Myra Craig used to dream at night that the fifty-seven members of her class arose from their desks with wild shrieks and danced a war-dance about her. This paralyzed her throat, her hands, and her feet, and she could only stand, flooded with horror, awaiting the arrival of the school principal and disgrace. Out of this teacher's dream she always awoke disgusted with school-work.

Myra came from Fall River—her parents still lived there—came when she was ten years younger, to seek her fortune in the great city. New York had drawn her as it draws all the youth of the land, for youth lusts for life and rushes eagerly to the spot where life is most intense and most exciting. The romance of crowds, of wealth, of art, of concentrated pleasure and concentrated vice, of immense money-power, the very architecture of the world-city, the maelstrom of people, drew the young Fall River woman irresistibly. She did not want the even and smooth future of a little town; she wanted to plunge into the hazardous interweaving of the destinies of millions of people. She wanted to grasp at some of the magic opportunities of the city. She wanted a career.

And so she came. Early that June morning she left her cabin on the Sound steamboat and went out on deck, and then she had unfolded to her the most thrilling scene of the earth. Gazing, almost panting with excitement, it seemed to her that the nature she had known—the hills and fields of New England—shrank to littleness. First there was all about her the sway of the East River, golden—flecked with the morning sun, which glowed through a thin haze. From either shore a city climbed, topped with steeples and mill chimneys—floods of tenements and homes. Then the boat swept under the enormous steel bridges which seemed upheld by some invisible power and throbbed with life above them. And then, finally, came the Vision of the City. The wide expanse of rolling, slapping water was busy with innumerable harbor craft, crowded ferries, puffing tugs, each wafting its plume of smoke and white steam; but from those waters rose tier after tier of square-set skyscrapers climbing in an irregular hill to the thin peak of the highest tower. In the golden haze, shot with sun, the whole block of towers loomed distant, gigantic, shadowy, unreal—a magic city floating on the waters of the morning. Windows flashed, spirals of white smoke spun thin from the far roofs. Myra thought of those skyscrapers as the big brothers of the island gazing out over the Atlantic.

The boat rounded the tip of the island, furrowing the broad surface of the bay, which seemed as the floor of a stage before that lifting huge sky-lost amphitheater. Every advance changed the many-faceted beauty of New York, and Myra, gazing, had one glimpse across little green Battery Park up the deep twilit caÑon of Broadway, the city's spine. The young woman was moved to tears. She seemed to slough off at that moment the church of her youth, averring that New York was too big for a creed. It was the great human outworking; the organism of the mighty many. It seemed a miracle that all this splendor and wonder had been wrought by human hands. Surely human nature was great—greater than she had dreamed. If creatures like herself had wrought this, then she was more than she had dared to imagine, "deeper than ever plummet had sounded." She felt new courage, new faith. She wanted to leave the boat and merge with those buildings and those swarming streets. She was proud of the great captains who had engineered this masswork, proud of the powers that ruled this immensity.

But beyond all she felt the city's livingness. The air seemed charged with human activity, with toil-pulsations. She was all crowded about with human beings, and felt the mystery of what might be termed crowd-touch. Here, surely, was life—life thick, happy, busy, daring, ideal. Here was pioneering—a reaching forth to a throbbing future. So, as the boat landed, she mentally identified herself with this city, labeled herself New-Yorker, and became one of its millions.

Her rapture lasted throughout her first stay. She tasted romance glancing in shop windows or moving in a crowd or riding in an elevated train. A letter of introduction to a friend of her mother's secured her a companion, who "showed her the sights" and helped her choose her boarding-house in East Eightieth Street. And then came the examinations for public-school teaching; and after these she went home for the summer, returning to New York in the fall.

Then her new life began, the rapture ceased, and Myra Craig, like so many others, found that her existence in the city was just as narrow as it had been in the town. In some ways, more narrow. She was quite without friends, quite without neighborhood. Her day consisted in teaching from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M., correcting papers and planning lessons and making reports until well into the evening, sometimes until late in the night, and meeting at meals unfriendly people that she disliked. Her class was composed of rather stupid, rather dirty children. They smelled—a thing she never forgave them. And what could one woman do with fifty or sixty children? The class was at least three times too big for real teaching, and so almost inevitably a large part of the work became routine—a grind that spoiled her temper and embittered her heart. Her fellow-teachers were an ignorant lot; the principal himself she thought the biggest lump of stupidity she had ever met—a man demanding letter-perfection and caring not one rap for the growth of children. Her week-ends were her only relief, and she used these partly for resting and partly in going to theater and concert.

