THE STARS INCLINE
BY
JEANNE JUDSON
AUTHOR OF “BECKONING ROADS”
[Illustration]
McCLELLAND & STEWART
PUBLISHERS TORONTO
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1919
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
The Quinn & Boden Company
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE STARS INCLINE
CHAPTER I
One can be nineteen and still know a great deal of the world. Ruth
Mayfield felt that she knew a great deal of the world. She could judge
character, and taking care of Mother’s business affairs had helped a
lot, and like most young women of nineteen she knew that if marriage
offered no more to her than it had offered to her parents, she did not
want to marry. Of course they hadn’t quarrelled or anything, but they
lived such dull lives, and there were always money worries—and
everything.
Ruth had never told her mother any of these things, especially after her
father died and her mother had cried so much and had seemed to feel even
worse than Ruth did, for Ruth _had_ felt badly. She had been awfully
fond of her father, really fonder of him than of her mother. He
understood her better and it was he who had encouraged her to study art.
That was one of the things that set her apart from other girls in
Indianapolis. She was an art student. One day she would do great things,
she knew.
When she was a very little girl she had intended to write. She decided
this because nothing gave her so much pleasure as reading, not the sort
of books that delight the hours of the average childhood, but books
which, had her mother ever taken the trouble to look at them, would have
made her rather concerned for the future of the small reader. But Mrs.
Mayfield never troubled to look. The books all came from the
Indianapolis public library, so they must be all right. They were fairy
tales at first and later mythology. The mythology of the Greeks and
Romans which somehow never stepped out of the marble for her; and the
intensely human mythology of the Icelanders and of the Celts which she
liked better, and later the mythology of India which fascinated her most
of all because it had apparently neither beginning nor end. While her
mother and her mother’s friends were dabbling in Christian Science and
“New Thought” she was lost in the mysteries of the transmigration of
souls. Perhaps it was all this delving into the past that gave to her
wide brown eyes what is called the spirituelle look—a look decidedly
contradicted by her sturdy body; perhaps, too, it was extensive reading
that finally decided her not to try to write, but to express herself in
painting, a medium through which she could depict emotions and dramas
rather than ideas and facts.
There came to her at the age of fourteen a development which, while it
increased her faith in things supernormal and for a while fascinated her
into a deeper delving into the religions of the East, had the final
effect of frightening her away from things of the mind and turning her
activities into more beautiful channels. She had read of the
objectification of ideas and the materialization of thoughts and wanted
to try to do these things herself, without quite knowing what exercise
she should make of her knowledge even though it came to her. Like many
people of a spiritual yet intense nature, of her five senses the sense
of smell was the keenest. She liked flowers for their odour more than
for colour or form. One winter day when she had returned home from
school and was sitting alone with her books—looking out at the
snow-laden trees instead of studying—she thought of spring and violets;
she was tired of winter, eager for the spring to come again, and she
tried to see violets, to catch their scent and their colour. She closed
her eyes and shut out the winter room and the frost-rimmed window—all
around her in great warm waves of fragrance rose the odour of
violets—exquisite English violets with the freshness of the woods in
them. She took deep breaths, keeping her eyes closed lest the miracle
should fade. Then when she had quite satisfied herself that she really
did smell violets she opened her eyes. All about her on the floor, on
the table, covering her schoolbooks, they lay, great heaps of odorous
purple blossoms mingled with rich green leaves. With a little cry of
pleasure and amazement she stretched out her hands to gather them in and
they were gone. The room was as it had been before, but the odour was
not gone. For many minutes the fragrance of violets filled her nostrils.
She was afraid to close her eyes again to bring back the vision, but the
following day she tried again, and many times afterward. She tried
different flowers, carnations and Chinese lilies. She could not always
see the flowers, but she seldom failed with the odour. The game
fascinated her so that she spent every moment that she could find alone
in materializing flowers. Then came to her the desire to take the next
step—to make other people realize her power. Her mother, being the least
imaginative person she knew as well as the one most conveniently near,
she decided to try with her. It was one evening when her father was not
at home. Her mother was busy embroidering—one of those never to be
finished articles of no conceivable use, which occupy the hands of women
who have no active interest in life. Ruth was pretending to read. She
dared not shut her eyes lest her mother should observe. But she bent
unseeing eyes over her book and concentrated on the inner vision of the
mystic—shutting out everything except the thought of violets. They were
her mother’s favourite flower. For many seconds after she herself was
surrounded by the odour of violets and could see them on her book, her
mother did not speak. Then she looked up restlessly from her embroidery.
