CHAPTER XIII Jane and the Irishman came into the Settlement one day to find the superintendent red-eyed, with two books on her desk. It was clear that she had been having a luxuriously miserable time. "I've just finished two of the most powerful stories," she said, polishing the precious powder from her nose with a damp handkerchief. "Every girl should read them--and every _man_!" "I wonder at you, Emma Ellis," said Michael Daragh, "the way you'll be keening over a printed tale, when you've your heart and head and hands full of real woes about you, surely!" "Oh, Mr. Daragh, if you'd just sit down and read _I_ and _The Narrow Path_! Both written anonymously,--and you just _feel_ the human heartthrob in every line." "I'll not be cluttering my mind with the likes of that, woman dear!" "I've read them both," said Jane, slipping out of her furs and cuddling into one of the great new chairs, "and I'm afraid I think they're fearful piffle." "Miss Vail!" Her face snapped back into its old lines. (Miss Vail really mustn't think that because she was so situated, financially, that she could do kind and generous things--which others would do if they could--that her word was law on every subject!) "I'll have to be reading them, to decide between the two of you," said Michael, lighting his mellowed old pipe. Miss Ellis winced a little as she looked at her new curtains. "But it's good for moths," said Jane, catching her eye. "No, Michael, you needn't fuss up your orderly mind with anything so frivolous and distracting. I can tell you the gist of them both in a few well-chosen phrases! The theme of both is that when lovely--and lonely--woman stoops to earning her own living she finds--not too late, but alas, immediately--that men betray! That every prospect pleases and only man is vile! These two heroines set out to make their own way; their faces are their fortune and very nearly their finish! One is a very young girl, the other an unhappy wife, fleeing with, and, one might be pardoned for imagining, protected by, a young child. Each is a pattern of dewy innocence and determined virtue, but no matter where they hie or hide, the villains still pursue." "Of course," said Miss Ellis in her small, smothered voice, "if you're going to make a _joke_ of it----" "My dear Miss Ellis, it _is_ a joke! One of them gets no further than the station in her initial flight when she is accosted by a young millionaire--insulted. (If you were a Constant Reader of popular fiction, Michael Daragh, you'd know how difficult it is for millionaires to retain the shreds of human decency.) And that's just the prelude, but it introduces the motif which runs through the entire composition. Staid, middle-aged husbands of friends, editors, business men, authors,--Don Juans all! Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, enmesh the road the ladies are to wander in."