"That will do. I've heard those wise words before. I am ready to be submerged in such excluding emotions."
"Mason," said Sanborn, "one of two things I must believe: Either that you have fallen in love with that superb country girl tonight or you've been giving me a chapter from your new novel."
Mason looked around with a mystic gleam in his eyes.
"Well, which is it?"
CHAPTER XIX
ROSE SITS IN THE BLAZE OF A THOUSAND EYES
Life quickened for the coulé girl. She accommodated herself to the pace of the daily papers with instant facility. She studied the amusement columns, and read the book reviews, and frequented the beautiful reading room of the Newberry library. She went to all the matinees, taking gallery tickets, of course, ever mindful of her slender resources—studying as truly, as intently, as if she were still at college.
She had told her father that three hundred dollars would carry her through till June, and she was determined it should do so. She had not begun to think of any work to do beyond her writing. Her mind was still in unrest—here life's problem was seemingly more difficult of solution than ever.
She took hold upon the city with the power of a fresh mind capable of enormous feeling and digesting. She seemed to be in the world at last, plunged in it, enveloped by it, and she came to delight in the roar and tumult of it all, as if it were the sound of winds and waters; and each day she entered upon a little wider circle of adventure. Once the first confusion was past, the movement and faces of the crowds were of endless interest to her. She walked down into the city every day, returning to her little nook in the noisy flat building, as the young eagle to its eerie above the lashing tree-tops. She was sitting above the tumult, as Mr. Mason had advised her to do.