Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of them closing its door in the face of her sharp, hungry mind.

And there was that other world, enveloping all the other lesser worlds about her––the world of the Catholic Church.

Three weeks ago those two words had meant to her a little green building in French Village where the “Canucks” went to church.

Now her day began and ended with it. It was on all sides of her. The pictures and the images on every wall, the signs on every classroom door. The books she read, the talk she heard was all 39 filled with it. It came and went through every door of life.

All the inherited prejudices of her line of New England fathers were alive and stirring in her against this religion that demanded so much. The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given her fought against it. It was so absolute. It was so sure of everything. She wanted to argue with it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must be wrong sometimes.

But just when she was sure that she had found something false, something that she knew was not right in the things they taught her, she was always told that she had not understood. Some one was always ready to tell her, in an easy, patient, amused way, that she had gotten the thing wrong. How could they always be so sure? And what was wrong with her that she could not understand? She could learn everything else faster and more easily than the other girls could.

Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her hands fell nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were blinded with great, burning tears. A wave of intolerable longing and loneliness swept over her.

The wonderful, enchanting world that she had come out of her hills to conquer was cut down to the four little grey walls that enclosed her. Everything was shut away from her. She did not understand these strange women about her. Would never understand them.

40

Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where Daddy Tom was near her, where there was love for her, where the people and even the snow and the wild winds were her friends?