Such for ten years—with summers spent at home—was Myra's life. It was bounded by a few familiar streets; it was largely routine; it was hard and bitter; and it had no future. It was anything but what she had dreamed. New York was anything but what she had dreamed. She never saw again that Vision of the City; never felt again that throb of life, that sense of pioneering and of human power. And yet in those years Myra had developed. She was thrown back on books for friendship, and through these and through hard work and through very routine she developed personality—grew sensitive, mentally quick, metropolitan. She had, as it were, her own personal flavor—one felt in her presence a difference, a uniqueness quite precious and exquisite.

And then one day she had gone to the printery and met a man, who was homely, rough, simple, and, in spite of her revulsion from these qualities, was immensely drawn to him. Something deeper than the veneer of her culture overpowered her. She had almost forgotten sex in the aridity of those ten years; she had almost become a dried old maid; but now by the new color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes, the fresh rapidity of her blood, and through the wonder of the world having become more light, as if there were two suns in the sky instead of one—yes, through the fact that she lived now at ten human-power instead of one—her heart told her exultingly, "You are a woman."

Girlhood had come again, but girlhood made all woman by immense tenderness, by the up-rush of a wild love, and by the awakening of all her instincts of home and mating and child-bearing. And then had come that mad, wind-blown twilight at the riverside when the spirit of life had drenched her and she had become grave, tender, and wrought of all lovely power. Joe was just a boy then to her, and her great woman-heart drew him in and sheltered him in the sacred warmth of her being. In that moment she had reached the highest point of her womanhood, a new unfolding, a new release. And then had come horror, and he had been swept away from her—one glimpse of his numb, ghastly face, and he was gone.

It was Fannie Lemick that took her home. She only knew that she was being led away, while crashing through her mind went flames, smoke, the throbbing of the engines, and the words: "I may never see you again … dead girls…." All that night she tossed about in a horror, and in the morning she feverishly read the terrible news until she thought she must swoon away. She became sick; the landlady had to come up and help her; the doctor had to be sent for, and he had told her that this nervous breakdown had been long overdue; she had been working under too great a strain; it only needed some shock to break her.

But while she lay in a sick fever her heart went out to Joe. If she only could be at his side, nerve him to the fight, protect him and soothe him. She knew that his whole old life had been consumed in that fire, and lay in ruins, and she felt subtly that he had been taken from her. By one blow, at the very moment of the miracle of their love, they had been torn from each other. She did not want to live; she hoped that she had some serious disease that would kill her.

But she did live; she became better, and then in a mood of passionate tenderness she wrote her first little love-letter to Joe. She went about, doing her school-work and bearing the weight of intolerable lonely days, and he had written twice, just a word to her, a word of delay. What kept him? What was he doing? She read of his testimony at the inquest and became indignant because he blamed himself. Who was to blame for such an accident? It was not his cigarette that had started the blaze. In her overwrought condition she passed from a terrible love to a sharp hate, and back and forth. Was he a fool or was he more noble than she could fathom? He should have seen her sooner, he should not have left her a prey to her morbid thoughts. Time and again she became convinced that he had ceased to love her, that he was more concerned over his burnt printery. She twisted his letters against him. She would sit in her room trying to work at her school papers, and suddenly she would clench her fists, turn pale, and stare despairingly at the blank wall.

Day after day she waited, starting up every time she heard the postman's whistle and the ringing of the bell. And then at last one night, as she paced up and down the narrow white little room, she heard the landlady climbing the stairs, advancing along the hall, and there was a sharp rap. She felt faint and dizzy, flung open the door, took the letter, and sank down on the bed, hardly daring to open it.

It was brief and cold:

Dear Myra,—I know you are up early, so I am coming around at seven to-morrow morning—I'll be out in the street and wait for you. We can go to the Park. I have some serious problems to lay before you.

