at a certain hour, at a
certain moment, in New York, for subsequent events would run back to that
like links in a chain. And she would have been right and also wrong in
that; for but for those subsequent events the first impression would have
faded, and been taken little account of in her life. I am more and more
convinced that men and women act more upon impulse and less upon deep
reflection and self-examination than the analytic novelists would have us
believe, duly weighing motives and balancing considerations; and that men
and women know themselves much less thoroughly than they suppose they do.
There is a great deal of exaggeration, I am convinced, about the inward
struggles and self-conflicts. The reader may know that Margaret was
hopelessly in love, because he knows everything; but that charming girl
would have been shocked and wounded to the most indignant humiliation if
she had fancied that her friends thought that. Nay, more, if Henderson
had at this moment made by letter a proposal for her hand, her impulse
would have been to repudiate the offer as unjustified by anything that
had taken place, and she would no doubt have obeyed that impulse.

But something occurred, while she was in this mood, that did not shock
her maidenly self-consciousness, nor throw her into antagonism, but which
did bring her face to face with a possible reality. And this was simply
the receipt of a letter from Henderson; not a love-letter--far enough
from that--but one in which there was a certain tone and intention that
the most inexperienced would recognize as possibly serious. Aside from
the announcement in the letter, the very fact of writing it was
significant, conveying an intimation that the reader might be interested
in what concerned the writer. The letter was longer than it need have
been, for one thing, as if the pen, once started on its errand, ran on
con amore. The writer was coming to Brandon; business, to be sure, was
the excuse; but why should it have been necessary to announce to her a
business visit? There crept into the letter somehow a good deal about his
daily life, linked, to be sure, with mention of places and people in
which she had recently an interest. He had been in Washington, and there
were slight sketches of well-known characters in Congress and in the
Government; he had been in Chicago, and even as far as Denver, and there
were little pictures of scenes that might amuse her. There was no special
mystery ab