Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/167

site, in the place she indicated. For a time neither of them said anything. Yvonne's glance roved out over the water, and the fingers that held her wrap about her were yellowish-white at the knuckles. Jock watched her . . . until, without warning, she brought her eyes to the line of his and began her narrative . . .

"I was born in a little manufacturing town in Ohio. I want you to try to visualize that town, Jock. Think of hills and smoke. Steep hills without any trees rearing up from the river, and smoke-colored clapboard houses tossed every which way down the sides of the hills. The only thing about it that was lovely was the river, and I could never bear to look at that much because my mother and father were drowned in it. When I was small. Out of a canoe . . .

"After that I lived with my aunt. She was good to me, according to her lights, but oh, she stifled me! She—well, there were hundreds of women in the town just like her, and when I was older I always thought of them as the boudoir-cap women. You know the type, don't you? Little women with little futile messy minds. They were always worrying about the next meal, and the dust on the mantelpiece, and talking about each other's business. Oh, how I hated those women! They used to count on their fingers when any new bride was going to have a baby. . . . I hated the men, too. All the people in the town were like their houses. Self-satisfied and drab and middle-class and little.

"Well, I lived there, and grew up, and went to high