Had any one in all the world of maidenhood beside her ever prayed such a prayer? Old words came to her: “Thou knowest my foolishness.”
The rhyme was dated the afternoon that Ralph Towne had said—but what right had she to remember anything that he had said? He had forgotten and despised her for remembering; but he could not despise her as much as she despised herself!
Why was it that understanding him as she certainly did understand him, that she knew that she would fly to the ends of the earth with him if he should take her hand and say, “Come”; that is, she was afraid that she would. It was no marvel that the knowledge gave her a feeling of discomfort, of intense dissatisfaction with herself; how woefully wrong she must be for such a thing to be true!
On the blank side of a sheet of manuscript, she scribbled a stanza that haunted her; it gave expression to the life she had lived during the two years just passed.
“A nightingale made a mistake;
She sang a few notes out of tune;
Her heart was ready to break,
And she hid from the moon.”
In this month her book was accepted; that check for two hundred and six dollars gave pleasure that she and others remembered all their lives; with this check came one for fifteen dollars for Dinah; she almost laughed her crossness away over Dine’s little check.
Dine’s reply was characteristic:
“Thus endeth my first and last venture upon the literary sea; I follow in your wake no longer.
“If it were matrimony now—
“John (isn’t John a grand, strong name?) doesn’t like literary women. He reads Owen Meredith to me, and Miss Mulock. He says that I am like Miss Mulock’s Edna.”