Carmel Lee had been told by everybody, ever since she could remember being told anything, that she was headstrong and impulsive. Her parents had impressed it upon her and, rather proudly, had disseminated the fact among the neighbors until it became a tradition in the little Michigan town where she was born. People held the idea that one must make allowances for Carmel and be perpetually ready to look with tolerance on outbursts of impulse. Her teachers had accepted the tradition and were accustomed to advise with her upon the point. The reputation accompanied her to the university, and only a few weeks before, upon her graduation, the head of the Department of Rhetoric (which included a course in journalism) spent an entire valuable hour beseeching her to curb her willfulness and to count as high as fifty before she reached a decision. So Carmel, after being the victim of such propaganda for sixteen or seventeen years, could not be censured if she believed it herself. She had gotten to be rather afraid of Carmel and of what Carmel might do unexpectedly. Circumspection and repression had become her watchwords, and the present business of her life was to look before she leaped. She had made a vow of deliberation. As soon as she found herself wanting to do something she became suspicious of it; and latterly, with grim determination, she had taken herself in hand. Whenever she became aware of a desire to act, she compelled herself to sit down and think it over. Not that this did a great deal of good, but it gave her a very pleasing sensation of self-mastery. As a matter of fact, she was not at all introspective. She had taken the word of bystanders for her impulsiveness; it was no discovery of her own. And now that she was schooling herself in repression, she did not perceive in the least that she failed to repress. When she wanted to do a thing, she usually did it. The deliberation only postponed the event. When she forced herself to pause and scrutinize a desire, she merely paused and scrutinized it--and then went ahead and did what she desired. It may be considered peculiar that a girl who had inherited a newspaper, as Carmel had done, should have paid so cursory a first visit. It would have been natural to rush into the shop with enthusiasm and to poke into corners and to ransack the place from end to end, and to discover exactly what it was she had become owner of. However, Carmel merely dropped in and hurried away.... This was repression. It was a distinct victory over impulse. She wanted to do it very much, so she compelled herself to turn her back and to go staidly to lunch at the hotel.