My tale of Woe----"
Elim once more took himself firmly in hand; he folded the paper and
sharply indorsed it with a C minus. Afterward he felt decidedly
uncomfortable. He wondered if Rosemary Roselle would be made unhappy by
the low marking? Probably she wouldn't care; probably all that occupied
her mind were dress and company. Possibly she danced--light, godless.
The haze within deepened; he could see through the window the tops of
the maples--they held a green sheen as if in promise of the leaves to
follow. The robin whistled faint and clear.
Possibly she danced. Carried away on the gracious flood of the
afternoon, he wondered what Rosemary Roselle looked like. He was
certain that she was pretty--her writing had the unconscious assurance
of a personable being. Well, he would never know.... Rosemary Roselle--
the name had a trick of hanging in the memory; it was astonishingly
easy to repeat. He tried it aloud, speaking with a sudden emphasis that
startled him. The name came back to him from the bare walls of his room
like an appeal. Something within him stirred sharp as a knife. He rose
with a deep breath, confused, as if some one else, unseen, had
unexpectedly spoken.
III
His conscience, stirring again, projected the image of Hester, with her
pinched glistening countenance, on his conjecturing. He resolutely
addressed himself to the judgment of Rosemary Roselle's second paper,
his lighter thoughts drowned in the ascending dark tide of his
temperament It was called Our Waitress, and an instant antagonism for
the entire South and its people swept over him.
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