IT

T had been a raw, blustering day, the pines showing a white light where they tipped beneath the wind that blew across them. November had stripped the fields, and over the whole landscape lay only the high serenity of earth and sky.

Gabrielle Eaton, walking across the great meadow, lifted her face to the sky. She had come out from faculty meeting tired and depressed and longing for a breath of air. The meeting had droned through its three interminable hours of detail and bickering. Little dried-up morsels of men had argued and plotted and counterplotted over the mental and spiritual food that should be served out to vigorous, growing girls. And each had voted with a thrifty eye to the advance of his own department. The small minority that cared for

round, intelligent face in spectacles, with its pointed beard spearing at knowledge, flashed before her. He had no doubts as to what was best for the young. In his flat, thin voice he had talked for half an hour, explaining, elaborating, systematizing ways of educating girls. And at home, Gabrielle knew, Mrs. Harben, small and flat-chested, with the three little Harbens

education as a whole and saw the subject in its wider relations had been far outvoted. To-morrow, she knew, there would be lobbying and small factions at work for each other and for themselves, and next week would see the same miserable travesty repeated. She lifted her face again and breathed deep. How was one to bear a life that choked and stifled at every turn? For twelve years she had been teaching girls, and each year she came to feel less certain of what was best for them, what to give, and what to withhold. And Professor Harben's small,

about her, was trying to make two thousand dollars do the work of four in the college community.

And men whose business enterprises affected a continent and involved millions intrusted the care of their daughters, the discipline and nurture of their minds, the training of their bodies, to Professor Harbensto men to whom in their business they would have hesitated to trust the care of office buildings. The long, low line of mountains to the west beckoned her. She lifted a level gaze to them. She was a tall, thin woman, with dark eyes and flexible, curving lips that seemed half ready to mock at herself, and caught themselves in a little smile. It was the smile that gave the face a subtle beauty, something on-looking, forwardreaching, not to be denied. Suppose she gave up the work? She walked more slowly. A letter in the pocket of her coat brushed against her hand as it swung idly. Suppose she gave up her work?

The light lessened and deepened. The

mountains caught a glow above their blueness and became mysterious. The sky lifted itself, vaulting, and a single star hung out above the meadow. She walked slowly, looking down. Why could she not respond, give up this vexing work, and join hands with him for the rest of life? There was no lack of fire in the letter thrust carelessly into her pocket. It was It was the letter of a man ardently in love. Could she give up her work for John Fairchild, take her place in the world with a man already distinguished, administer his house, receive his guests, and represent him in the world, and be at last in a home of her own? She threw back her head, breathing in the clean-swept November air.

So this was what they might come toall her dreams! What had forced her to put the dream aside every time it strove to shape itself in the form of some man and held out its hand, beckoning her? Now she was thirty-five, and life again was holding out what it called reality to her. "Come away from your dreams." The flexible lips smiled; then the light filled her face, and she turned back, walking slowly, her skirt touching the tall grass on each side and bending it a little as she went.

He was coming next week, and he had begged her not to answer the letter. He wanted to look in her face, he had said. The flexible lips mocked a little. Then the smile flooded them, and her face was beautiful again.

What had life to give a woman who would not love, who followed a dream! Ah, but she did love. Her heart was filled with the ache of it, a longing that beat upon her and set her searching every face for the life that was her right. Why should it come to some women, and not to her? She saw Mrs. Harben's thin-chested little figure breasted to the fight, her whole life devoted to Charles and the children. And then suddenly, deep in Mrs. Harben's eyes, she caught a glimpse of something that startled her-something akin to this force in herself that drove her, stripped and desolate and searching.

So some women were false to it, as a man might be false to the vision when he turned aside to work for money? It was not money that had tempted Mrs. Harben. She smiled a little. But there were other things that drew one aside-respectability, convention, timidity, even curiosity. Had she not known them all! She had shrunk from a life of unfulfilment almost with a fierce repulsion. Then her dream had shimmered, and she had followed it. And it had no shape or color or name; only the forward walk into the dark.

The college buildings came in sight, crude, ugly in line, built for use-to shelter the spirits of growing girls! Almost terrified, she gazed up at them. The tower clock struck six, and she quickened her steps.

