"Well, you see, they are all very nice, but one time is just the same as another, and I think I want to read. I feel dried up inside. And Grace, I can't stand men. They always seem to be expecting something, and they bore me horribly when I'm not wondering how they ever came to be created." "Yes, that's how you look at them. I'm glad I'm not so particular, though I don't care for any of them." "That's because there isn't one you haven't been engaged to." "Theresa, don't be vulgar." "Isn't it true?" "No--not quite. And Terry--I think I'm rather tired of gadding about myself. Let's stay at home together and mend our stockings." "Mine do need it," said Theresa, glancing downward. "And there's Father." "Yes." So they stayed at home, but at nine o'clock Grace said she wanted air, and would go for a little walk. "Shall I come with you?" Theresa asked lazily, and was so much startled by Grace's quick and emphatic, "Oh no, thank you!" that she almost felt it in her conscience to follow her; but she sat still, frowning, and put a direct question when Grace, returned, unusually silent, and stood to warm her hands before the fire. "Have you been out with a man?" "Theresa, you're horrid. No, I have not. You talk to me as though I were a servant girl." Theresa smiled. "I wish you were as unsusceptible as Bessie. She gets all her romance out of novelettes, bless her!" Grace drew a troubled breath. "I've been doing something like that myself to-night." She stared into the fire, and spoke with a slight blurring of her words. "I feel as if I want to tell you. I've just been--imagining." "Don't you often do it?" "Why, no! I'm generally much too busy with the present, but lately--oh, well, I expect I'm silly." "No. Go on." "I'm nearly twenty-four." "And I'm twenty-one." "And, Terry, I'm beginning to want things." Theresa knew the meaning of this general term. "It must be nice to know what you want," she said softly. "And to want such simple, beautiful things of every day." "Yes, but they're hard to get. You can't do it all by yourself. I've been wandering up and down the streets, wishing I were going back to a little house with my own man in it, and a soft thing in a cradle. Theresa, aren't women wonderful?" "What makes you say so?" "They are so good! Oh, I want to be loved! Sometimes I so badly want to be loved that I could go and ask someone to do it!" "That's not wanting to be loved," said Theresa bluntly. "Well, words don't matter so long as you understand. But I don't do it! And think what men do!" "It's worse for men." "Not for all of them. Those are the only times when I want to read poetry, the only times when there seems any sense in it." Theresa gave her chuckling laugh and hugged her knees. "Am I horrid? Are you like that?" "No; I think it makes me rather sick. But, then, I'm a queer person." "I'm glad you don't think it's wrong of me. I'm frightened of myself sometimes."