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stars. But they all lived somewhere else than in those small houses, where their pale wives struggled to be cultivated while they bore babies and did housework and had no maids. She knew them so well, and she never looked from her front windows now without comprehension sweeping over her again. She loved them and ached a little when she thought of them. They were all trying so hard to live as they felt it beautiful to live, and their houses were so small—too small and too close, so that they had constantly to hush the crying of their children and their own laughter or anger or weeping as well. They had only silence to keep them private from each other. And they needed privacy, since they were not ignorant people and since decency was a necessity to them. They could make a joke of poverty and did. But one day little Mrs. Sanford had clutched her hands together—one day at the faculty reception to the seniors. She wore the drooping black lace dress she wore every year. And she had looked up at Susan, a little timidly, to ask, “What do you plan to do, Susan dear?”
    “Everything,” Susan had said gaily, and then Mrs. Sanford had clutched her two water-sodden little hands together again, her hands with clean, broken fingernails. It was Monday and in the cellar that early morning she had done the family wash and slipped out to hang it up quickly, not looking at other yards where other wives were doing the same thing.
    “Oh, Susan!” she had said. “You frighten me, dear! It’s so dreadful to know all that one wants from life and not be able to have it. Sometimes I think it’s better not to know—not to be able to read, than to be able and have no books, for instance, or wanting terribly to sing and not being able to afford the training.”
    She had not known what to say, and then Mrs. Sanford had smiled and patted her arm. “But you’re so talented, dear. I know you’ll be successful.”
    Someone cried out, “Now I just know Mrs. Sanford will sing for us,” and Mrs. Sanford called back, “Oh dear, nobody wants to hear me sing!”
    “Yes,” Susan said, “yes, please, Mrs. Sanford. I love to hear you.”
    “Do you, dear? Then I will.”
    They had stood listening while she sang in a small wistful breathy voice, Kennst du das Land. Susan had heard her sing it many times, so why now should she want to sob when she remembered it? … Every time she looked out of the front windows she remembered how Mrs. Sanford had looked that day while she sang.
    But the west windows looked out into Tramp’s Woods. She and Mark had become engaged there. He had said that day, “Where shall we go, Sue?” And she had said, “I’ve always wanted to go into Tramp’s Woods! Let’s go!”
    They had not played there as children, because of a childish superstition, told from one generation of playfellows to the next, that the ghost of a tramp was there, who had hung himself long ago, over his own solitary campfire in plain sight and sound of a street full of homes and families and children. The lights from their windows must have twinkled on him as he ate his supper—there had been a can of beans, half empty, so he could not have died hungry. And there was a little stack of wood if he had wanted to keep his fire burning. There was even enough money in his pocket to bury him, provided it was without fuss. It was in an envelope, and he had put on the outside in a pencil scrawl, “To bury me—no funeral.” There was no reason why he should have hung himself there in plain sight of people. It was so queer of him that mothers were really relieved he had done it, since it was not as though they could have helped it. They said above their children’s heads, “It’s just as well a person like that is out of the way. One never knows what he might do.” And the children, catching the tone of their voices, made a ghost out of the tramp and never went near the woods where he had died.
    But she and Mark had gone there that afternoon to