The slight wounded her at the moment; she had not expected to have a guest to whom she would be nothing and to whom it would seem no unkindness to let her know this.  The slight left its trail of pain as the evening wore on and he did not come near her.  Several times, while standing close to him, she had looked her surprise, had shadowed her face with coldness for him to see.  For the first time in her life she felt herself rejected, suffered the fascination of that pain.  Afterward she had intentionally pressed so close to him in the throng of her guests that her arm brushed his sleeve.  At last she had disengaged herself from all others and had even gone to him with the inquiries of a hostess; and he had forced himself to smile at her and had forgotten her while he spoke to her—­as though she were a child.  All her nature was exquisitely loosened that night, and quivering; it was not a time to be so wounded and to forget.

She did not forget as she sat in her room after all had gone.  She took the kindnesses and caresses, the congratulations and triumphs, of those full-fruited hours, pressed them together and derived merely one clear drop of bitterness—­the languorous poison of one haunting desire.  It followed her into her sleep and through the next day; and not until night came again and she had passed through the gateway of dreams was she happy:  for in those dreams it was he who was setting out from the house of his fathers on a voyage down the River of Life; and he had paused and turned and called her to come to him and be with him always.

Marguerite lifted her face from her palms, as she finished her revery.  She slipped to the floor out of the big walnut bed, and crossing to the blinds laid her fingers on the young man’s shoulder.  It was the movement with which one says:  “I have come.”

With a sigh she drew one of the blinds aside and looked out upon the leaves and roses of her yard and at the dazzling sunlight.  Within a few feet of her a bird was singing.  “How can you?” she said.  “If you loved, you would be silent.  Your wings would droop.  You could neither sing nor fly.”  She turned dreamily back into her room and wandered over to a little table on which her violin lay in its box.  She lifted the top and thrummed the strings.  “How could I ever have loved you?”

She dressed absent-mindedly.  How should she spend the forenoon?  Some of her friends would be coming to talk over the party; there would be callers; there was the summer-house, her hammock, her phaeton; there were nooks and seats, cool, fragrant; there were her mother and grandmother to prattle to and caress.  “No,” she said, “not any of them.  One person only.  I must see him.”

She thought of the places where she could probably see him if he should be in town that day.  There was only one—­the library.  Often, when there, she had seen him pass in and out.  He had no need to come for books or periodicals, all these he could have at home; but she had heard the librarian and him at work; over the files of old papers containing accounts of early agricultural affairs and the first cattle-shows of the state.  She resolved to go to the library:  what desire had she ever known that she had not gratified?