She came soon to know that the west side of State street was tabooed by wealthy shoppers, who bought only on the east side; that Wabash avenue was yet more select, and that no one who owned a carriage ever traded in the bargain stores. She did all her shopping there because it was cheaper, but deep in her heart she felt no kinship with the cross, hurrying, pushing, perspiring crowds in the bargain stores. Her place was among the graceful, leisurely, beautifully attired groups of people on the east side of State street. She was not troubled at this stage of her development by any idea of being faithful to the people of her own material condition and origin. She had always loved the graces and cleanlinesses of life, and her father, she knew to be a man of innate refinement. The idea of caste, of arbitrary classes of people, had only come to her newly or obscurely through newspapers or novels. She did not like dirty people, nor surly people, nor boorish people. In fact, she did not class people at all; they were individuals with her yet. She was allured by the conditions of life on the Lake Shore Drive because the people lived such quiet, clean and joyous lives apparently, with time to think and be kind.
She met few people outside of the little circle at the boarding house, and an occasional visiting friend of Miss Fletcher or Mr. Taylor. Owen she saw much of, and he pleased her greatly. He was a man she could have married under some circumstances. He had means a plenty; he was an unusual character, clean-souled, almost elemental in his simple sincerity, but she considered him committed to Mary, and, besides, Mason had become a deterring cause, though she hardly realized that.
Through all the days which followed that evening at Dr. Herrick's she saw his face with growing distinctness. It was not a genial face, but it was one to remember, a face of power. The line of the lips, the half-averted chin, marked Mason's attitude to be one of disgust or weariness. He was the most powerful man she had ever known, a man of critical insight, and for that reason especially she had sought in her last reading to please him. She had failed, and so she was afraid to see him again. When Isabel said to her:
"Mason is a man you should know. He can do a great deal for you in the city," Rose replied in her blunt fashion:
"I don't want him to do anything for me."
"O yes, you do! He's really a kind-hearted man. He puts on a manner which scares people sometimes, but he's a man of the highest character. He's the greatest thinker I ever met—O I'm not disloyal to Dr. Sanborn, he's the best man I ever met." There was a story in that tender inflection. "So you must let me send in something to Warren, and let him advise you."
Rose finally consented, but it seemed to her like laying an only child upon the rack. She had come almost to fear, certainly to dread, that strange, imperturbable man. His abiding-place and his office were alike so far removed from any manner of living she had knowledge of. He concealed his own likes and dislikes so effectually that not even Isabel (as she confessed) could learn them.
A few days after putting her packet of poems into Isabel's hands Rose received a note from her asking her to come over and see her—that she had an invitation for her.
"We are invited, you and Dr. Sanborn and I, to sit in a box at the symphony concert Saturday night, with Mr. and Mrs. Harvey. Mrs. Harvey is one of my dearest friends, and I've talked about you so much she is eager to see you."
Rose took the matter very quietly. She was mightily pleased, but she was not accustomed to gushing her thanks; besides, she had recovered her equilibrium.