Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/219

Rh Of late many of her emotions were like enveloping clouds—love and worship, as well as hate and scorn. Her passion for Mrs. Morrison was big, dense, un-understandable. As she lay with her face buried in the dark of the pillow, she could see great masses of red and purple light-dust, shapeless and conglomerate, rolling and shifting senselessly in the dark behind her closed lids. Life was like that. Oh, if only somebody would show her a straight easy little path leading through the confusion.

"Oh, come, come, Lollie," exclaimed Stella. "Don't do that way. Of course if you feel so badly as all that about poor Ed, why—he needn't come, I suppose. But for the life of me, I don't see what he's done to you."

It was the first time for years Stella had seen Laurel cry like a little girl. It was the last time she ever saw her. After that one outburst, Laurel never again betrayed to her mother her fear of the shifting clouds of the twilight stratum of the dawning of her soul.

Stella was not mistaken in attributing Laurel's sudden aversion to Ed to her age, but she soon discovered it was no whim. In fact, Laurel seemed so terribly set against "poor Ed" that she almost was inclined to believe that Stephen must have "poisoned" her mind somehow. Why, when Ed invited Laurel and her mother to go to the theater with him, and choose their own show, the child refused absolutely to stir an inch. She wouldn't touch a piece of the generous box of candy he sent them. "Oh, how can you bear him?" she remarked quietly (for all the world like Stephen) when she found his name