For the first time in many years Ellen Blake was conscious of inability. Of course she could not have expected that her good fortune would last forever. And yet, it must be confessed, that her helplessness coming, as it did, when she had every reason to feel confident, had been altogether a surprise, had, indeed, taken her at a cruel disadvantage. She was the more disconcerted at finding herself unable to do what she had promised when she thought of the serious responsibility resting upon her. It was wholly natural that she should be looking at the predicament with the eye not of an ordinary being but of a personage, whose failure would be a public calamity,—no mere personal misfortune. Intellectual distinction, natural eloquence, and the personal charm that made her so marked and attractive a figure, had brought her into prominence as a leader among progressive women. If she seemed inclined to take herself a trifle seriously, no one could wonder, for the demands made upon her were neither few nor slight. And while a more selfish person might have shown a nice discrimination in the choice of duties, Ellen, in her gracious readiness to be of service, accepted as obligations all the greatnesses thrust upon her. Constantly importuned for utterances, she felt bound to answer all requests for opinions, till at last, her sense of humour grew weak in conflict with her strenuousness, she had become an oracle on all matters that were or ought to be of interest to women. And so it happened that when she had been asked to make a speech at the Women's Convention in Indianapolis, on The Educational Value of College Life, she had unhesitatingly consented. But in this instance her fame and her conscience had brought her face to face with failure, for on a subject peculiarly suited to her, she could find no words for feelings or ideas.

She was in despair, for not to make the speech would be to play the traitor to the cause of Woman, and to show the basest ingratitude to Bryn Mawr, the place that had fitted her for her life work. Taking herself to task had no effect. She wrote some sentences, read them over, found them vague and inaffective, gushing indeed. She continued to write almost feverishly only to reject sheet after sheet. At length she decided that she had no exact information, neither facts nor figures. That was the trouble. In the discussion of so weighty a matter both were important. Then, almost as an inspiration, it seemed to her, came the thought of Katherine Brewster, also a Bryn Mawrtyr, also interested in woman.

"She is certainly just the person," said Ellen, and she was soon standing on the Brewsters' doorstep. A very systematic maid opened the door and showed Ellen to a small room at the end of the hall. Katherine's quarters had always met with her approval,—the little room in which she waited, communicating as she remembered with a larger room beyond, had about it an air of business and privacy. Though it had for seats only the stiffest of chairs, and for reading matter only the dullest of reports, Ellen's mood led her to envy the uncomfortable and repellent atmosphere. By force of contrast it reminded her of many miserable occasions, when she had tried to feel at ease, while interviewing some ardent reformer in the presence of her humourous if sympathetic family.

She forgot for the time being, what she could not but perceive in her less absorbed moments, that the distinction and notoriety of Katherine was the distinction and notoriety of the Brewster family; and that, in sacrificing the general comfort to the convenience of one, they were exchanging insignificance for importance; while she, however conspicuous personally, was also the daughter of Chief Justice Blake, and was "the image of her mother, the beautiful Polly Meredith." "Not so good-looking though," sighed many an old gentleman, as his thoughts reverted to the triumphs of that beauteous maid in the days when girls broke hearts, rather than conventions.

Wealth and social distinction, good-breeding and beauty were hers without an effort, without a college education; yet she knew well that there was something in her that was due to Bryn Mawr. In striving to express this she had come to Katherine Brewster, sure that from her she would get the explanation.

She had hardly sat down before the door between the rooms opened energetically and the brisk young owner appeared, cheerful and businesslike in manner.

"Oh, Ellen! How do you do? I shall be at leisure," drawing out her watch and considering a moment, "in six or seven minutes."

Without waiting for an answer, Katherine turned back to the other room. She left the door behind her open and Ellen could not but see what was going on. Her disused sense of the ridiculous stirred slightly as she took in the details. Katherine was talking, or rather giving facts, to a young man who was dotting down her words in shorthand. From the scraps of the conversation that reached her, Ellen received a confused impression of myriads of facts marshalled in excellent order. She congratulated herself that she had indeed come to the right person and would find valuable assistance in the clear brain of Katherine Brewster.

At length she caught the words, "I have now given you all the information at my command, and shall trust you to make it interesting to the general public and so prepare the way for our reform." The young man could not linger in face of the finality in her manner, and before he was well out of the door Katherine had turned to her next visitor with brief friendliness.

