ld
give up library work and, by a miracle whose nature was not very clearly
revealed to her, turn a prairie town into Georgian houses and Japanese
bungalows.

The next day in library class she had to read a theme on the use of the
Cumulative Index, and she was taken so seriously in the discussion that
she put off her career of town-planning--and in the autumn she was in
the public library of St. Paul.

VII

Carol was not unhappy and she was not exhilarated, in the St. Paul
Library. She slowly confessed that she was not visibly affecting lives.
She did, at first, put into her contact with the patrons a willingness
which should have moved worlds. But so few of these stolid worlds wanted
to be moved. When she was in charge of the magazine room the readers did
not ask for suggestions about elevated essays. They grunted, "Wanta find
the Leather Goods Gazette for last February." When she was giving
out books the principal query was, "Can you tell me of a good, light,
exciting love story to read? My husband's going away for a week."

She was fond of the other librarians; proud of their aspirations. And by
the chance of propinquity she read scores of books unnatural to her gay
white littleness: volumes of anthropology with ditches of foot-notes
filled with heaps of small dusty type, Parisian imagistes, Hindu recipes
for curry, voyages to the Solomon Isles, theosophy with modern American
improvements, treatises upon success in the real-estate business. She
took walks, and was sensible about shoes and diet. And never did she
feel that she was living.

She went to dances and suppers at the houses of college acquaintances.
Sometimes she one-stepped demurely; sometimes, in dread of life's
slipping past, she turned into a bacchanal, her tender eyes excited, her
throat tense, as she slid down the room.

During her three years of library work several men showed diligent
interest in her--the treasurer of a fur-manufacturing firm, a teacher, a
newspaper reporter, and a petty railroad official. None of them made her
more than pause in thought. For months no male emerged from the mass.
Then, at the Marburys', she met Dr. Will Kennicott.

CHAPTER II

IT was a frail and blue and lonely Carol who trotted to the flat of the
Johnson Marburys for Sunday evening supper. Mrs. Marbury was a neighbor
and friend of Carol's sister; Mr. Marbury a traveling representative of
an insurance company. They made a specialty of sandwich-sal