She believed that all things which might make the world beautiful—­love and kindness, leisure and art—­were shut up in prison, and that successful men like Bayliss Wheeler held the keys.  The generous ones, who would let these things out to make people happy, were somehow weak, and could not break the bars.  Even her own little life was squeezed into an unnatural shape by the domination of people like Bayliss.  She had not dared, for instance, to go to Omaha that spring for the three performances of the Chicago Opera Company.  Such an extravagance would have aroused a corrective spirit in all her friends, and in the schoolboard as well; they would probably have decided not to give her the little increase in salary she counted upon having next year.

There were people, even in Frankfort, who had imagination and generous impulses, but they were all, she had to admit, inefficient—­failures.  There was Miss Livingstone, the fiery, emotional old maid who couldn’t tell the truth; old Mr. Smith, a lawyer without clients, who read Shakespeare and Dryden all day long in his dusty office; Bobbie Jones, the effeminate drug clerk, who wrote free verse and “movie” scenarios, and tended the sodawater fountain.

Claude was her one hope.  Ever since they graduated from High School, all through the four years she had been teaching, she had waited to see him emerge and prove himself.  She wanted him to be more successful than Bayliss and still be Claude.  She would have made any sacrifice to help him on.  If a strong boy like Claude, so well endowed and so fearless, must fail, simply because he had that finer strain in his nature,—­then life was not worth the chagrin it held for a passionate heart like hers.

At last Gladys threw herself upon the bed.  If he married Enid, that would be the end.  He would go about strong and heavy, like Mr. Royce; a big machine with the springs broken inside.

VII

Claude was well enough to go into the fields before the harvest was over.  The middle of July came, and the farmers were still cutting grain.  The yield of wheat and oats was so heavy that there were not machines enough to thrash it within the usual time.  Men had to await their turn, letting their grain stand in shock until a belching black engine lumbered into the field.  Rains would have been disastrous; but this was one of those “good years” which farmers tell about, when everything goes well.  At the time they needed rain, there was plenty of it; and now the days were miracles of dry, glittering heat.