"I'm glad to see you, Ellen, and can just fit you in between the Committee of Councils and the reporter, who was anxious to get my opinion on the new system for the disposal of garbage. I should like to tell you all about it. It is so absorbing."

"I am afraid I shall have to hold you down to another subject. I need enlightenment as well as the reporter. I have to tell the Women's Congress the value of life in a woman's college. I was sure this subject was one on which I was well informed, till I came to think what I might say,—and lo! commonplaces are all I can utter. I was at a loss what to do,—loath to break my promise, and helpless in my stupidity. Now, can't you give me an idea? I hate to bother you, you are so busy. But it isn't for myself only."

"Well, Ellen, I think I can help you," answered Katherine with the utmost seriousness, "but you will need pencil and paper," rising to get them, "or suppose you sit here," sweeping aside the papers littered over the desk and pointing to the chair in front of it. "I shall have to deal in figures and you might not remember them all."

Then followed a maze of numbers reeled off with surprising readiness, now and then authenticated by a glance at one of the many pigeon-holes. Ellen felt somewhat dazed; but she was conscious that the bewilderment was her contribution for the figures were arranged with precision,—Health of College Women, Matrimonial Prospects of College Women, The College Woman and the Problem of Domestic Service, The Economic Results of College training for Women. Valuable facts were quoted from them, facts bristling with suggestions for the capable young woman so utterly mistress of them, but a trifle unmanageable for Ellen till she should have time thoroughly to conquer them.

She was not altogether ungrateful when the servant announced the Committee of Selectmen, and she hastened to show her deference to the fathers of the city by immediate withdrawal.

Katherine's good-bye took the form of advice, "I should certainly deal with the practical value of college life, taking up some line of thought that will show its power to make women effective citizens in the broad sense of the word."

There was no use in going directly home, for she could make nothing of facts so dull, Ellen decided, as she left the house. Besides she had no time to get down to work. It was now four o'clock, and she had promised to be at Edith Warrington's for tea at five. She could go directly there; or, better still, she might find Sara Ford and Augusta Coles at home. Their flat was near by. They would be sure to give her some ideas.

Sara was alone when Ellen reached their rooms, and gave her a warm and ready welcome, of the sort that tempted to friendly chat rather than to weighty discussion. Sara was slight and frail in appearance, and made an immediate appeal to most persons by the wistful expression of her eyes. But for all her seeming delicacy, she was full of nervous strength, and was besides very earnest, almost anxious in her devotion to her duty and in her attitude toward the responsibilities of a college woman.

There was in the room an effect of collision, of an effort to combine the possessions of a gentle, ease-loving nature, with those of one given overmuch to austerity. The room itself, sunny and old-fashioned, went far to reconcile the hostile elements, and the result was inviting, if not harmonious.

Sara had settled Ellen comfortably on the broad window-seat, and was solicitously tucking pillows behind her back, apologizing the while for Augusta's absence. "She has gone to see an authority on labor," Sara explained. "She wanted his opinion on public ownership. She won't be gone long, though."

"How does Augusta excite herself over such questions?" wondered Ellen. Sara smiled absent-mindedly, and then as though pondering, without a shade of remonstrance in her manner, said, "Augusta has the keenest insight into everyday subjects, and the most wonderful grasp of them that I have ever known. I never dare to be amused at Augusta. I can do nothing but admire her. But now, Nell," she continued, drawing her chair nearer the window where Ellen was sitting, "tell me about yourself. You are always doing interesting things. Certainly the world ought to be convinced of the value of college education by the work of such women as you and Augusta."

Ellen's mind was so firmly fixed on the object of her visit that she was unembarrassed by the flattery lavished upon her, and noted only the sympathy in the words. When she had explained her difficulties to Sara, she met with instant comprehension.

"Why, Nellie dear, I know just how you feel," was the prompt response to Ellen's statement. "You are conscious of an overwhelming desire to honour Bryn Mawr, of a responsibility to woman's education, and you would not by a word injure the one or retard the other."

"Of course, I feel that. But what am I going to do? I've thought and thought till I haven't an idea left. Katherine Brewster has loaded me down with statistics, but I need something more. Can't you give me a hint? There is so much of the picturesque in the college life that is not at all frivolous, and yet when I put pen to paper it is gone."

"I am always conscious of just that state of mind," assented Sara, "when I try to express my feeling about college. The beauty of the place, the glamour over everything! One can't describe it."