When she entered the dining-room a little later the evening hubbub was in full swing: plates clattered, voices rose above the clashing of knives and the rattle of forks, and over and under it all rose and swelled a crude, unshaped soul taking its food. As she slipped quietly to her place at the head of one of the long tables one or two girls looked up and smiled. She had not spoken, she seemed hardly to have glanced down the long table; but a little change had come to it. It was as if she had gathered up a loose handful of threads and held and steadied them.

Her voice

could not have carried half the length of the table had she spoken, but something had invaded it, and traveled and touched each chattering girl. The table seemed to emerge from its shapelessness and noise

"She slipped quietly to her place"

and babble. All about it surged the chaotic murmur and push of voices and the sound of dishes. It was hardly possible to talk, to think. Three times a day, seven times a week, one must give oneself in the breaking of bread with them.

AFTER dinner, when in the quiet of her room she drew forward a round table to the fire and arranged the drop-light, with books at hand, and settled comfortably into her deep chair before the fire, the noise and clamor of college life seemed shut away.

As she sat turning the leaves of her book she was subtly aware of the room about her, and happy in its quiet. The room, glimmering in its shadow, had come to express her as few women's homes can express them. The pictures on the wall. were there because she had chosen them, each for its place. And the rows upon rows of books were not a conventional library in any usual sense of the term. Each was a phase of her life. Had she suddenly been lifted from her deep chair by the fire and transported to some other world, she would still have remained in the book-lined walls. Not till they had been torn apart, distributed one by one into other hands, would Gabrielle Eaton

have ceased to exist. The books were her outer shell, her protection and defense against encroachment. And within them she dwelt, with her drop-light and easychair and the scattered pieces of furniture, each old and precious, and gleaming bits of brass and biting green of bronze and little pieces of rare earthenware. She had an artist's delight in these things, and the connoisseur's eye. All that was spurious had been rejected long since. The portière that shut off the narrow bedroom just beyond was of Persian weaving; its soft folds drew and held the eye. On the wall across from the fireplace a Florentine mirror caught the flames, and reflected them from its surface and its burnished frame. Everything was perfect of its kind and beautiful. The whole room expressed and surrounded and comforted her, and the fire purred a little on the wide hearth. Alone, within these four walls, she was herself. And this was the extent of her kingdom-four walls square! Her book fell to her lap. Her eyes studied the flame.

All the unrest of life seemed crushing in on her, invading the quiet room. The books on the table beside her were suddenly trivial. She turned to them idly. Butler's "Life and Habit"-how fascinated she had been when she glanced into it in the book-shop! She gave the book a little push aside with her finger. And Lowes Dickinson on the war, and Binyon, and Bennett's new novel, and Wells's last essays, and Tagore. She pushed them all aside and leaned her head on her hand, looking into the fire.

It seemed suddenly a makeshift, this life and the beautiful room, and all the eager choosing and seeking for right shape and color. It moved away in perspective to something small and trivial. The letter that had been taken from her coatpocket lay on the table by the drop-light. She picked it up and opened it and spread it on her lap, smoothing it with thoughtful fingers.

Then she took it up and read it through from beginning to end. It was a long letter, and all the light of the fire seemed to

gather and play in the face under the shading hand that stirred only now and then to reach down and turn a closely written sheet.

A sound in the hall startled her, and she glanced up hastily at the clock and slipped the letter into its envelop.

A knock had sounded on the door. There was a murmur of voices and laughing, drifting sounds along the hall.

"Come in!"

Her voice had a welcoming sound, and the group of girls in the open door came forward as if the room with the woman sitting by the fire, her hands folded in her lap, were a wonted and happy place. They grouped about her, on chairs or cushions, or on the floor by the fire, all centering toward her with unconscious ease. Sometimes in the physicist's laboratory a magnet will make pretty patterns of the bits of steel it passes over. The book-lined walls seemed to have lost their almost repellent orderliness, and the subdued Oriental coloring, touched with the orange or vivid green or scarlet of sweaters and scarfs in the firelight, woke from its age-long quiet. Even the Persian portière seemed to stir slightly in the little movement of life and color and laughter.