“Have you been using perfume, Ruth?—you know I don’t approve of young
girls—”
“No, Mother, I haven’t. I haven’t any to use.”
“I smell perfume—violet perfume—it’s more like real violets than just
perfume—don’t you notice it? The whole room is heavy with it.”
She dropped her embroidery and moved about the room as if hunting for
the flowers though she knew there were none there.
“It must have been my imagination—it’s gone now. Strange, I was sure I
smelt violets. I must ask Doctor Gorton about it. It may be a dangerous
symptom.”
Ruth did not speak. She was rather ashamed and not a little frightened.
There was nothing of the mischievous about her. She did not want to play
tricks. She had just wanted to test her power, but this was the last
time that she consciously tried to use it. For some time the illusion of
flowers persisted whenever she thought of them, but she tried not to
think of them and before many months the experiment was a thing of the
past. It persisted in Ruth only in a deep-rooted faith in the power of
mind, and in the truth of many things that the average person considered
superstition. When she heard of deaths and births and marriages—of good
luck and bad luck—of coincidences and accidents, it seemed to her that
behind the obvious and accepted causes of all these things she could
trace an inner and spiritual reason—the working of forces that laughed
at the clumsy working of material machinery. Yet she no longer delved.
For a while she actually made a conscious effort to look at life in the
ordinary way. She was helped in this by the death of her father, which
placed her in a position of responsibility toward her invalid mother,
and made her life too full of reality to leave much room for the occult
and supernatural.
She hadn’t realized quite how much she had loved her mother until she
died. Mother had been old-fashioned and fussy, but then all invalids
were fussy, and she had been a dear about letting her go on with her
studies after Father died, even though she wouldn’t move to Chicago as
Ruth wished. They could have lived as cheaply in Chicago and Ruth could
have gone to the art institute there, but Mother wouldn’t consent to the
move. She wanted to stay near her friends. Ruth couldn’t understand
that. Her mother’s friends were all such ordinary people. Kind-hearted,
but quite hopelessly ordinary. It was curious that her mother’s death
had realized for her one of her most cherished dreams. Mother knew that
she was going to die. The doctors had told her so, and she had told
Ruth. It made Ruth cry, but her mother didn’t shed any tears. That was
why Ruth did. If her mother had cried Ruth would have been more
controlled, but her mother was so unnaturally calm.
“When I am gone I want you to go to your father’s sister, Gloria
Mayfield. I hate to send you there, but there’s no one else of your
blood, and you’re too young to live alone. Gloria has retired from the
stage and they say she is quite respectable now, and besides you won’t
be dependent on her. Now that there will be no more doctors’ bills to
pay, there will be enough money for you to live on, more than any young
girl ought to have in her own hands. It is all in trust and you will
have just the income until you are twenty-one.” Ruth made no comment to
this. Having handled her mother’s business affairs she knew that her
income would be very small indeed, but she and her mother had different
ideas as to how much a young girl should spend. “Of course I expect you
to pay your way with your aunt,” her mother went on. “But you must live
with some older woman and she is your father’s sister.”
She said it as if the fact that Gloria Mayfield was her father’s sister
answered all arguments.
“Where does Aunt Gloria live, Mother?” asked Ruth. She accepted the fact
that her mother would die soon without making an effort to persuade
either herself or her mother that there was any hope that the doctors
might be mistaken. She had known for years that her mother would not
live long. Doctors, New Thought, Christian Science, and Theosophy had
all been appealed to without having any appreciable effect on her
mother’s health. Ruth being perfectly healthy was inclined to have faith
in the New Thought. She disliked the Science because of the word
Christian, but was inclined to believe that any one of these numerous
things might have helped if used alone. When her father had died first
it had seemed unreal—impossible almost, for Ruth and her father had
always expected her mother to go first, though neither of them would
have put such a thought into words. It was just an unspoken
understanding between them.
“In New York,” Mrs. Mayfield had answered; and Ruth was ashamed that her
first thought on hearing this amazing news was that in New York she
could study in the best American art schools.
