It was late when Ruth went to sleep that night; she and Annie talked through the evening--of books Annie was reading, of the things which were interesting her. She was rich in interests; ideas were as personal things to her; she found personal satisfactions in them. She was following things which Ruth knew little about; she had been long away from the centers of books, and out of touch with awakened people. A whole new world seemed to open from these things that were vital to Annie; there was promise in them--a quiet road out from the hard things of self. There were new poets in the world; there were bold new thinkers; there was an amazing new art; science was reinterpreting the world and workers and women were setting themselves free. Everywhere the old pattern was being shot through with new ideas. Everywhere were new attempts at a better way of doing things. She had been away from all that; what she knew of the world's new achievement had seemed unreal, or at least detached, not having any touch with her own life. But as disclosed by Annie those things became realities--things to enrich one's own life. It kindled old fires of her girlhood, fanned the old desire to know. Personal things had seemed to quell that; the storm in her own life had shut down around her. Now she saw that she, like those others whom Annie scorned, had not kept that openness to life, had let her own life shut her in. She had all along been eager for books, but had not been fortunate in the things she had come upon. She had not had access to large libraries--many times not even to small ones; she had had little money for buying books and was so out of touch with the world that she had not had much initiative in trying to get hold of things. She felt now that she had failed miserably in that, but there were years when she was like a hurt thing that keeps in hiding, most of all wanting to escape more hurt. It had been a weakness--she clearly saw that now, and it had been weakening to her powers. Most of the books she had come upon were of that shut-in life Annie scorned, written from within that static living, and for it. People in them had the feeling it was right people should have, unless there were bad people in the book, and then they were very definitely bad. Many of those books had been not only unsatisfying, but saddening to her, causing her to feel newly apart from the experiences of people of her kind. But now Annie's books let her glimpse a new world--a world which questioned, a world of protest, of experiment, a world in which people unafraid were trying to find the truth, trying to build freshly, to supplant things outworn with the vital forms of a new reality. It was quickening. It made her eager. She was going to take some of those books home, she would send for others, would learn how to keep in touch with this new world which was emerging from the old. It was like breaking out from a closed circle. It was adventure!