"I think it isn't for the best."
"Why not?"
"It's hard on her."
"How so?"
Fetzer looked down at her folded hands.
"It's hard to want all the time what you cannot have, especially when you see it before you."
"What is there Ellen wants which she can't have?"
Fetzer rose, pushing back the light chair upon which she had been sitting.
"You know," she said quietly. "It is hard even for me to live here for some reasons, though I'm a little older than you and I'm a very ignorant Pennsylvania Dutch woman and I have this." She laid her hand across her cheek. "Sometimes I think how different everything might have been if I had been born different. Miss MacVane—I expect it is so with her and with Miss Knowlton too. But we are older and we can resign ourselves. But I'm sorry for this young girl, that everything should be spoiled for her."
"How spoiled?" Stephen asked the question as quietly as Fetzer had spoken, but his heart was not quiet. He was not, like her, unsophisticated, and he saw, not for the first time, his attentions to Ellen through the exaggerating medium of his own desire. He suspected with alarm that Fetzer had been prompted by some worldly-wise, discerning person. There were these other women in the house, there were Hilda's friends. Could some fool have meddled?