“Let me alone!” she cried. “Let me have it out!” And Hal, who had had no experience with hysteria, stood helplessly by. “There’s more misery than I ever knew there was!” she went on. “’Tis everywhere ye turn, a woman with her eyes burnin’ with suffering wondering if she’ll ever see her man again! Or some mother whose lad may be dying and she can do nothin’ for him!” “And neither can you do anything, Mary,” Hal pleaded again. “You’re only sorrowing yourself to death.” “Ye say that to me?” she cried. “And when ye were ready to let Jeff Cotton shoot ye, because you were so sorry for Mrs. David! No, the sights here nobody can stand.” He could think of nothing to answer. He drew up a chair and sat by her in silence, and after a while she began to grow calmer, and wiped away her tears, and sat gazing dully through the doorway into the dirty little street. Hal’s eyes followed hers. There were the ash-heaps and tomato-cans, there were two of Mrs. Zamboni’s bedraggled brood, poking with sticks into a dump-heap--looking for something to eat, perhaps, or for something to play with. There was the dry, waste grass of the road-side, grimy with coal-dust, as was everything else in the village. What a scene!--And this girl’s eyes had never a sight of anything more inspiring than this. Day in and day out, all her life long, she looked at this scene! Had he ever for a moment reproached her for her “black moods”? With such an environment could men or women be cheerful--could they dream of beauty, aspire to heights of nobility and courage, to happy service of their fellows? There was a miasma of despair over this place; it was not a real place--it was a dream-place--a horrible, distorted nightmare! It was like the black hole in the ground which haunted Hal’s imagination, with men and boys at the bottom of it, dying of asphyxiation! Suddenly it came to Hal--he wanted to get away from North Valley! To get away at all costs! The place had worn down his courage; slowly, day after day, the sight of misery and want, of dirt and disease, of hunger, oppression, despair, had eaten the soul out of him, had undermined his fine structure of altruistic theories. Yes, he wanted to escape--to a place where the sun shone, where the grass grew green, where human beings stood erect and laughed and were free. He wanted to shut from his eyes the dust and smoke of this nasty little village; to stop his ears to that tormenting sound of women wailing: “O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!” He looked at the girl, who sat staring before her, bent forward, her arms hanging limply over her knees. “Mary,” he said, “you must go away from here! It’s no place for a tenderhearted girl to be. It’s no place for any one!” She gazed at him dully for a moment. “It was me that was tellin’ _you_ to go away,” she said, at last. “Ever since ye came here I been sayin’ it! Now I guess ye know what I mean.” “Yes,” he said, “I do, and I want to go. But I want you to go too.”