Alves held her own opinion. She should be sorry to lose Dresser from their little circle. She permitted herself one remark,—"He is so much of a gentleman."
"A gentleman!" Sommers exclaimed scornfully. "Are any of us gentlemen in the American sense?"
It seemed probable, however, that Sommers and Alves would be the first to leave the Keystone. Although the sultry June weather made them think longingly of the idyllic days at Perota Lake, the journey to Wisconsin was out of the question. Struggle as he might, Sommers was being forced to realize that they must give up their modest position in the Keystone. And one day the proprietor hinted broadly that she had other uses for their room. They had been tolerated up to this point; but society, even the Keystone form of society, found them too irregular for permanent acceptance. And now it was impossible to move away from Chicago. They had no money for the venture.
CHAPTER V
A change, even so small a change as from one boarding-house to another, is caused by some definite force, some shock that overcomes the power of inertia. The eleventh of June Sommers had gone to meet Alves at their usual rendezvous in the thicket at the rear of Blue Grass Avenue. The sultry afternoon had made him drowse, and when he awoke Alves was standing over him, her hands tightening nervously.
"They have dropped you," he said, reading the news in her face.
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, until they had plodded down the avenue for several blocks.
"Why did they do it!" she murmured rebelliously. "They gave me no reason. It isn't because I teach badly. It isn't because of the married teachers' talk: there are hundreds of married women in the schools who haven't been dismissed."
"Well," Sommers responded soothingly, "I shouldn't hunt for a rational reason for their act. They have merely hastened the step we were going to take some day."
"What shall we do!" she gasped, overpowered by the visions her practical mind conjured up. "We could just get along with my forty dollars, and now—Oh! I've been like a weight about your neck. I have cut you off from your world, the big world where successes are made!"