out in the street and wait for you. We can go to the
Park. I have some serious problems to lay before
you.

Joe.

"Serious problems!" She understood. He was paving the way for renouncing
her. Perhaps it was a money matter--he thought he ought not marry on a
reduced income. Or perhaps he found he didn't love her. For hours she
sat there with the letter crumpled in her hand, frozen, inert, until she
was incapable of feeling or thinking. So he was coming at seven. He took
it for granted that she would be ready to see him--would be eager to
walk in the Park with him. Well, what if she didn't go? A fine letter
that, after that half-hour at the riverside. A love-letter! She laughed
bitterly. And then her heart seemed to break within her. Life was too
hard. Why had she ever left the peace and quiet of Fall River? Why had
she come down to the cruel, careless, vicious city to be ground up in a
wholesale school system and then to break her heart for an uncouth,
half-educated printer? It was all too hard, too cruel. Why had she been
born to suffer so? Why must she tingle now with pain, when in a few
years she would be unfeeling dust again? Among all the millions of the
people of the earth, among all the life of earth and the circling
million scattered worlds, she felt utterly isolated, defrauded,
betrayed. Life was a terrible gift, and she did not want it. This whirl
of emotion rose and rose in her, went insanely through her brain, and,
becoming intolerable, suddenly ceased and left her careless, numb, and
hard.

She arose mechanically and looked in the glass at herself. Her face was
haggard.