They needn't think I'm going to wait round and let them say
they've discharged me!"

"Charity--Charity Royall, you listen----" he began, getting heavily out
of his chair; but she waved him aside, and walked out of the room.

Upstairs she took the library key from the place where she always hid it
under her pincushion--who said she wasn't careful?--put on her hat, and
swept down again and out into the street. If Mr. Royall heard her go
he made no motion to detain her: his sudden rages probably made him
understand the uselessness of reasoning with hers.

She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door and entered into the
glacial twilight. "I'm glad I'll never have to sit in this old vault
again when other folks are out in the sun!" she said aloud as the
familiar chill took her. She looked with abhorrence at the long dingy
rows of books, the sheep-nosed Minerva on her black pedestal, and the
mild-faced young man in a high stock whose effigy pined above her desk.
She meant to take out of the drawer her roll of lace and the library
register, and go straight to Miss Hatchard to announce her resignation.
But suddenly a great desolation overcame her, and she sat down and laid
her face against the desk. Her heart was ravaged by life's cruelest
discovery: the first creature who had come toward her out of the
wilderness had brought her anguish instead of joy. She did not cry;
tears came hard to her, and the storms of her heart spent themselves
inwardly. But as she sat there in her dumb woe she felt her life to be
too desolate, too ugly and intolerable.

"What have I ever done to it, that it should hurt me so?" she groaned,
and pressed her fists against her lids, which were beginning to swell
with weeping.

"I won't--I won't go there looking like a horror!" she muttered,
springing up and pushing back her hair as if it stifled her. She opened
the drawer, dragged out the register, and turned toward the door. As
she did so it opened, and the young man from Miss Hatchard's came in
whistling.

IV

He stopped and lifted his hat with a shy smile. "I beg your pardon," he
said. "I thought there was no one here."

Charity stood before him, barring his way. "You can't come in. The
library ain't open to the public Wednesdays."

"I know it's not; but my cousin gave me her key."

"Miss Hatchard's got no right to give her key to other folks, any more'n
I have. I'm the librarian and I know the by-laws. This is my library."