“Yes, of course. Everybody knows that. What I mean is that you’ll only hurt yourself in your profession. They won’t give you a reference if you jump up and leave like this now. At this time of the year. You’ll be put on the black list.2 And you’ll find it hard to get another teaching-job. Naxos has enormous influence in the South. Better wait till school closes.”

“Heaven forbid,” answered Helga fervently, “that I should ever again want work anywhere in the South! I hate it.” And fell silent, wondering for the hundredth time just what form of vanity it was that had induced an intelligent girl like Margaret Creighton to turn what was probably nice live crinkly hair, perfectly suited to her smooth dark skin and agreeable round features, into a dead straight, greasy, ugly mass.

Looking up from her watch, Margaret said: “Well, I’ve really got to run, or I’ll be late myself. And since I’m staying—Better think it over, Helga. There’s no place like Naxos, you know. Pretty good salaries, decent rooms, plenty of men, and all that. Ta-ta.” The door slid to behind her.

But in another moment it opened. She was back. “I do wish you’d stay. It’s nice having you here, Helga. We all think so. Even the dead ones. We need a few decorations to brighten our sad lives.” And again she was gone.

Helga was unmoved. She was no longer concerned with what anyone in Naxos might think of her, for she was now in love with the piquancy of leaving. Automatically her fingers adjusted the Chinese-looking pillows on the low couch that served for her bed. Her mind was busy with plans for departure. Packing, money, trains, and—could she get a berth?

THREE

THREE

ON ONE SIDE of the long, white, hot sand road that split the flat green, there was a little shade, for it was bordered with trees. Helga Crane walked there so that the sun could not so easily get at her. As she went slowly across the empty campus she was conscious of a vague tenderness for the scene spread out before her. It was so incredibly lovely, so appealing, and so facile. The trees in their spring beauty sent through her restive mind a sharp thrill of pleasure. Seductive, charming, and beckoning as cities were, they had not this easy unhuman loveliness. The trees, she thought, on city avenues and boulevards, in city parks and gardens, were tamed, held prisoners in a surrounding maze of human beings. Here they were free. It was human beings who were prisoners. It was too bad. In the midst of all this radiant life. They weren’t, she knew, even conscious of its presence. Perhaps there was too much of it, and therefore it was less than nothing.