Lee Virginia presented the appearance of some "settlement worker," some fair lady on a visit to the poor, as she took her seat at the table and gingerly opened the small moist napkin which the waiter dropped before her. Her appetite was gone. Her appetite failed at the very sight of the fried eggs and hot and sputtering bacon, and she turned hastily to her coffee. A fly was in that! She uttered a little choking cry, and buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed. Lize turned upon the waitress and lashed her with stinging phrases. "Can't you serve things better than this? Take that cup away! My God, you make me tired--fumblin' around here with your eyes on the men! Pay more attention to your work and less to your crimps, and you'll please me a whole lot better!" With desperate effort Lee conquered her disgust. "Never mind, I'm tired and a little upset. I don't need any dinner." "The slob will go, just the same. I've put up with her because help is scarce, but here's where she gits off!" In this moment Virginia perceived that her mother was of the same nature with Mrs. McBride--not one whit more refined--and the gulf between them swiftly widened. Hastily sipping her coffee, she tried hard to keep back the tears, but failed; and no sooner did her mother turn away than she fled to her room, there to sob unrestrainedly her despair and shame. "Oh, I can't stand it," she called. "I can't! I can't!" Outside, the mountains deepened in splendor, growing each moment more mysterious and beautiful under the sunset sky, but the girl derived no comfort from them. Her loneliness and her perplexities had closed her eyes to their majestic drama. She felt herself alien and solitary in the land of her birth. Lize came in half an hour later, pathetic in her attempt at "slicking up." She was still handsome in a large-featured way, but her gray hair was there, and her face laid with a network of fretful lines. Her color was bad. At the moment her cheeks were yellow and sunken. She complained of being short of breath and lame and tired. "I'm always tired," she explained. "'Pears like sometimes I can't scarcely drag myself around, but I do." A pang of comprehending pain shot through Virginia's heart. If she could not love, she could at least pity and help; and reaching forth her hand, she patted her mother on the knee. "Poor old mammy!" she said. "I'm going to help you." Lize was touched by this action of her proud daughter, and smiled sadly. "This is no place for you. It's nothin' but a measly little old cow-town gone to seed--and I'm gone to seed with it. I know it. But what is a feller to do? I'm stuck here, and I've got to make a living or quit. I can't quit. I ain't got the grit to eat a dose, and so I stagger along." "I've come back to help you, mother. You must let me relieve you of some of the burden." "What can you do, child?" Lize asked, gently. "I can teach." "Not in this town you can't." "Why not?"