“How old is she?” asked Ruth. She had been a bit troubled by her
mother’s words about an older woman. Ruth had no desire to go to New
York to be controlled by some elderly female relative.
“I don’t know. I never saw her. In her younger days she was abroad a
great deal, and then I never cared to meet her. She was younger than
your father, quite a lot younger, but she must have reached years of
discretion by this time. I hope so for your sake. Perhaps I’m not doing
the right thing by telling you to go to her, but after all she is your
father’s sister and will be your only relative after I am gone.”
“Have you written to her—do you want me to write?”
“No. I didn’t write to her before and I can’t start now. You will go to
her after I’m gone as your father’s daughter. Your claim on her is
through him, not me. You can write to her yourself as soon—as soon as
you know. Her address is in that little red book on the desk—at least
that was her address five years ago, when your poor father died. She
didn’t come to the funeral, though she did write to me, and she may have
moved since. She probably has. I think on the whole you’d better write
now so that the letter will have time to follow her.”
Ruth did write and her aunt had not moved, for by a curious coincidence
Aunt Gloria’s answer came on the very day that her mother died. At the
time, concerned with her grief, Ruth didn’t read the letter very
carefully, but afterward—after the funeral, and after all the
innumerable details had been settled, she went back to it and read it
again. She didn’t know exactly what to think of it. It filled her with
doubts. Almost she persuaded herself to disregard her mother’s wish and
not go to Aunt Gloria at all, but she had already told all her mother’s
kind friends that that was what she would do. It gave her a logical
excuse for refusing all of the offers of the well-meaning women who
asked her to come and stop with them “for a few weeks at least until you
are more yourself.”
Ruth realized that she had never felt so much herself as she did
now—rather hopelessly alone and independent in a way that frightened
her. These kind women were all her mother’s friends, not hers. She had
none. She had always prided herself on being different from other girls
and not interested in the things they cared for—boys and parties and
dress. Even at the art school she had found the other students
disappointingly frivolous. They had not taken their art seriously as she
did. The letter was curious:
“My dear child,” she had written, “by all means come to me in New York
if your mother dies. But why anticipate? She’ll probably live for years.
I hope so. To say I hope so sounds almost like a lack of hospitality and
to send you an urgent invitation to come, under the circumstances,
sounds—This is getting too complicated. Come whenever you need me, I’m
always at home now.”
And the letter was signed with her full name, Gloria Mayfield. She had
not even called Ruth niece, or signed herself “your loving aunt,” or
anything that might be reasonably expected.
Ruth might have lingered on at home, but she had refused the hospitality
of her mother’s friends and the house was empty and desolate and she was
dressed in black. She hadn’t wanted to dress in black, but she hadn’t
the courage to shock people by continuing to wear colours, so she
hurriedly finished all the ghastly business that some one must always
finish after a funeral, and then she packed her trunks, putting in all
the pictures and books that she liked best, and took a train for New
York. She had a plan in the back of her mind about a studio there. She
had never seen a real studio, but she had read about them, and if Aunt
Gloria proved disagreeable, she would go and live in one. She wondered a
bit what sort of a place Aunt Gloria lived in. The address sounded
aristocratic and sort of English, Gramercy Square. She liked the sound
of it.
Her mother’s death had hurt her cruelly, but she was so young that
already she was beginning to rebound. The journey helped to revive her
spirits. Everything interested her, but her first sight of New York
disappointed her vaguely. If she had known, her disappointment was
caused only because the cab driver took her down Fourth Avenue instead
of Fifth, and there was little to interest her in the dull publishing
buildings and wholesale houses, and she missed even the shabby green of
Madison Square. Her spirits rose a bit when the cab turned into Gramercy
Square. All the fresh greenness of it, the children playing within the
iron-barred enclosure, the old-fashioned houses and clubs and the big,
new apartment buildings looking so clean and quiet in the morning
sunlight, appealed to her. She rather expected the cab to stop before
one of the apartment houses, but instead it stopped on the north side of
the park. Her aunt lived in a house then. This was also cheering. The
cab driver carried her bag for her up the high steps and she rang the
bell with a fast-beating heart. She didn’t know exactly what she had
expected—perhaps that Aunt Gloria would open the door in person—and she
started back when it was opened by a tall negro who looked as startled
as herself.
