave your dishes and go up and put on your best duds."

"That's talking," commented Babe.

In the dining-room "Momma" said, "Hmp!" and Girlie was silent.

Sheila looked at her protector. "But, you see, Mr. Hudson, I—I—it was only a month ago—" She made a gesture with her hands to show him her black dress, and her lips trembled.

Pap walked round to her and patted her shoulder. "I know," he said. "I savvy. I get you, little girl. But, say, it won't do. You've got to begin to live again and brighten up. You're only seventeen and that's no age for mourning, no, nor moping. You must learn to forget, at least, that is"—for he saw the horrified pain of her eyes—"that is, to be happy again. Yes'm. Happiness—that's got to be your middle name. Now, Miss Sheila, as a favor to me!"

Sheila put up both her hands and pushed his from her shoulder. She ran from him past Babe into the dining-room, where, as she would have sped by, "Momma" caught her by the arm.

"If you're not aimin' to please him," said "Momma" harshly, "wot are you here for?"

Sheila looked at her unseeingly, pulled herself away, and went upstairs on wings. In her room the tumult, held down all through the ugly, cluttered, drudging day, broke out and had its violent course. She flew about the room or tossed on the bed, sobbing and whispering to herself. Her wound bled freely for the first time since it had been given her by death. She called to her father, and her heart writhed in the grim talons of its loneliness. That was her first agony and then came the lesser stings of "Momma's" insults, and at last, a fear. An incomprehensible fear. She began to doubt the wisdom of her Western venture. She began to be terrified at her situation. All about her lay a frozen world, a wilderness, so many thousand miles from anything that she and her father had ever known. And in her pocket there was no penny for rescue or escape. Over her life brooded powerfully Sylvester Hudson, with his sallow face and gentle, contemplative eyes. He had brought her to his home. Surely that was an honorable and generous deed. He had given her over to the care and protection of his wife and daughters. But why didn't Mrs. Hudson like it? Why did she tighten her lips and pull her nostrils when she looked at her helper? And what was the sinister, inner meaning of those two speeches … about the purpose of her being in the house at all? "An ornament on the parlor mantel" … "aiming to please him…." Of the existence of a sinister, inner meaning, "Momma's" voice and look left no doubt.

Something was wrong. Something was hideously wrong. And to whom might she go for help or for advice? As though to answer her question came a foot-step on the stair. It was a slow, not very heavy step. It came to her door and there followed a sharp but gentle rap.

"Who is it?" asked Sheila. And suddenly she felt very weak.

"It's Pap. Open your door, girl."

She hesitated. Her head seemed to go round. Then she obeyed his gentle request.

Pap walked into the room.