On the day in
May she had met him on the street and he had begged that she give him one
chance to talk things out with her. They had met at a street crossing where
cars went past into the suburban villages that lay about the city. "Come
on," he had urged, "let's take a street car ride, let's get out of the
crowds, I want to talk to you." He had taken hold of her arm and fairly
dragged her to a car. "Come and hear what I have to say," he had urged,
"then if you don't want to have anything to do with me, all right. You
can say so and I'll let you alone." After she had accompanied him to the
suburb of workingmen's houses, in the vicinity of which they had spent the
afternoon in the fields, Clara had found he had nothing to urge upon her
except the needs of his body. Still she felt there was something he wanted
to say that had not been said. He was restless and dissatisfied with his
life, and at bottom she felt that way about her own life. During the last
three years she had often wondered why she had come to the school and what
she was to gain by learning things out of books. The days and months went
past and she knew certain rather uninteresting facts she had not known
before. How the facts were to help her to live, she couldn't make out.
They had nothing to do with such problems as her attitude toward men like
John May the farm hand, the school teacher who had taught her something by
holding her in his arms and kissing her, and the dark sullen young man who
now walked beside her and talked of the needs of his body.
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