"I am sorry for her," cried Eleanor to herself. "I am sorry, but I cannot listen to her." In the middle of a hot August afternoon she determined to go for a walk. If she went a long distance and came home tired and drank no coffee for her supper, it might be that she could sleep through the night. She had no goal in view; she would simply go on until she was tired and then turn for the long walk home. As she dressed she reproached herself for her weakness. She would persuade her mother to go away from Waltonville; it was said that time and new scenes cured troubles of the mind. They would go to a larger place where no one would inquire into their business or even know them. "But I don't want to know anything about it!" said Eleanor to herself. "I don't want her to tell me! If she tells me I shall die!" Standing before her mirror she brushed her dark hair with long, sweeping motions of her arm. Her eyes met their reflection. "I am beautiful," said Eleanor. "There is some satisfaction in that." Then her cheeks crimsoned. Neither her eyes nor her dark hair nor her height had come from her mother--from whom had they come? She gave up her intention to walk and threw herself face downward upon her bed. "I will not hear anything about it," said she. "I will think only of going away." But her fears were stronger than her will. Her mind traveled again its old round. There was sodden, debauched Bates, with his rude and intimate salutation; there was the impertinent freedom of Mrs. Scott; there was the appraising stare of Walter Simpson Scott; there was her mother's embarrassed unwillingness to talk about Basil Everman; there was also that strange voice which she had heard long ago, that voice which seemed to reprove and to beseech her mother. "She is good!" cried Eleanor. "And I am wicked and hateful!" Presently she was wakened by the opening of the door in the hall below, and she sprang up, deceived for an instant into thinking that Richard Lister had returned and was asking for her. Then she lay down, dizzily. The voice was not Richard's, but Dr. Green's older, deeper tones which asked, "Is Eleanor at home?" When her mother answered that she had gone out, Eleanor closed her eyes. He had probably come to invite her to ride into the country with him. But she could not go; she could not bear the heat or the light or his bright eyes. Their expression disturbed her, had disturbed her subconsciously for weeks, the look of hunger which had brightened them when she had told him of her success with "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class" reminding her of the eyes of a caged animal, of strong feeling kept under, but there, waiting to blaze out. She had been repelled by it. Dr. Green, told that she was out, did not go away. He said, instead, "It is you I wish to see, Margie." Eleanor heard a step, the opening of a door into the dining-room, then its sharp closing.