Jim ignored her exclamation and entered his defense. “I was walking to pass the time till breakfast. When I got to the wood-lot there I turned to cut across lots. I did not see you. I had other things on my mind than unexpected young women on hilltops at unholy hours in the morning. I am sorry I disturbed you.” He did not go, but stood looking down at her. She was looking past him down the valley toward the distant shimmer that was the great lake. For the moment he was negligible to her; again her eyes, her face, wore that expression as of the woman in the bread-line—of hunger. In a moment her face relaxed till it spoke merely of discontent, dissatisfaction. Jim thought she would have been homely were it not for the graceful setting of her head on her shoulders, the splendid ease and symmetry of her position. “I don’t have to explain to every chance stranger why I get up early in the morning and come here,” she said, not so much sullenly as with repression, as though she were damming up something within her. “Of course not,” said Jim, inadequately. Suddenly she flashed to her feet with a beautiful litheness and stood facing him, her hands clenched into little fists, her breast heaving. “I will tell you. I’ve got to tell somebody. It’s because I hate this”—she swept her hand over Diversity. “It’s because it’s horrible, unbearable. It’s because I’m chained down here like a prisoner in a dungeon. That’s why I go to watch the train—it is going away, going out there where people live. That’s why I come up here. It’s my little window to look out of. I can see beyond Diversity. Sometimes a vessel passes. I imagine I am on it, going away—to Chicago—to New York—to San Francisco. Here I can turn my back on Diversity and see where its dead hand cannot reach. I hate the town, I hate the people, but most of all I hate the children. Oh, look shocked! But sit in a room with thirty of them ten months a year; watch their smugness; try to cram spelling and geography and arithmetic into them; try to make an impression on their dullness. They’re a nightmare! That’s why I come here—to look away from them, beyond them, to see a spot that’s not tainted with them. I was born here.” She said the last as though it were the summing up of all evil. “My dear young lady,” said Jim, in a tone that was ludicrously paternal, “you’re working yourself up to—hysterics or something.” She leaned against the old hickory-tree, panting, clutching the folds of her skirt with convulsive fingers. “I want to go—go—go! I want to see things—to be a part of them. I’m smothered. This is living in a graveyard where there’s a perpetual fog. Other people live. Other people have things happen to them, and I—I don’t even dare read about them in books. I couldn’t stand it.” Jim wanted to run, yet he wanted to stay. Here was a manifestation far outside the purview of his experience. It was a little adventure into a human soul, and Jim’s contact with the human soul had been superficial.