"Poor dear," murmured Katie. "It will be more real now that we've talked."

"I used to dream a dream, Katie, and I think it was about you. Only you weren't any one thing. You were all kinds of different things. Lovely things. You were Something Somewhere. You were the something that was way off beyond the nothingness of Centralia."

"The something that didn't squeak," suggested Katie tremulously.

"Something Somewhere. You were both a waking and a sleeping dream. I knew you were there. Isn't it queer how we do--know without knowing? My father used to talk about people being 'called.' Called to the ministry--called to the missionary field--called to heaven. Well maybe you're called to other things, too. Maybe," said Ann with a laugh which sobbed, "you're even 'called' to Chicago."

The laugh died and the sob lingered. "Only when you get there--Chicago doesn't seem to know that it had called you.

"My Something Somewhere was always something I never could catch up with. Sometimes it was a beautiful country--where a river wound through a woods. Sometimes it was beautiful people laughing and dancing. Sometimes it was a star. Sometimes it was a field of flowers--all blowing back and forth. Sometimes it was a voice--a wonderful far-away voice. Sometimes it was a lovely dress--oh a wonderful gauzy dress--or a hat that was like the blowing field of flowers. Sometimes--this was the loveliest of all--it was somebody who loved me. But whatever it was, it was something I couldn't overtake.

"And you mustn't laugh, Katie, when I tell you that the thing that made me think I could catch up with it was a moving-picture show!

"It came to Centralia--the first one that had ever been there. I heard the people next door talking about it. They said there were pictures of things that really happened in the great cities--oh of kings and queens and the president and millionaires and automobile races and grand weddings; that the pictures went on just like the happenings went on; that it was just as if the pictures were alive; that it was just like being there.

"Oh, I was so excited about it! I was so excited I could hardly get ready.

"You see ever since Tono had died--two years before, I had kept that idea that things were hard. That the thing to do was to be hard. I dreamed about things that were lovely--the Something Somewhere things--but as far as the real things went I never changed my mind about them. You mustn't let them into your heart. They just wanted to get in there to hurt you.

"Now I forgot all about that. These pictures were dreams made real. They had caught up with the Something Somewhere. And I was going to see them.

"But I didn't--not that day. I was so happy that my father suspected something. And he got it out of me and said I couldn't go. He said that the things that would be pictured would be the wickedness of the world.

That I was not to see it.

"But I made up my mind that I would see the wickedness of the world." Ann paused, and then said in lower voice: "And I have--and not just in pictures."

She seemed to be meeting something, and she answered it. "But just the same," she made answer defiantly, "I'd rather see the wickedness of the world than stay in the nothingness of the world!

"The pictures were to be there a week. I thought of nothing else but how I could see them. The last day there was a thimble-bee. I went to the thimble-bee--said I couldn't stay--and went to the pictures.

"Katie, that moving-picture show was proof. Proof of the Something Somewhere. And in my heart I made a vow--it was a _solemn_ vow--that I would find the things that moved in the pictures.

"And there was music--such music as I had never heard before, even though it came out of a box. They had the songs of the grand opera singers. And as I listened--I tell you I was called!--I don't care how silly it sounds--I was called by the voices that had sung into that box. For this was real--if the life hadn't been there it couldn't have been caught into the pictures and the box. It proved--I thought--that all the lovely things I had dreamed were true. I had only to go and find them. People were walking upon those streets. Then I could walk on those streets. And those people were laughing--and talking to each other. Everybody seemed to have friends. Everybody was happy! And all of that really _was_. The pictures were alive. Alive with the things that there were out beyond the nothingness of Centralia.

"The man played something from an opera and showed pictures of beautiful people going into a beautiful place to listen to that very music. He said that the very next night in Chicago those people would be going into that place to listen to those very voices.

"Katie, I don't believe you'll laugh at me when I tell you that my teeth fairly chattered when first it came to me that I must be one of those people! It was something all different from the longing for fun--oh it was something big--terrible--it _had_ to be. It was the same feeling of its having to be that I had about Tono.

