Suddenly Laurel turned and buried her face in the pillow on the couch and burst into violent weeping. Of late many of her emotions were like enveloping clouds—love and worship, as well as hate and scorn. Her passion for Mrs. Morrison was big, dense, un-understandable. As she lay with her face buried in the dark of the pillow, she could see great masses of red and purple light-dust, shapeless and conglomerate, rolling and shifting senselessly in the dark behind her closed lids. Life was like that. Oh, if only somebody would show her a straight easy little path leading through the confusion.

“Oh come, come, Lollie,” exclaimed Stella. “Don’t do that way. Of course if you feel so badly as all that about poor Ed, why—he needn’t come, I suppose. But for the life of me, I don’t see what he’s done to you.”

It was the first time for years Stella had seen Laurel cry like a little girl. It was the last time she ever saw her do it. After that one outburst, Laurel never again betrayed to her mother her fear of the shifting clouds of the twilight stratum of the dawning of her soul.

Stella was not mistaken in attributing Laurel’s sudden aversion to Ed to her age, but she soon discovered it was no whim. In fact, Laurel seemed so terribly set against “poor Ed” that she almost was inclined to believe that Stephen must have “poisoned” her mind somehow. Why, when Ed invited Laurel and her mother to go to the theater with him, and choose their own show, the child refused absolutely to stir an inch. She wouldn’t touch a piece of the generous box of candy he sent them. “Oh, how can you bear him?” she remarked quietly (for all the world like Stephen) when she found his name written on the card in the envelope tucked underneath the showy bow of ribbon.

Stella had to tell Ed the truth at last. She hated to give up all the good times he stood ready to shower upon them. She didn’t mind giving up Ed himself. She always got sick of him after a little while, anyhow, and she must confess he had run downhill considerably even since last September. He had changed his business again. He was working in some sort of machine-shop now, and his finger-nails were terribly broken and greasy.

Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

1