She walked out of the library with the best
appearance of unconcern that she could muster,--it had been a near thing
that she didn't break down and cry--and she did not go back. Probably it
was just as well that Galbraith hadn't sent for her. She'd only have
made a ghastly failure of it, if he had.
The background, of course, to all these endeavors and discouragements,
or, to describe it more justly, the indivisible, all-permeating ether
they floated about in, was, just as it had been in the time of her
success--Rodney. The occupations, routine and otherwise, that she gave
her mind to, might seem, in a way, to crowd him out of it, although not
one of them was undertaken without some reference to him; the success of
this, the failure of that, brought him nearer, put him farther away,
like the children's game of _Warm and Cold_.
When she ran out of occupations that could absorb the conscious part of
her mind, she did not even try to resist direct thoughts about him.
She'd spent uncounted hours since that opening night, wondering if he
knew where she was, inventing reasons why, knowing, he didn't come to
her; explanations of the possibility of his still remaining in
ignorance.
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