It was becoming evident to Ellen that Sara was but echoing her own words, was giving sympathy rather than advice. She had just made up her mind to be off, when the door opened to admit Sara's room-mate.

A cursory, modern greeting was all that Augusta Barneson Coles vouchsafed her visitor.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked Augusta, drawing off her gloves, and with the greatest precision pulling out the fingers. When she had finished this operation she laid the gloves on the table. Augusta maintained, against all comers, that neatness alone was to be considered in dress, and showed herself consistent by appearing at a formal dinner party in an immaculate shirt waist and short skirt. In the obtrusive simplicity of the shapeless coat, the uncompromising hat, the well-hung but skimped skirt, the severely arranged tie, the colourless hair smoothed in defiance of the wind, the stout shoes and correct stockings, you perceived the care of one who had a character to preserve.

Ellen straightened herself and assumed a thrifty exactness in her speech, setting aside preamble and apology; for in talk with Augusta she felt that the amenities of life were worse than wasted, they were insulting.

"Yes, Augusta, tell me what you can say for women's colleges, as distinguished from other modes of training."

"They will redeem the world from its present deplorable condition by teaching women to live by ideas," was the succinct if sweeping assertion.

"I am afraid I don't understand," murmured Ellen.

"By removing them from the sordid pressure of the practical," Augusta went on, "and that at a critical period in the mind's development and bringing them into an atmosphere of pure ideas, till the concrete no longer exists for them."

This statement seemed somewhat nonsensical to Ellen, but she had come for information and persisted. "That's all very well, but to make it more personal. I can't express what my college education has meant to me. What has it meant to you?"

"Experience meetings of any sort are distasteful to me," answered Augusta brusquely, "they make impossible abstract thought and result in commonplaces of undisciplined sentiment. They bend the idea to the individual, not the individual to the idea."

There was no doubt that Augusta had given all that was in her power and that Ellen would only lose time by urging her to closer definition. So far she had received opinions almost irreconcilable one with the other, the practical views of Katherine and the abstractions of Augusta. She was indeed amused rather than disappointed at the failure of her visit. How absurd she had been to expect fertile suggestions from Sara, always ready to reflect the mood of her companion—a quality often soothing and endearing but hardly useful in moments of perplexity;—or from Augusta with her futile theories and ridiculous jargon.

She had still one hope, Bertha Christie, who had gathered about her a group of Bryn Mawr graduates, all anxious to indulge the scholastic passion. Research and literature occupied them for the most part; but, in the intervals of study, they cultivated self-consciousness and held dress-rehearsals that they might perfect themselves in the parts selected. Phrase-making was their pastime and tricks of face and manner their delight. Their duty to themselves led them to withdraw from their families, thus liberating themselves from the exigencies of an unappreciative society. So sedulous were these artists in life to free themselves from tyranny to the individual that they regarded all outside demands as impertinent intrusions. They courted criticism and experience and craved Æsthetic satisfaction.

The only one of the band at home when Ellen was shown in, was Bertha Christie. Had she been seen in the midst of commonplace surroundings, dressed in a less studied fashion, she would in all likelihood have passed unnoticed. But the clinging folds of her dress, exquisite in colour and texture, the deliberately loosened hair, the poise of the head, and the languid grace of motion as she moved forward to greet Ellen, suggested something of the romantic, something of the ascetic, with just a seasoning of coquetry. She had the artistic temperament, but abilities critical rather than creative. She read poetry but measured life by her intellect. Hers was a disposition susceptible to impressions, but cruel in the analysis of them.

Her expression of indifference became one of scornful amusement as she listened to Ellen's earnest setting forth of her errand. A skilled fencer in words she succeeded in parrying the insistent queries, without revealing the triviality of her ideas. The impression left on Ellen's mind by this conversation was really disturbing. Up to this point she had no doubts about the value of college life, but now she wondered if there were not more to be said against it than for it. Was it not responsible for the selfishness and affectation of Bertha Christie? She looked at the clock on a near-by steeple and saw that she was already late for her engagement with Edith. In her annoyance at her wasted effort she was not sorry to think that at her next stopping-place she might dismiss business from her thoughts and enjoy the consolation and diversion she was sure to find.