Joe.

"Serious problems!" She understood. He was paving the way for renouncing her. Perhaps it was a money matter—he thought he ought not marry on a reduced income. Or perhaps he found he didn't love her. For hours she sat there with the letter crumpled in her hand, frozen, inert, until she was incapable of feeling or thinking. So he was coming at seven. He took it for granted that she would be ready to see him—would be eager to walk in the Park with him. Well, what if she didn't go? A fine letter that, after that half-hour at the riverside. A love-letter! She laughed bitterly. And then her heart seemed to break within her. Life was too hard. Why had she ever left the peace and quiet of Fall River? Why had she come down to the cruel, careless, vicious city to be ground up in a wholesale school system and then to break her heart for an uncouth, half-educated printer? It was all too hard, too cruel. Why had she been born to suffer so? Why must she tingle now with pain, when in a few years she would be unfeeling dust again? Among all the millions of the people of the earth, among all the life of earth and the circling million scattered worlds, she felt utterly isolated, defrauded, betrayed. Life was a terrible gift, and she did not want it. This whirl of emotion rose and rose in her, went insanely through her brain, and, becoming intolerable, suddenly ceased and left her careless, numb, and hard.

She arose mechanically and looked in the glass at herself. Her face was haggard.

"I'm getting homely," she thought, and quietly went to bed.

But in the night she awoke to a swift frenzy of joy. He was coming. After all, he was coming. She would see him. She would be near him again. Yes, how she loved him! loved with all her nature. It was the intensity of her love that made her hate. And she lay throbbing with joy, her whole being quivering with desire for him. He was hers, after all. It was the woman's part to forgive and forget.

But when the morning broke, and she arose in her nightgown and sat on the chair at the window, smoothing out and rereading the letter, her doubts returned. He was coming to renounce her. He would make all sorts of plausible excuses, he would be remorseful and penitent, but it all came to the same end. Why should she go and meet him to be humiliated in this way? She would not go.

Yet she rose and dressed with unusual care and tried to smile back the radiance of her face, and fixed her hair this way and that in a pitiful attempt to take away the sharpness of her expression, and when her little clock showed seven she put on hat and coat with trembling hands and went swiftly down and out at the front door. She was shaking with terrible emotions, fire filled and raged in her breast, and she had to bite her lip to keep it still.

The city flashed before her in all the sparkle of October, the air tingled, and in the early morning light the houses, the street, looked as bright and fresh as young school-children washed, combed, bright-eyed, new with sleep, and up from roofs went magic veilings of flimsy smoke. Down the avenues clanged cars black with mechanics, clerks, and shop-girls on the way to work; people streamed hurrying to their day's toil. The city was awake, shaking in every part of her with glad breakfast and the rush to activity. What colossal forces swinging in, swinging out of the metropolis in long pulsations of freight and ship and electricity! Wall Street would roar, the skyscrapers swarm, the schools drone and murmur and sing, the mills grind and rattle, and the six continents and the seven seas would pulse their blood into the city and be flushed by her radiating tides. Into this hidden activity Myra stepped, deaf and blind to all but the clamor of her heart and a single man walking like a black pawn aureoled in the low early sunlight.

She came down slowly, as he came up. She glanced at his face. She was shocked by its suffering, its gray age. He looked quite shabby in his long frayed coat, his unpolished shoes, his gray slouch hat—shabby and homely, and ill-proportioned, stooping a little, his rough shock of hair framing the furrowed face and sunken melancholy eyes. And it was for this man that she had been breaking her heart! Yet, at the moment there swept over her an awful surge of passion, so strong that she could have seized him in her arms and died in his embrace.

He, in turn, saw how white and set her face was, how condemnatory. He had come to her almost ready to throw his plans overboard and cleave to her—for a day and a night that side of his nature had dominated, expunging all else, driving him to her, demanding that he grasp her magic presence, her womanly splendor. This alone was real, and all the rest fantastic. And he had walked up and down the street with all the October morning singing in his blood; the world was glorious again and he was young; he would take her, he would forget all else, and they would go off somewhere in the wilderness and really live. He had never lived yet. He thirsted for life, he thirsted for all this woman could give him. And now the condemnation in her face choked him off, made her a stranger, separated them, made it hard to speak to her.

