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brothers recognized that she had special abilities, and that
they were proud of it. She had done them the honor, she
told herself bitterly, to believe that though they had no
particular endowments, THEY WERE OF HER KIND, and not of
the Moonstone kind. Now they had all grown up and be-
come persons. They faced each other as individuals, and
she saw that Anna and Gus and Charley were among the
people whom she had always recognized as her natural
enemies. Their ambitions and sacred proprieties were
meaningless to her. She had neglected to congratulate
Charley upon having been promoted from the grocery de-
partment of Commings's store to the drygoods depart-
ment. Her mother had reproved her for this omission. And
how was she to know, Thea asked herself, that Anna ex-
pected to be teased because Bert Rice now came and sat in
the hammock with her every night? No, it was all clear
enough. Nothing that she would ever do in the world
would seem important to them, and nothing they would
ever do would seem important to her.
Thea lay thinking intently all through the stifling after-
noon. Tillie whispered something outside her door once,
but she did not answer. She lay on her bed until the second
church bell rang, and she saw the family go trooping up
the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, Anna
and her father in the lead. Anna seemed to have taken
on a very story-book attitude toward her father; pat-
ronizing and condescending, it seemed to Thea. The older
boys were not in the family band. They now took their
girls to church. Tillie had stayed at home to get supper.
Thea got up, washed her hot face and arms, and put on
the white organdie dress she had worn last night; it was
getting too small for her, and she might as well wear it out.
After she was dressed she unlocked her door and went cau-
tiously downstairs. She felt as if chilling hostilities might
be awaiting her in the trunk loft, on the stairway, almost
anywhere. In the dining-room she found Tillie, sitting by
the open window, reading the dramatic news in a Denver
Sunday paper. Tillie kept a scrapbook in which she pasted
clippings about actors and actresses.
"Come look at this picture of Pauline Hall in tights,
Thea," she called. "Ain't she cute? It's too bad you
didn't go to the theater more when you was in Chicago;
such a good chance! Didn't you even get to see Clara
Morris or Modjeska?"
"No; I didn't have time. Besides, it costs money,
Tillie," Thea replied wearily, glancing at the paper Tillie
held out to her.
Tillie looked up at her niece. "Don't you go and be
upset about any of Anna's notions. She's one of these
narrow kind. Your father and mother don't pay any atten-
tion to what she says. Anna's fussy; she is with me, but
I don't mind her."
"Oh, I don't mind her. That's all right, Tillie. I guess
I'll take a walk."
Thea knew that Tillie hoped she would stay and talk to
her for a while, and she would have liked to please her.
But in a house as small as that one, everything was too
intimate and mixed up together. The family was the
family, an integral thing. One couldn't discuss Anna there.
She felt differently toward the house and everything in it,
as if the battered old furniture that seemed so kindly, and
the old carpets on which she had played, had been nour-
ishing a secret grudge against her and were not to be
trusted any more.
She went aimlessly out of the front gate, not know-
ing what to do with herself. Mexican Town, somehow, was
spoiled for her just then, and she felt that she would hide
if she saw Silvo or Felipe coming toward her. She walked
down through the empty main street. All the stores were
closed, their blinds down. On the steps of the bank some
idle boys were sitting, telling disgusting stories because
there was nothing else to do. Several of them had gone
to school with Thea, but when she nodded to them they
hung their heads and did not speak. Thea's body was
often curiously expressive of what was going on in her
mind, and to-night there was something in her walk and
carriage that made these boys feel that she was "stuck
up." If she had stopped and talked to them, they would
have thawed out on the instant and would have been
friendly and grateful. But Thea was hurt afresh, and
walked on, holding her chin higher than ever. As she
passed the Duke Block, she saw a light in Dr. Archie's
office, and she went up the stairs and opened the door into
his study. She found him with a pile of papers and account-
books before him. He pointed her to her old chair at the
end of his desk and leaned back in his own, looking at
her with satisfaction. How handsome she was growing!
"I'm still chasing the elusive metal, Thea,"--he pointed
to the papers before him,--"I'm up to my neck in mines,
and I'm going to be a rich man some day."
"I hope you will; awfully rich. That's the only thing
that counts." She looked restlessly about the consulting-
room. "To do any of the things one wants to do, one has
to have lots and lots of money."
Dr. Archie was direct. "What's the matter? Do you
need some?"
