As she stopped there Ruth asked eagerly, eyes intently upon her: "But just what is it you mean, Annie? Just what is it you fought for—kept?"
"To be my own!" Annie flashed back at her, like steel.
Then she changed; for the first time her work fell unheeded in her lap; the eyes which a minute before had flashed fight looked far off and were dreamy; her face, over which the skin seemed to have become stretched, burned by years of sun and wind, quivered a little. When she spoke again it was firmly but with sadness. "It's what we think that counts, Ruth. It's what we feel. It's what we are. Oh, I'd like richer living—more beauty—more joy. Well, I haven't those things. For various reasons, I won't have them. That makes it the more important to have all I can take!"—it leaped out from the gentler thinking like a sent arrow. "Nobody holds my thoughts. They travel as far as they themselves have power to travel. They bring me whatever they can bring me—and I shut nothing out. I'm not afraid!"
Ruth was looking at her with passionate earnestness.
"Over there in that town,"—Annie made a little gesture toward it, "are hundreds of women who would say they have a great deal more than I have. And it's true enough," she laughed, "that they have some things I'd like to have. But do you think I'd trade with them? Oh, no! Not much! The free don't trade with the bond, Ruth."
And still Ruth did not speak, but listened with that passionate intentness.
"There in that town," Annie went on, "are people—most a whole townful of them—who are going through life without being really awake to life at all. They move around in a closed place, doing the same silly little things—copy-cats—repeaters. They're not their own—they're not awake. They're like things run by machinery. Like things going in their sleep. Take those girls we used to go to school with. Why, take Edith Lawrence. I see her sometimes. She always speaks sweetly to me; she means to be nice. But she moves round and round in her little place and she doesn't even know of the wonderful things going on in the world today! Do you think I'd trade with her?—social leader and all the rest of it!" She was gathering together the bundles of asparagus. She had finished her work. "Very sweet—very charming," she disposed of Edith, "but she simply doesn't count. The world's moving away from her, and she,"—Annie laughed with a mild scorn—"doesn't even know that!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was late when Ruth went to sleep that night; she and Annie talked through the evening—of books Annie was reading, of the things which were interesting her. She was rich in interests; ideas were as personal things to her; she found personal satisfactions in them. She was following things which Ruth knew little about; she had been long away from the centers of books, and out of touch with awakened people. A whole new world seemed to open from these things that were vital to Annie; there was promise in them—a quiet road out from the hard things of self. There were new poets in the world; there were bold new thinkers; there was an amazing new art; science was reinterpreting the world and workers and women were setting themselves free. Everywhere the old pattern was being shot through with new ideas. Everywhere were new attempts at a better way of doing things. She had been away from all that; what she knew of the world's new achievement had seemed unreal, or at least detached, not having any touch with her own life. But as disclosed by Annie those things became realities—things to enrich one's own life. It kindled old fires of her girlhood, fanned the old desire to know. Personal things had seemed to quell that; the storm in her own life had shut down around her. Now she saw that she, like those others whom Annie scorned, had not kept that openness to life, had let her own life shut her in. She had all along been eager for books, but had not been fortunate in the things she had come upon. She had not had access to large libraries—many times not even to small ones; she had had little money for buying books and was so out of touch with the world that she had not had much initiative in trying to get hold of things. She felt now that she had failed miserably in that, but there were years when she was like a hurt thing that keeps in hiding, most of all wanting to escape more hurt. It had been a weakness—she clearly saw that now, and it had been weakening to her powers. Most of the books she had come upon were of that shut-in life Annie scorned, written from within that static living, and for it. People in them had the feeling it was right people should have, unless there were bad people in the book, and then they were very definitely bad. Many of those books had been not only unsatisfying, but saddening to her, causing her to feel newly apart from the experiences of people of her kind.