nothing but relief.

So darkened the one bright room in his childhood's mansion. Obscured, it
left the other chambers dingier than before, and filled with the ache of
loss. Slowly he forgot his mother's companionship, but not her beauty,
nor her roses, nor "Bohemia," nor his hatred of the "America" which was
his father's. To get away from his native town, to leave America, became
the steadfast purpose of his otherwise unstable nature.

The man watched himself through high school. He saw himself still hating
his surroundings and ignoring his schoolfellows--save for an occasional
girl whose face or hair showed beauty. At this time the first step in his
plan of escape shaped itself--he must work hard enough to get to college,
to Ann Arbor, where he had heard there was an art course. For the boy
painted now, in all his spare time, not merely birds, but dogs and
horses, boys and girls, all creatures that had speed, that he could draw
in action, leaping, flying, or running against the wind. Even now Stefan
could warm to the triumph he felt the day he discovered the old barn
where he could summon these shapes undetected. His triumph was over the
arch-enemy, his father--who had forbidden him paint and brushes and
confiscated the poor little fragments of his mother's work that he had
hoarded. His father destined him for a "fitting" profession--the man
smiled to remember it--and with an impressive air of generosity gave him
the choice of three--the Church, the Law, or Medicine. Hate had given him
too keen a comprehension of his father to permit him the mistake of
argument. He temporized. Let him be sent to college, and there he would
discover where his aptitude lay.

So at last it was decided. A trunk was found, a moth-eaten bag. His
cheap, ill-cut clothes were packed. On a day of late summer he stepped