Thea shrugged. "Oh, I can get along, in a little way."
She looked intently out of the window at the arc street-
lamp that was just beginning to sputter. "But it's silly to
live at all for little things," she added quietly. "Living's
too much trouble unless one can get something big out of
it."
Dr. Archie rested his elbows on the arms of his chair,
dropped his chin on his clasped hands and looked at her.
"Living is no trouble for little people, believe me!" he
exclaimed. "What do you want to get out of it?"
"Oh--so many things!" Thea shivered.
"But what? Money? You mentioned that. Well, you
can make money, if you care about that more than any-
thing else." He nodded prophetically above his interlacing
fingers.
"But I don't. That's only one thing. Anyhow, I
couldn't if I did." She pulled her dress lower at the neck as
if she were suffocating. "I only want impossible things,"
she said roughly. "The others don't interest me."
Dr. Archie watched her contemplatively, as if she were
a beaker full of chemicals working. A few years ago, when
she used to sit there, the light from under his green lamp-
shade used to fall full upon her broad face and yellow pig-
tails. Now her face was in the shadow and the line of light
fell below her bare throat, directly across her bosom. The
shrunken white organdie rose and fell as if she were strug-
gling to be free and to break out of it altogether. He felt
that her heart must be laboring heavily in there, but he was
afraid to touch her; he was, indeed. He had never seen her
like this before. Her hair, piled high on her head, gave her
a commanding look, and her eyes, that used to be so in-
quisitive, were stormy.
"Thea," he said slowly, "I won't say that you can have
everything you want--that means having nothing, in
reality. But if you decide what it is you want most, YOU
CAN GET IT." His eye caught hers for a moment. "Not every-
body can, but you can. Only, if you want a big thing,
you've got to have nerve enough to cut out all that's easy,
everything that's to be had cheap." Dr. Archie paused.
He picked up a paper-cutter and, feeling the edge of it
softly with his fingers, he added slowly, as if to himself:--
"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
To win . . . or lose it all."
Thea's lips parted; she looked at him from under a frown,
searching his face. "Do you mean to break loose, too, and
--do something?" she asked in a low voice.
"I mean to get rich, if you call that doing anything.
I've found what I can do without. You make such bar-
gains in your mind, first."
Thea sprang up and took the paper-cutter he had put
down, twisting it in her hands. "A long while first, some-
times," she said with a short laugh. "But suppose one
can never get out what they've got in them? Suppose they
make a mess of it in the end; then what?" She threw the
paper-cutter on the desk and took a step toward the doctor,
until her dress touched him. She stood looking down at
him. "Oh, it's easy to fail!" She was breathing through
her mouth and her throat was throbbing with excitement.
As he looked up at her, Dr. Archie's hands tightened on
the arms of his chair. He had thought he knew Thea Kron-
borg pretty well, but he did not know the girl who was
standing there. She was beautiful, as his little Swede had
never been, but she frightened him. Her pale cheeks, her
parted lips, her flashing eyes, seemed suddenly to mean one
thing--he did not know what. A light seemed to break
upon her from far away--or perhaps from far within. She
seemed to grow taller, like a scarf drawn out long; looked
as if she were pursued and fleeing, and--yes, she looked
tormented. "It's easy to fail," he heard her say again, "and
if I fail, you'd better forget about me, for I'll be one of the
worst women that ever lived. I'll be an awful woman!"
In the shadowy light above the lampshade he caught her
glance again and held it for a moment. Wild as her eyes
were, that yellow gleam at the back of them was as hard
as a diamond drill-point. He rose with a nervous laugh
and dropped his hand lightly on her shoulder. "No, you
won't. You'll be a splendid one!"
She shook him off before he could say anything more,
and went out of his door with a kind of bound. She left so
quickly and so lightly that he could not even hear her foot-
step in the hallway outside. Archie dropped back into his
chair and sat motionless for a long while.
So it went; one loved a quaint little girl, cheerful, in-
dustrious, always on the run and hustling through her
tasks; and suddenly one lost her. He had thought he knew
that child like the glove on his hand. But about this tall
girl who threw up her head and glittered like that all over,
he knew nothing. She was goaded by desires, ambitions,
revulsions that were dark to him. One thing he knew: the
old highroad of life, worn safe and easy, hugging the sunny
slopes, would scarcely hold her again.
After that night Thea could have asked ...
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