Athalie

Grossman's reputation was different, but except for a smirk or two he

had never bothered her. Nor did anybody else connected with the firm.

They all were too much afraid of Wahlbaum.

So, except for the petty, contemptible annoyances to which all young

girls are more or less subjected in any cosmopolitan metropolis,

Athalie had found business agreeable enough except for the

confinement.

That was hard on a country-bred girl; and she could scarcely endure

the imprisonment when the warm sun of April looked in through the

windows of Mr. Wahlbaum's private office, and when soft breezes

stirred the curtains and fluttered the papers on her desk.

Always in the spring the voice of brook and surf, of woodland and

meadow called to her. In her ears was ever the happy tumult of the

barn-yard, the lowing of cattle at the bars, the bleat of sheep. And

her heart beat passionate response.

Athalie was never ill. The nearest she came to it was a dull feeling

of languor in early spring. But it did not even verge on either

resentment or despondency.

In winter it was better. She had learned to accept with philosophy the

noises of the noisiest of cities. Even, perhaps, she rather liked

them, or at least, on her two weeks' vacation in the country, she

found, to her surprise, that she missed the accustomed and incessant

noises of New York.

Her real hardships were two; poverty and loneliness.

The combined earnings of herself and her sisters did not allow them a

better ventilated, or more comfortable apartment than the grimy one

they lived in. Nor did their earnings permit them more or better

clothing and food.

As for loneliness, she had, of course, her sisters. But healthy,

imaginative, ardent youth requires more than sisters,--more even than

feminine friends, of which Athalie had a few. What she needed, as all

girls need, were acquaintances and friends among men of her own age.

And she had none--that is, no friends. Which is the usual fate of any

business girl who keeps up such education and cultivation as she

possesses, and attempts to add to it and to improve her quality.

Because the men of her social and business level are vastly inferior

to the women,--inferior in manners, cultivation, intelligence,

quality--which seems almost to make their usually excellent morals

peculiarly offensive.

That was why Athalie knew loneliness. Doris, recently, had met a few

idle men of cultivated and fashionable antecedents. Catharine, that

very evening, was evidently going to meet a man of that sort for the

first time in her career.

As for Athalie, she had had no opportunity to meet any man she cared

to cultivate since she had last talked with C. Bailey, Jr., on the

platform of the Sixth Avenue Elevated;--and that was now nearly four

years ago.