"Ain't it awful? Of course, no one knows it but you. I'd just die if he knew it. I used to be afraid that he'd find out, but he can't, because you see, he never saw me till I came here, and he thinks it is just accident. He's so simple about such things anyway, and he's always dreaming of something away off. O he's wonderful! He's been all over the mountains. He adores John Muir—you know that man Professor Ellis told us about? Well, he's lived just that way weeks and weeks in the wildest mountains, and it's just glorious to hear him tell about it."
Rose was astonished at Mary, generally so self-contained. She talked as if she had volumes to tell and but short minutes to tell them in. Her cheeks glowed and her eyes grew deep and dark.
"He's here reading law, but he don't need to work. He's got a share in a big mine out there somewhere, which he discovered himself. He just thought he'd try civilization awhile, he said, and so he came to Chicago. He kind o' pokes around the law school (it's in our building—that's where I saw him first, in the elevator), just as an excuse. He hates the law; he told me so. He comes in to see me sometimes. Of course I leave the door open." She smiled. "But it don't make any difference to him. He's just the same here as he is anywhere—I mean he knows how to treat a woman. The school-ma'am said she thought it was terrible to have a man come into your room—the same room you sleep in—but I told her it depended on the man. That settled her, for Owen—I mean Mr. Taylor—don't like her."
Rose listened in silence to this torrent of words from Mary. Her mind was naturally fictive, and she divined the immense world suggested by the girl's incoherent sentences. The mysterious had come to her friend—the "one man of all the world," apparently—a striking personality, quite suited to Mary, with her practical ways and love of fun. It confirmed her in her conviction that a girl must adventure into the city to win a place and a husband.
She rose and put her arms about her friend's neck:
"I'm so glad, Mary."
"O goodness! don't congratulate me. He's never said a word—and maybe he won't. I can't understand him—anyway it's great fun."
A slow step crossed the hall, and a rap at the door nearly took away Mary's breath; for a moment she could not reply, then Mr. Taylor's voice was heard.
"I beg your pardon." He was turning away when Mary sprang up and opened the door.
"O Mr. Taylor, is it you?"