He cried in a low voice:

"Myra!"

The word was charged with genuine passion, and she became more pale, and stood unable to find her tongue, her lips quivering painfully.

Then suddenly there was a nervous overflow.

"You wanted to walk in the Park," she blurted in a cold, uneven voice. "We'd better be going then. I won't have much time. I've got to be at school early."

She started off, and he strode beside her. They walked in a strange slow silence, each charged with inexpressible, conflicting emotions, and each waiting for the other. This strain was impossible, and finally Joe began speaking in low tones.

"I know it seems queer that I haven't been to see you … but you'll understand, I couldn't. There was so much to do…."

He stopped, and then again came the cold, uneven voice:

"You could have found a moment."

They went on in silence, and entered the Park, following the walk where it swept its curve alongside the tree-arched roadway, past low green hills to the right and the sinking lawns to the left, crossed the roadway, and climbed the steep path that gave on to the Ramble—that twisty little wilderness in the heart of the city, that remote, wild, magic tangle.

A little pond lay in the very center of it, all deep with the blue sky, and golden October gloried all about it—swaying in wild-tinted treetops, blowing in dry leaves, sparkling on every spot of wet, and all suffused and splashed and strangely fresh with the low, red, radiant sunlight. There was splendor in the place, and the air dripped with glorious life, and through it all went the lovers, silent, estranged, pitiable.

"We can sit here," said Joe.

It was a bench under a tree, facing the pond. They sat down, each gazing on the ground, and the leaves dropped on them, and squirrels ran up to them, tufted their tails and begged for peanuts with lustrous beady eyes, and now and then some early walker or some girl or man on the way to work swung lustily past and disappeared in foliage and far low vistas of tree trunks.

The suspense became intolerable again. Joe turned a little to her.

"Myra!"

She was trembling; a moment more she would be in his arms, sobbing, forgiving him. But she hurried on in an unnatural way.

"You wanted to speak to me—I'm waiting. Why don't you speak?"

It was a blow in the face; his own voice hardened then.

"You're making it very hard for me."

She said nothing, and he had to go on.

"After the fire—" his voice snapped, and it was a space before he went on, "I felt I was guilty…. I went to a mass-meeting and one of the speakers accused the … class I belong to … of failing in their duty…. She said …"

Myra spoke sharply:

"Who said?"

"Miss Heffer."

"Oh!"

Joe felt suddenly silenced. Something unpleasant was creeping in between them. He did not know enough of women, either, to divine how Myra was suffering, to know that she had reached a nervous pitch where she was hardly responsible for what she thought and said. He went on blunderingly:

"I felt that I was accused… I felt that I had to make reparation to the toilers, … had to spend my life making conditions better…. You see this country has reached a crisis …"

It was all gibberish to her.

"Exactly what do you mean?" she asked, sharply.

"I mean"—he fumbled for words—"I must go and live among the poor and arouse them and teach them of the great change that is taking place…."

She laughed strangely.

"Oh—an uplifter, settlement work, charity work—"

He was stupefied.

"Myra, can't you see—"

"Yes, I see," she said, raising her voice a little; "you're going to live in the slums and you want me to release you. I do. Anything else?"

She was making something sordid of his beautiful dream, and she was startlingly direct. He was cut to the heart.

"You're making it impossible," he began.

She laughed a little, stroking down her muff.

"So you're going to live among the poor … and you didn't dare come and tell me…."

"I had no right to involve you until I was sure…."

"And now you're sure…."

"No," he cried.

She raised her voice a little again:

"And I wrote asking if I couldn't help you. Women are fools…."

He sat searching about for something to say. His heart was like cold lead in his breast; his head ached. He felt her side of the case very vividly, and how could she ever understand?

Then, as she sat there her head seemed to explode, and she spoke hurriedly, incoherently:

"It's time to get to school. I want to go alone. Good-by."

She rose and went off rapidly.

"Myra!" he cried, leaping up, but she only accelerated her pace….

Instead of going to school she went straight home, flung herself full-length on the bed, buried her face in the pillow, and shook for a long time with terrible tearless sobs. Her life was ruined within her.