“How could people ever live with things like this?” she shuddered.  She saw the furniture as a circle of elderly judges, condemning her to death by smothering.  The tottering brocade chair squeaked, “Choke her—­choke her—­smother her.”  The old linen smelled of the tomb.  She was alone in this house, this strange still house, among the shadows of dead thoughts and haunting repressions.  “I hate it!  I hate it!” she panted.  “Why did I ever——­”

She remembered that Kennicott’s mother had brought these family relics from the old home in Lac-qui-Meurt.  “Stop it!  They’re perfectly comfortable things.  They’re—­comfortable.  Besides——­Oh, they’re horrible!  We’ll change them, right away.”

Then, “But of course he has to see how things are at the office——­”

She made a pretense of busying herself with unpacking.  The chintz-lined, silver-fitted bag which had seemed so desirable a luxury in St. Paul was an extravagant vanity here.  The daring black chemise of frail chiffon and lace was a hussy at which the deep-bosomed bed stiffened in disgust, and she hurled it into a bureau drawer, hid it beneath a sensible linen blouse.

She gave up unpacking.  She went to the window, with a purely literary thought of village charm—­hollyhocks and lanes and apple-cheeked cottagers.  What she saw was the side of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church—­a plain clapboard wall of a sour liver color; the ash-pile back of the church; an unpainted stable; and an alley in which a Ford delivery-wagon had been stranded.  This was the terraced garden below her boudoir; this was to be her scenery for——­

“I mustn’t!  I mustn’t!  I’m nervous this afternoon.  Am I sick? . . .  Good Lord, I hope it isn’t that!  Not now!  How people lie!  How these stories lie!  They say the bride is always so blushing and proud and happy when she finds that out, but—­I’d hate it!  I’d be scared to death!  Some day but——­Please, dear nebulous Lord, not now!  Bearded sniffy old men sitting and demanding that we bear children.  If they had to bear them——!  I wish they did have to!  Not now!  Not till I’ve got hold of this job of liking the ash-pile out there! . . .  I must shut up.  I’m mildly insane.  I’m going out for a walk.  I’ll see the town by myself.  My first view of the empire I’m going to conquer!”

She fled from the house.

She stared with seriousness at every concrete crossing, every hitching-post, every rake for leaves; and to each house she devoted all her speculation.  What would they come to mean?  How would they look six months from now?  In which of them would she be dining?  Which of these people whom she passed, now mere arrangements of hair and clothes, would turn into intimates, loved or dreaded, different from all the other people in the world?

As she came into the small business-section she inspected a broad-beamed grocer in an alpaca coat who was bending over the apples and celery on a slanted platform in front of his store.  Would she ever talk to him?  What would he say if she stopped and stated, “I am Mrs. Dr. Kennicott.  Some day I hope to confide that a heap of extremely dubious pumpkins as a window-display doesn’t exhilarate me much.”