Then she changed; for the first time her work fell unheeded in her lap; the eyes which a minute before had flashed fight looked far off and were dreamy; her face, over which the skin seemed to have become stretched, burned by years of sun and wind, quivered a little. When she spoke again it was firmly but with sadness. "It's what we think that counts, Ruth. It's what we feel. It's what we _are_. Oh, I'd like richer living--more beauty--more joy. Well, I haven't those things. For various reasons, I won't have them. That makes it the more important to have all I can take!"--it leaped out from the gentler thinking like a sent arrow. "Nobody holds my thoughts. They travel as far as they themselves have power to travel. They bring me whatever they can bring me--and I shut nothing out. I'm not afraid!" Ruth was looking at her with passionate earnestness. "Over there in that town,"--Annie made a little gesture toward it, "are hundreds of women who would say they have a great deal more than I have. And it's true enough," she laughed, "that they have some things I'd like to have. But do you think I'd trade with them? Oh, no! Not much! The free don't trade with the bond, Ruth." And still Ruth did not speak, but listened with that passionate intentness. "There in that town," Annie went on, "are people--most a whole townful of them--who are going through life without being really awake to life at all. They move around in a closed place, doing the same silly little things--copy-cats--repeaters. They're not their _own_--they're not awake. They're like things run by machinery. Like things going in their sleep. Take those girls we used to go to school with. Why, take Edith Lawrence. I see her sometimes. She always speaks sweetly to me; she means to be nice. But she moves round and round in her little place and she doesn't even _know_ of the wonderful things going on in the world today! Do you think I'd trade with _her_?--social leader and all the rest of it!" She was gathering together the bundles of asparagus. She had finished her work. "Very sweet--very charming," she disposed of Edith, "but she simply doesn't count. The world's moving away from her, and she,"--Annie laughed with a mild scorn--"doesn't even know that!" CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR