As she stood there without moving, there flashed before her a complete panorama of all the paths and benches of King Lake Park—the little boats that slipped here and there under the trees at night in the summertime—a boy and a girl—a boy and a girl—a boy and a girl—to each boat. And the oars dragging most inconsequentially—and infatuated heads together—infatuated hearts beating ecstatically—suffocatingly strong. Yet now—after so many kisses and promises, the lie given to her dreams, her words—his words on which her words had been based—the lie given to kisses—hours, days, weeks, months of unspeakable bliss—the lie given to her own security and hopes, forever. Oh, it would be best to die—it would—it would. And then a slow and dragging return to her room, where because of the absence of her father and stepmother she managed to slip into her bed and lie there, thinking. But with a kind of fever, alternating with chills—and both shot through with most menacing pains due to this most astounding revelation. And with a sudden and keener volume of resentment than she had ever known gathering in her brain. The cruelty! The cruelty! And the falsehood! He had not only lied but insulted her as well. He who only five months before had sought her so eagerly with his eyes and intriguing smile. The liar! The brute! The monster! Yet linked and interwoven with such thoughts as these, a lacerating desire not to believe them—to turn back a month—two—three—to find in his eyes somewhere a trace of something that would gainsay it all. Oh, Ed! Ed! And so the night going—and the dawn coming. A horrible lacerating day. And after that other days. And with no one to talk to—no one. If only she could tell her stepmother all. And so other days and nights—all alone. And with blazing, searing, whirling, disordered thoughts in unbroken procession stalking her like demons. The outside world in case she were to be thrust into it! Her own unfamiliarity and hence fear of it! Those chattering, gaping youths on the corners—the girls she knew—their thoughts, since they must all soon know. Her loneliness without love. These and a hundred related thoughts dancing a fantastic, macabre mental dance before her. But even so, within her own brain the persistent and growing illusion that all she had heard from him was not true—a chimera—and so for the time being at least continued faith in the value of pleading. Her wonderful lover. It must be that still some understanding could be reached. Yet with growing evidence that by no plea or plaint was he to be restored to his former attitude. For, in answer to notes, waiting at the corners, at the end of the street which led down to his father’s coal-dock, in the vicinity of his home—silence, evasions, or direct insults, and sneers, even.