“Is Aunt Gloria—is Miss Mayfield at home?”
“Are you expected?”
He spoke in a soft, precise voice unlike the voice of any nigger Ruth
had ever heard before. She knew he must be a servant though he was not
in livery, and she looked at him as she answered, suddenly impressed by
his regular features, his straight hair, and yellow-brown skin.
“She didn’t know exactly when I’d come, but she knew I was coming. I am
her niece.”
The servant picked up her bag, which the cab driver had left beside her
and opened the door wider for her to come in.
“Miss Mayfield is at home. I’ll let her know that you are here if you
will wait a few moments.”
She was in a wide hall now from which an open staircase rose to rooms
above. The hall was very cheerful with white woodwork and grey walls
hung with etchings in narrow black frames. Uninvited Ruth perched
hesitatingly on the edge of a Chippendale chair and waited. The coloured
man walked to the far end of the hall, opened a door there and called:
“Amy, come here, you.”
Amy came, a round, short, black woman of the type most familiar to Ruth.
To her the man evidently explained the situation, but his soft voice did
not carry to Ruth’s end of the hall; not so the voice of Amy. Ruth could
hear her replies quite plainly.
“Mis’ Mayfiel’ a’n yit had her breakfus’—I’se jes now makin’ de tray—ef
you sez so I’ll tell her, but dis a’n no hour to be talkin’ to Mis’
Mayfiel’.”
Both Amy and the man disappeared through the door and soon Amy emerged
again carrying a breakfast tray. She went past Ruth and up the stairs.
Ruth was growing impatient and rather offended. Of course she should
have sent a wire, but even so, Gloria Mayfield was her aunt and she
should have been taken to her at once. Evidently her aunt ate breakfast
in bed. Perhaps she was an invalid like her mother. Ruth hoped not.
Evidently too she had a lot more money than Ruth had supposed. Her
impatience was not alleviated when Amy came down the stairs again
without speaking to her. It was unbearable that she should sit here in
the hall of her aunt’s house, ignored like a book agent. In another
moment the man had reappeared.
“Miss Mayfield will see you as soon as she can dress, Miss, and would
you like breakfast in your room or downstairs?”
He had picked up Ruth’s bag as he spoke.
“I’ve had breakfast,” said Ruth. She had indeed eaten breakfast in Grand
Central Station. It was only seven o’clock in the morning when she
arrived in New York, and that had seemed rather an early hour for even a
relative to drop into her aunt’s home unexpectedly.
She followed the servant up the stairs, mentally commenting on how she
hated “educated niggers.” Yet she had to admit there was nothing
disrespectful in his manner. He set her bag down in one of the rooms
opening out of the circular landing and asked for her trunk checks, and
suggested sending Amy up to make her comfortable. She gave him the trunk
checks, refused the offer of Amy’s help, and when he had closed the door
sat down to examine her surroundings and wait for the appearance of her
aunt.
There had been a certain charm about the entrance hall and stairway of
the house, but the room in which she found herself was as uninteresting
as possible. It was large and high-ceiled and almost empty and streamers
of loosened and discoloured wall paper hung from the walls. It was in
the rear of the house. The few essential pieces of furniture in the room
made it look even larger than it really was. It looked like what it was,
a very much unused bedroom in a house very much too large for its
inhabitants. She walked to the window and looked out, but the view did
not interest her. It was only of the rear of the houses on Twenty-second
Street. The house opposite had a tiny back garden that ran out to meet a
similar back garden in the rear of her aunt’s house. Ruth did not call
this plot of ground a garden, because it had nothing growing in it
except one stunted, twisted tree on the branches of which September had
left a dozen pale green leaves. It made her think of an anæmic slum
child. Looking at it Ruth felt suddenly very sad and neglected. She had
hoped that her aunt would not be too much like a relative, but now she
began to persuade herself that she had looked forward to the embracing
arms of a motherly aunt, and her cold reception had quite broken her
heart. Instead of a fussy, motherly relative she had found a cold,
selfish woman living in a house much too large, surrounded by
servants—Ruth had only seen two but there were probably more. She was
unwelcome; she had been shoved off into the shabbiest room in the house
by an insolent servant. But she was not a pauper. She would tell her
aunt very coldly that she had only come to pay her respects and was
going immediately to an hotel.