"Though probably that feeling would have passed away if it hadn't been for my father. He came there and found me, and--humiliated me. And after we got home--" Ann was holding herself tight, but after a moment she relaxed to say with an attempted laugh: "It wasn't all being 'called.'

Part of it was being driven.

"Then there was another thing. The treasurer of the missionary society came that night with some money--eighteen dollars--I was to send off the next day. It was that money started me out to find my Something Somewhere."

"Oh _Ann_!" whispered Katie, drawing back. "But of course," she added, "you paid it back just as soon as you could?"

"I _never_ paid it back! If I had eighteen _million_ dollars, I'd _never_ pay it back! I _like_ to think of not paying it back!"

Katie's face hardened. "I can't understand that."

"No," sobbed Ann, "you'd have to have lived a long time in nothingness to understand that--and some other things, too." She looked at her strangely. "There's more coming, Katie, that you won't be able to understand."

Katie's face was averted, but something in Ann's voice made her turn to her. "I think it was wrong, Ann. There's no use in my pretending I don't.

I _can't_ understand this. But maybe I can understand some of the other things better than you think."

"I left at six o'clock the next morning," Ann went back to it when she was calmer. "And at the last minute I don't think I would have had the courage to go if my father hadn't been snoring so. How silly it all sounds!

"And the only reason I got on the train was that it would have taken more courage to go back than to go on.

"Katie, some time I'll tell you all about it. How I felt when I got to Chicago. How it seemed to shriek and roar. How I seemed just buried under the noise. How I walked around the streets that day--frightened almost to death--and yet, inside the fright, just crazy about it. And how green I was!

"Nothing seemed to matter except going to grand opera. I didn't even have sense enough to find a place to stay. I thought about it, but didn't know how, and anyhow the most important thing was finding the things that moved in the pictures--and sang in the box.

"I saw a woman go up to a policeman and ask him where something was and he told her, so I did that, too. Asked him where you went to hear grand opera. And he pointed. I was right there by it.

"I heard some people talking about going in to get tickets. So I thought I had better get a ticket.

"But they didn't have any. They were all gone.

"When I came out I was almost crying. Then a smiling man outside stepped up to me and said he had tickets and he'd let me have one for ten dollars. I was so glad he had them! Ten dollars seemed a good deal--but I didn't think much about it.

"Then I had my ticket and just two dollars left.

"But that night at the opera I didn't know whether I had two dollars, or no dollars, or a thousand dollars. At first I was frightened because everybody but me had on such beautiful clothes. But soon I was too crazy about their clothes to care--and then after the music began--

"Oh, Katie! Suppose you'd always dreamed of something and never been able to catch up with it. Suppose you'd not even been able to really dream it, but just dream that it was, and then suppose it all came--No, I can't tell you. You'd have to have lived in Centralia--and been a minister's daughter.

"My heart sang more beautifully than the singers sang. 'Now you have found it! Now you have found it!' my heart kept singing.

"When all the other people left I left too--in a dream. For it had passed into a dream--into a beautiful dream that was going to shelter it for me forever.

"I stood around watching the beautiful people getting into their carriages. And I couldn't make myself believe that it was in the same world with Centralia.

"Then after a while it occurred to me that all those people were going home. Everybody was going home.

"At first I wasn't frightened. Something inside me was singing over and over the songs of the opera. I was too far in my dream to be much frightened.

"Then all at once I got--oh, so tired. And cold. And so frightened I did not know what to do. My dream seemed to have taken wings and flown away.

All the beautiful laughing people had gone. It was just as if I woke up.

And I was on the strange streets all alone. Only some noisy men who frightened me.

"I hid in a doorway till those men got by. And then I saw a woman coming. She was all alone, too. She had on a dress that rustled and lovely white furs, and did not seem at all frightened.

"I stepped out and asked her to please tell me where to go for the night.

"Some time I'll tell you about her, too. Now I'll just tell you that it ended with her taking me home with her to stay all night. She made a lot of fun of me--and said things to me I didn't understand--and swore at me--and told me to 'cut it' and go back to the cornfields--but I was crying then, and she took me with her.

"She kept up her queer kind of talk, but I was so tired that the minute I was in bed I went to sleep.