The voices settled into quiet discussion; other voices joined them, and the group about the fire, broken only by the coming and going, narrowed a little as the evening went by. Except that they centered always toward Gabrielle Eaton, it might have been difficult at times to guess from the talk that she was the older, dominating personality among them. There was an equality, a sense of outreaching in her mind as in theirs. For all of them the future held a secret. They bent their heads to catch the whisper of it, or lifted their faces as it seemed to pass them swiftly by. It was the rare comradeship that seems to exist only where men or women are sequestered for some chosen aim. And this, too, was a perfect thing of its kind. No more beautiful friendship could be imagined than these young girls gave to Gabrielle Eaton. To enter into this companionship, to understand it and be re

newed by it, was her life, as narrow as the walls of her room, but as fresh and springing as youth itself.

It was not till they had all gone and

the clock had struck its late hour that her fingers, dropping to a fold in the chair, touched the letter.

She drew it out and held it a moment thoughtfully in her fingers. Then she bent forward and laid it on the fire, and the flame blackened the edge and ran up eagerly and engulfed it.

She watched it burn to a char. She would wait till she saw him.

AT first he had seemed arrogant, a little insistent. They had gone for a long walk across the meadows, and he had pointed out all he should be able to do for her. He could make life beautiful and carefree. And at last he had begged her, almost humbly, to accept what he could give her. She was a little touched. She knew he was not accustomed to asking favors of any one. It was probably years since John Fairchild had asked any man or woman to do a favor for him. He was accustomed to granting favors. He was a little awkward about it, almost like a boy, and slow to take in her refusal when she tried to

"Sat turning the leaves of her book"

explain to him how she felt. At the end he had refused to go away as an ordinary polite suitor would have done after dismissal. He assured her he was not an ordinary suitor or a polite one. He had

known her ever since they were children together. He should stay on as a neighbor, not as a rejected suitor. So she had acquiesced with a smile, and had ordered. dinner for them in her sitting-room. The thought of taking him into the din of dishes and voices that made up the college dining-room was not to be contemplated.

The little maid set out the table before the fire and laid the cloth and brought in the tray and disappeared; and Gabrielle Eaton found herself facing her suitor across the table with a curious sense of domestic intimacy she had not counted on.

She had put out a sign that would prevent their being disturbed for the halfhour he might stay. She had assured herself it could not be longer than half an hour. She counted on his being safely out of the way before her girls came for the evening talk by the fire.

She was aware of a desire to free the room of his presence. There was something disturbing in the big man who sat so easily opposite her, looking appreciatively about the room, at the book-lined walls and the bits of soft color and the

"They had gone for a long walk"

great dish of roses in the center of the table. He moved a hand to them.

"Wonderful color!" he said.

"Yes; one of my girls brought them. They are really too many for this small table." She looked at them critically. "If you don't mind my getting up?"

He nodded with amused glance.
She brought a slender, clear-glass vase

and selected a single rose, half-blown and firm-stemmed, and set it in the middle of the table. The great bowl was removed to the side of the room.

Her eyes studied the effect happily-the single flower in its straight glass.

Suddenly she glanced at him with a half-embarrassed smile.

"I know you think I am silly to care about a little thing like that."

"Why should n't you care? The world is made up of little things." He spoke with a serene common sense, the tolerance of a man who allows for foibles, and she felt he had not a glimmer of understanding of the feeling that had urged her. He accepted the change courteously, as he would accept anything she chose to do; but he would never know the fierce insistence for perfection that had driven her to it, that drove her always. He liked her room, she knew. She had noted the quiet glance he threw about him as he came in. But he could never comprehend the severe, almost religious zeal that had gone to make it what it was, so perfect that not a line could be altered without marring it. Sometimes, it is true, there were even now days of upheaval; but they had become rare. Almost the only things that changed from day to day were the flowers her girls sent her, or a parcel of new books from the shop; and even these must keep their place for the beauty of the whole.

All this played like an undercurrent beneath the surface of talk. She was subtly aware of a force stirring in her room. Something seemed to break and give a little, and she found herself looking anxiously behind her. All her familiar treasures were safe in place.

They talked of life in Dalton, the home town where they had grown up together, and of acquaintances and friends; and the little maid reappeared and carried away the great tray; and still John Fairchild had made no move to go.

Voices were sounding in the hall; they paused outside her door, and came softly through the closed panels.

"She 's engaged! What a shame!" Then the voices drifted away, and John