"And pleasure to me," she said slowly, "means something different than it does to either of you. In a way, with you both pleasure is active. With me it's passive." She laughed shortly, almost nervously. "Maybe I'm lazy, I don't know; but I've worked so long that I'm weary to death of commonplace and repression and denial and--dinginess. I want to be a free individual and have leisure and opportunity to feel things, not to do them. I'm selfish, hopelessly selfish, morbidly selfish; but I am as I am. I'm like the plant that's raised in a cellar and can't leave because its roots are sunk there deep. I want to be transplanted perforce out into the sunshine. I'm hungry for it, hungry. I've caught glimpses of things beyond through my cellar window, but glimpses only. I repeat, I want to feel unhampered. I know pretty things and artistic things when I see them, and I want them: to wear, to live among, to look at. I want to travel, to hear real music, to feel real operas and know real plays--not imitations. I'm tired of reading about life and hearing about life. I want to live it, be a part of it--not a distant spectator. That is what pleasure means to me now; to escape the tyranny of repression and of pennies and be free--free!" For the third time silence fell; a silence that lasted longer far than before, a silence which each was loth to break. While she was speaking, at first Armstrong had shifted about in his chair restlessly; at the last, his hands deep in his pockets, he had sat still. Once he had looked at her, peculiarly, the tolerant half smile still on his lips; but she had not returned the look, and bit by bit it vanished. That was all. For a minute perhaps, until it became awkward at least, the silence lasted--to be broken finally by the girl herself. Slowly she arose from her seat and, tall, slender, deliberately graceful, came from her place in the shadow into the light. "I'm a bit ashamed to have brought out the family skeleton and aired it to-night," she said evenly. Under drooping lids she looked from one face before her to the other swiftly. "I don't know why I did it exactly. I'm a bit irresponsible, I guess, to-night. We are all so, I think, at times." As deliberately as she did everything she took a seat. Her hands folded in her lap. "If you'll forget it I'll promise not to offend in the same way again." She smiled and changed the subject abruptly. "I see by the papers," she digressed, "that at last we're to have a trolley line in town. The same authority informs us as well that you are the moving spirit, Mr. Roberts." "Yes." It was the ordinary laconic, non-committal man of business who answered. A pause, then a significant amplification. "This is the age of the trolley. There are a hundred miles of suburban lines contracted for as well. No one will recognize this country as it is now ten years hence." "And this suburban line you speak of--I suppose you're the spirit back of that too?" queried the girl.