you really were inferior—football, for instance. The deference of Mrs. Kestrell, the pats and endearments of Miss Todd, and the practical solicitude of Dr. Wilcove were in a sense more embarrassing than indifference would have been. Their kindness only blurred the edges of his problem, and he had never been more in need of keeping the edges sharply defined.
The condolence of Phœbe Meddar was the sweetest of all. She saw him at Gritty's gate, crossed the road and stopped before him, then said, shyly but sincerely, "I'm sorry about your auntie, Paul; and I missed your playing in church last Sunday." That was the most delicate manifestation of sympathy and the most thrilling recognition of his musical importance that had ever been vouchsafed to him, but, after all, it was only a negative offering to a boy whose whole attention must be concentrated on putting together the puzzle-pieces of his disrupted life. And Phœbe's little offering summed up the whole of Hale's Turning. Hale's Turning took the trouble to be sorry because he cut a picturesque figure. He could not do much with its sorrow, still less with its white linen table-napkins and its plans to enfold him within the bigoted traditions of its life. He was obsessed with a desire to escape, to go where he could see only strange faces, hear only strange voices, move among people who had never even heard of Hale's Turning and its sleepy ways, people whose ideas were fresh and exciting and drawn from rich sources. He wanted to leave his old self—the self that had somehow been laid to rest in the graveyard—and set out in search of a new self, to wander, if necessary, to the very edge of the world in search of it.
If anything had been needed to tip the scale more sharply on the side of rebellion, the effect was accom-
