Gathering up the loose
pages of one article to put them back, her eyes ran
mechanically again over its opening sentences. Suddenly
something magnetized them, a new interest flashed into
them; with a little nervous movement she brought the page
closer to the candle and looked at it carefully. As she
looked she blushed crimson, and dropping the paper,
covered her face with her hands.
"Oh, _Buddha!_" she cried softly, struggling with her
mortification, "no wonder they rejected it! There's a
mistake in the very second line--a mistake in _spelling!_"
She felt her face grow hotter as she said it, and
instinctively she lowered her voice. Her vanity was
pricked as with a sword; for a moment she suffered keenly.
Her fabric of hope underwent a horrible collapse; the
blow was at its very foundation. While the minute hand
of her mother's old-fashioned gold watch travelled to
its next point, or for nearly as long as that, Elfrida
was under the impression that a person who spelled
"artificially" with one _L_ could never succeed in
literature. She believed she had counted the possibilities
of failure. She had thought of style, she had thought of
sense--she had never thought of spelling! She began with
a penknife to make the word right, and almost fearfully
let herself read the first few fines.
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