“Oh no, Aunt Gloria; I couldn’t think of imposing on you,” she could
hear herself saying, and of course then her aunt would urge her to stay,
but she wouldn’t. What could her aunt do in such a big house? It was
four floors and a basement. It must be full of shabby, unused rooms like
this one. Just then there was a knock at the door, and she hadn’t even
smoothed her hair or powdered her nose as she had intended doing before
her aunt sent for her.
“Come in,” she said. Her voice sounded husky and unused. The words were
scarcely out of her mouth when the door opened and a woman swept into
the room—the tallest woman she had ever seen, at least six feet tall and
slender without being thin—a graceful tiger lily of a woman with masses
of auburn hair and big grey, black-lashed eyes and a straight white nose
and a crushed flower of a mouth. With one hand she was holding a
gorgeous, nameless garment of amber silk and lace and the other hand was
held out to Ruth. Even as she took it Ruth realized that it would have
been preposterous to have expected the goddess to kiss her.
“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting—Ruth,” she said. Her voice was
like silver bells ringing.
“I should have wired,” admitted Ruth. Her voice sounded flat and
toneless after hearing her aunt speak.
“It would have been awkward if I hadn’t happened to be in town, but I
was, so it’s all right. You’re older than I thought, I was afraid that
you’d turn out a little girl.”
“And you’re ever so much younger than I thought, Aunt Gloria,” said
Ruth, beginning to gain her composure.
“Thirty-five last birthday,” said her aunt.
Immediately Ruth realized that thirty-five was the only possible age for
a woman. To be older or younger than thirty-five was infinitely dull.
She herself at nineteen, which only a few moments ago she had considered
a very interesting age indeed, was quite hopeless.
“But come, we mustn’t stay in this awful room. I didn’t tell George just
where to take you. Certainly not here. I’ll have a room fixed up for
you. Did George send for your trunks? He said you’d had breakfast, but
that can’t be true—coffee perhaps, but not breakfast—I only had coffee
myself. So we can eat together while they’re getting a room ready for
you.” She was sweeping Ruth along with her down the stairs as she
talked, not waiting for answers to anything she said. At the foot she
turned and opened a door at the left of the staircase and peered in.
“Too gloomy in the dining-room in the morning. We’ll go in here,” and
she turned to the other side, opening a door into a big room, all
furnished in soft grey and dull gold. Ruth’s artist eye perceived how
such a neutral-tinted background was just the thing to enhance the
colourful appearance and personality of her aunt. The only touch of
vivid colour in the room was in the hangings at the deep, high windows
that looked out on the park.
“Have Amy bring our breakfast in here,” said Gloria, and then Ruth saw
that George was standing in the doorway of the room they had just
entered, though she had not heard her aunt call him. Later she observed
the same thing many times, that George always appeared as if by magic
and seemingly without being called whenever her aunt wanted him.
The room was full of comfortable, low, cushioned chairs, and seated on
two of them with a table between, on which George had laid a white
cloth, Ruth and her aunt Gloria gave each other that full scrutiny which
surprise and embarrassment had previously denied them.
Ruth could see now that her aunt was not really so young as she had at
first appeared. There were fine lines around her large eyes and art, not
nature had painted her lashes black. Her fine brows had been “formed”
and there were little, pale freckles gleaming on her white nose and
across her long, cleanly moulded hands. Ruth saw all these things and
they only strengthened her belief that Aunt Gloria was the most
beautiful and charming woman in the world. She hoped very much that her
aunt would like her, but she was not sanguine about it. She tried to
tell herself that this woman was only her father’s sister, but it was
hard to believe.
“Now, tell me all about it,” said Gloria.
“There’s very little to tell. Mother died on the tenth—your letter
arrived on the same day. Of course it wasn’t unexpected. She had been an
invalid for almost ten years, so it wasn’t a shock. I was the only
relative at the funeral, but Mother had ever so many friends—”
She paused, wondering if she ought to tell Aunt Gloria about the
flowers, the Eastern Star wreath, and—
“I don’t mean that,” Gloria interrupted her thoughts. “I mean how your
mother happened to suggest that you come here. You know Jack’s wife
didn’t approve of me—refused to meet me even, and I can’t understand.
