The tune kept right on throughout dinner. During the meal she was
called to the telephone, and at the other end was Raymond; he wanted
her to save him the first dance that evening. What rapture--this was
what happened to the beautiful belles you read about!
After dinner mother and Aunt Nettie went to call upon some ladies
they hoped wouldn't be at home--what funny things grown-ups do! The
baby was taking his nap, and Missy had a delicious long time ahead
in which to be utterly alone.
She took the library book of poems and a book of her father's out to
the summerhouse. First she opened the book of her father's. It was a
translation of a Russian book, very deep and moving and sad and
incomprehensible. A perfectly fascinating book! It always filled her
with vague, undefinable emotions. She read: "O youth, youth! Thou
carest for nothing: thou possessest, as it were, all the treasures
of the universe; even sorrow comforts thee, even melancholy becomes
thee; thou art self-confident and audacious; thou sayest: 'I alone
live--behold!' But the days speed on and vanish without a trace and
without reckoning, and everything vanishes in thee, like wax in the
sun, like snow.
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