se one's
fancy. For a moment she dragged her mind for some word, some look in
which she might have found a shadow of excuse for the dislike she felt.
"No, he said nothing foolish," she confessed at last, "he was only kind
and friendly and it is I who have offended--I who have allowed myself to
feel an unreasonable aversion." All at once an irritation against
herself pervaded her thoughts, and she determined that if she met him
again she would be more cordial--that she would force herself to show a
particular friendliness. The recollection of his love for Madame Alta
came to her, and she felt at the same time a sharp curiosity and a deep
disgust--"A man like that must love with madness," she thought, and
next, "but how do I know if it were love between them and why should I
judge?" Her clasped hands went to her eyes and she prayed silently:
"Keep me apart, O Lord, keep me pure and apart!"

For a while she sat with bowed head, then, as her hands fell into her
lap, she broke into a little tender laugh at herself. "What a fool I am,
after all," she lamented; "here I have seen a man whom I do not
like--once, for an hour--and he has so troubled my quiet that I cannot
put my mind upon my work. What does it matter, and why should a stranger
who displeases me have power to compel my thoughts? It was but a
trifle--the distraction of an hour, nothing more--and, whether I like
him or not, by to-morrow I shall have forgotten his existence."

But she remembered his face as he sat across from her in the dimly
lighted stage, and she felt again, with a start, that he was the first
man she had ever known. "Yet he does not attract me, and I shall never
see him again," she thought after a moment. She took up a little
religious book from her desk and tried in vain to fix her wandering
attention. Life appeared all at once very full and very beautiful, and
as she thought of the thronging city around her it seemed to her that
she herself and the people in the street and the revolving stars were
held securely in the hand of God. The belief awoke in her that she was
shielded and set apart for a predestined good, an exalted purpose, and
she wondered if the purpose were already moving toward her out of the
city and if its end would be only the fulfilling of the law of her own
nature. Then she thought of Angela in her closed chamber. Had she been
shielded? Was she also set apart? But the thought did not disturb her,
for she herself seemed of a lar