Was there some sort of deathbed forgiveness, or what?”
There was the faintest trace of mockery in her voice, but somehow Ruth
could not be angry, though she knew that this woman, her father’s
sister, was laughing at her dead mother and her dead mother’s
conventions and moralities. She decided that she would be as frank as
her aunt.
“No, Aunt Gloria, I don’t think Mother’s views had changed at all. She
sent me here because you are my only living relative and she thought I
was too young to live alone—and I came,” she continued bravely, “because
New York is the best place in America to study art and I want to be a
great painter. But if you don’t want me here I’ll live alone—I have
money you know, and Mother intended that I should pay my own way.”
“I understand,” said Gloria, nodding. “That would be in character—a sort
of blood is stronger than Bohemia idea.”
“And then,” continued Ruth, determined to be absolutely frank, “I think
Mother was under the impression that you were older than you are, and
had settled down—you have retired from the stage?”
Again Gloria laughed.
“My dear child, I’ve done nothing but retire from the stage ever since I
first went on it, but that doesn’t matter. I agree with your mother that
you will be much better off here with me than alone, and I shall be very
glad to have you—it means one more permanent resident in this huge barn
of a house. Only please don’t call me Aunt. Call me Gloria. My being
your aunt is more or less of an accident. The fact that I like you is of
vastly more importance, and if you like me we shall get on very well
together.”
“I think you’re wonderful,” admitted Ruth, blushing deeply.
“Very well, then, you shall stay here—you can have two rooms or more if
you want ’em, fixed up to suit yourself, and you can spend your income
on your clothes and your education—but you will be here as my guest, not
as my relative. I dislike relatives inordinately—don’t you?”
Without giving Ruth time to reply she went on:
“Have you thought about where you’re going to study?”
“No; I suppose there are a number of places.”
“There are, of course; the Art Students’ League is one of the best. The
associations there should be good. You’ll be working with the
strugglers. How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen and the whole world before you, work and failure and success
and New York and Paris and your first love affair—you’re young and you
don’t have to nibble at the loaf; you can take big, hungry bites, and
when the time for nibbling does come, you’ll have a banquet to
remember.”
“Where is the Art Students’ League?” asked Ruth.
Her aunt fascinated her; she talked “like a book,” Ruth thought, but
Ruth herself was practical despite her dreaming and the talk of art
schools interested her.
“Oh, it’s a school with small fees—if you have a lot of talent they give
scholarships—I don’t really know much about it, except that it’s on
Fifty-seventh Street some place, and that it is supposed to be proper
and good. You might try it for a year—then you’ll probably be wanting
Paris. In another year I may feel old enough to chaperon you.”
After breakfast they went through the house, planning where Ruth should
establish herself, finally deciding on two rooms on the fourth floor,
because one of them had a skylight and could be used as a studio, where
Ruth could work undisturbed.
The next few days were spent in buying furniture, in having the rooms
redecorated, and in becoming familiar with New York.
Ruth was determined not to be impressed by anything, a determination
that led Gloria Mayfield to suspect that her niece was of a phlegmatic
temperament, and to wonder why she wanted to be an artist. Only the
quiet sense of humour that Ruth displayed at rare intervals, encouraged
her to believe that having her niece with her might not be a bad
arrangement.
Ruth on her part discovered that her Aunt Gloria had a wide and varied
circle of friends and no particularly well-defined scheme of existence.
And she discovered a little of Gloria Mayfield’s past, the past that had
been so shrouded in mystery in her mother’s house. It was when Ruth had
made a remark about her aunt living alone in such a large house.
“Yes, it is large, but what am I to do?” said Gloria. “My second husband
wished it on me and my third was kind enough to settle enough income on
me to pay the taxes, and there you are. Of course I could let it to some
one else, but it’s nice to have a lot of room.”
Ruth could not disguise her shock and astonishment.
“Oh, didn’t you know?” asked Gloria, smiling cheerfully.
“I didn’t know you’d been married at all,” said Ruth.
“Only once, really—the others were almost too casual. I supposed your
mother had told you.”
“Did they die?” asked Ruth.
“Not to my knowledge—I never killed any of them,” said Gloria.
And Ruth put this conversation away in the back of her brain for future
reference, along with several dozen other things that she didn’t exactly
understand.