A coquette can soon destroy the strong instinct of sacredness and exclusiveness with which an unperverted girl guards her heart from all save the one who seems to have the divine right and unexplained power to pass all barriers.  Even while fancy free, unwelcome advances are resented almost as wrongs and intrusions by the natural woman; but after a real, or even an ideal image has taken possession of the heart and imagination, repugnance is often the sole reward of other unfortunate suitors, and this dislike usually will be felt and manifested in a proportion corresponding with the obtrusiveness of the attentions, their sincerity, and the want of tact with which they are offered.

To that degree, therefore, that Roger was in earnest, Mildred shrank from him, and she feared that he would not—­indeed, from his antecedents could not—­know how to hide his emotions.  His words had so startled her that, in her surprise and annoyance, she imagined him in a condition of semi-ambitious and semi-amative ebullition, and she dreaded to think what strange irruptions might ensue.  It would have been the impulse of many to make the immature youth a source of transient amusement, but with a sensitive delicacy she shrank from him altogether, and wished to get away as soon as possible.  Pressing upon her was the sad, practical question of a thwarted and impoverished life—­impoverished to her in the dreariest sense—­and it was intolerable that one who seemed so remote from her sphere should come and ask that, from her bruised and empty heart, she should give all sorts of melodramatic sentiment in response to his crude, ambitious impulses, which were yet as blind as the mythical god himself.

Had she seen that Roger meant friendship only when he asked for friendship, she would not have been so prejudiced against him; but the fact that this “great boy” was half consciously extending his hand for a gift which now she could not bestow on the best and greatest, since it was gone from her beyond recall, appeared grotesque, and such a disagreeable outcome of her changed fortunes that she was almost tempted to hate him.  There are some questions on which women scarcely reason—­they only feel intensely.

Mildred, therefore, was heartily glad that Roger did not wait to be introduced to her father, and that he kept himself aloof from the reunited family during the evening.  She also was pleased that they were not joined by the Atwoods at the supper-table.  That this considerate delicacy was due to the “young barbarian’s” suggestion she did not dream, but gave good-hearted but not very sensitive Mrs. Atwood all the credit.  As for poor Roger, his quick insight, his power to guess something of people’s thoughts and feelings from the expression of their faces, brought but little present comfort or promise for the future.