Edith Wharton - Penn State University

Summerfoot in it again. They needn’t think I’m going to wait roundand let them say they’ve discharged me!”“Charity—Charity Royall, you listen——” he began,getting heavily out of his chair; but she waved him aside,and walked out of the room.Upstairs she took the library key from the place whereshe always hid it under her pincushion—who said shewasn’t careful?—put on her hat, and swept down againand out into the street. If Mr. Royall heard her go he madeno motion to detain her: his sudden rages probably madehim understand the uselessness of reasoning with hers.She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door andentered into the glacial twilight. “I’m glad I’ll never haveto sit in this old vault again when other folks are out in thesun!” she said aloud as the familiar chill took her. Shelooked with abhorrence at the long dingy rows of books,the sheep-nosed Minerva on her black pedestal, and themild-faced young man in a high stock whose effigy pinedabove her desk. She meant to take out of the drawer herroll of lace and the library register, and go straight to MissHatchard to announce her resignation. But suddenly a greatdesolation overcame her, and she sat down and laid herface against the desk. Her heart was ravaged by life’s cruelestdiscovery: the first creature who had come towardher out of the wilderness had brought her anguish insteadof joy. She did not cry; tears came hard to her, and thestorms of her heart spent themselves inwardly. But as shesat there in her dumb woe she felt her life to be too desolate,too ugly and intolerable.“What have I ever done to it, that it should hurt me so?”she groaned, and pressed her fists against her lids, whichwere beginning to swell with weeping.“I won’t—I won’t go there looking like a horror!” shemuttered, springing up and pushing back her hair as if itstifled her. She opened the drawer, dragged out the register,and turned toward the door. As she did so it opened, and theyoung man from Miss Hatchard’s came in whistling.IVHE STOPPED AND LIFTED his hat with a shy smile. “I begyour pardon,” he said. “I thought there was no one here.”22