She knew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; if the sidelights had not been filled with green paper she might have looked out upon the little brown stoop and the well-worn brick pavement.

But she had no wish to look out, for this would have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, unseen place on the other side--a place which became to the child's imagination, according to its different moods, a region of delight or of terror.
It was in the "office" still that Isabel was sitting on that melancholy afternoon of early spring which I have just mentioned.

At this time she might have had the whole house to choose from, and the room she had selected was the most depressed of its scenes.

She had never opened the bolted door nor removed the green paper (renewed by other hands) from its sidelights; she had never assured herself that the vulgar street lay beyond.

A crude, cold rain fell heavily; the spring-time was indeed an appeal--and it seemed a cynical, insincere appeal--to patience.