Life is not caring--giving up--getting hardened--I know it.

I _loathe_ it." Katie sat there quite still.

She was frightened.
"And you! Here in a place like this--what do you know about it?
Why you're nothing but an--outsider!" An outsider, was she ?--and she had thought that Ann-- The girl's passion seemed suddenly to flow into one long, cunning look.
"What are you doing it for ?" she asked quietly with a sort of insolently indifferent suspicion.
"I don't know," Katie replied simply.

"At least until a minute ago I didn't know, and now I wonder if perhaps, without knowing it, I was not trying to make up for some of those people--for I fear some of them were friends of mine--who have gone ahead by kicking other people out of their way.

Perhaps their kicks provided my laughs.