I answered him very carefully. "A man, maybe. But not the woman." "What?" said Gerald blankly. "I'll make myself," I said. "And then maybe I'll pick out a man who has made himself. And if we love each other, we'll marry." "But," he said, "the sweetness of having you fit, day after day, into the dream that I have of what you are going to be--" So then I told him. "Gerald," I said, "I wasn't meant to live your life. I've got to find my job in the world--whatever that is. I've got to get away from you--from you all--from everybody, Gerald!" "Good heavens!" he said. "Cosma, you're tired--you're nervous--" I looked at him quite calmly. "If," I said, "when I state some conviction of mine, any man ever tells me again that I'm nervous, I'll tell him he's--he's _drunk_. There's just as much sense in it." I gave him both my hands. "Gerald," I said, "you dear man, your life isn't my life. I don't want it to be my life. That's all." Afterward, when I went up-stairs, with that peculiar, heavy lonesomeness that comes from the withdrawal of this particular interest in this particular way, I wondered if the life I was planning was made up of such withdrawals, such hurts, such vacancies. And then I remembered the way I had felt when I walked home from the meeting that Sunday night; and it seemed to me there are ways of happiness in the world beside which one can hardly count some of the ways of pleasure that one calls happiness now. In my room that night I found a parcel. It was roughly wrapped in paper that had been used before. From it fell a white scarf and a paper. "DEAR COSSY (the letter was written in pencil) I am going to send you this whether you get the prize or whether you don't. If you didn't get it, I guess you need the present worse. It's the nubia I wore on my wedding trip. I sha'n't want it any more. I enclose one dollar and your Pa sends one dollar to get you something with for yourself. With love, "MA. "P. S. My one dollar is egg money, so it's my own it ain't from him I raised them." Suddenly, as I read, there came over me the first real longing that I had ever had in my life for Katytown, and for home. One more incident belonged to Savage Prize Oration Day. Neither Miss Manners nor Miss Spot said anything to me about my oration. But in commencement week Mrs. Carney came in to see me. "Cosma," she said, "I have a letter here which I must show you." I read the letter. It said: "Dear Mrs. Carney: "After due consideration we deem it advisable to inform you that in our judgment the spirit and attitude of Cosma Wakely are not in conformity with the spirit of our school.