It was significant of her attitude that, although she had meant all along to drop in on Edith, on her way home, and knew besides that she was certain to find one or two more of her college friends, she had no thought of them in connection with her speech. She had unconsciously drifted into imagining, as did all outsiders, that Augusta Coles and Bertha Christie were the types and her own friends the anomalies among college women. Her friendships and her activities were no longer brought into contact. So long as Ellen was looking for companionship, she still showed herself capable of appreciating wisdom as well as cleverness, good sense as well as originality; but just so soon as she desired enlightenment, she forgot that her own friends might hold opinions worthy of consideration, and singled out the eccentric or visionary among her acquaintances. In doing so she was not consciously seeking singularity, she was rather showing her instinctive reverence for experience. Having become something of a doctrinaire, she went for her instruction to those more advanced than herself.

Had Edith Warrington been true to what seemed to Ellen the best in her, she might have been set among the sages, but Edith had voluntarily forfeited all right to be considered really earnest, for after she had determined to devote her life to study, she had been turned aside by a mere trifle. In the second year of her post-graduate study, she had had a call from an old lady whom she had always found most entertaining and had been bored with the random gossip so delightful hitherto.

"It's the last straw," she said, in talking to one of her friends of the occurrence, "when Mrs. Astruther bores me there's something the matter. I've noticed an indifference to everything but my work growing upon me of late, but have ignored it. This shock has brought me to my senses and shows me that I prefer people to things." She was urged not to generalize too hastily, by the friends who were eager to see her fulfil her promise as a scholar. She had now been married about five years, and, because the memory of her scholarship was still fresh, she was spoken of as one lost past recovery; for, though she never lost her student ways, she was no longer called a student.

When Ellen came within sight of the house, she heard some one tap on the pane and on looking up saw Edith signalling to her not to ring.

"Here you are at last, Nell," was her greeting. "I was looking for you. What kept you so late? Some old committee?"

"Oh, I'm dead tired. I have had a miserable afternoon."

"You poor thing! Come along and be amused. Louise and Evelyn are here. They're having a heated discussion about matrimony. It's a bit personal and very funny."

"Louise and Evelyn? It must be absurd."

"Yes, they think they're talking on broad general principles, but they're just talking about Dick Fisher and Mr. Brandon."

"You know him?" asked Ellen. "I've never met him and since Evelyn's engagement was announced I've been curious about him."

"Oh, he is a very nice fellow—really charming."

"But not good enough for Evelyn, I'm sure."

"They never are, are they, Nell?" and Edith turned with an amused smile.

"No, not even Mr. Warrington," laughed Ellen. "I don't agree about him yet."

When they reached the little study, Ellen nodded to the two girls sitting near the window and flung herself into an easy chair by the tea table, glad to rest her mind with a counter distraction. She knew the disputants well and felt as much at home with them as with Edith.

Louise Fisher had been her room-mate at college, distinguished for her common sense and independent ways and a warm advocate of the business career for women, all women married or single. Many a satirical picture had Ellen drawn in those days, of Louise's ideal of domestic happiness. But Louise had become engaged before she graduated, to a man immeasurably her superior in mental ability, and she had settled down to echoing his opinions. Ellen often wondered if no ghosts sat opposite to Louise at the breakfast table; but she could not disturb her by any amount of banter.

Evelyn Ames, the other disputant, had been an enigma at college. She had attracted many on first acquaintance; but had baffled them at the point where acquaintance ripens into intimacy. No one dared call herself Evelyn's friend, except such as were content with the formal graciousness of her ways. And yet she had been a force in college life, had shown both courage and enthusiasm at critical moments.

She had recently announced her engagement, and was naÏve in her disclosures of her own feelings in the present discussion. She was thoroughly at her ease with her companions; for since she had left college, she had surprised many, whom she had before held at a distance, into very real friendships, taking them unawares by her affection for Bryn Mawr and its associations. These three had discovered that her inaptitude for fellowship at college was the result of a former starvation of her affections. The daughter of a widow, a woman of small means, of cold nature and social ambition, Evelyn had not been allowed to find out the softer side of her nature, till she had been sent to Bryn Mawr by a rich and domineering relative.

When Edith and Ellen joined them, Louise was saying, "The only way is to try to divert his mind from his work."

"But that doesn't seem to me at all the nicest way," said Evelyn. "I think you ought to be able to help a man in his work."

"At that rate," said Edith, as she poured out a cup of tea, "Ellen should marry a public man and help him write his——"

"Yes," sniffed Louise contemptuously, "like Mrs. Jones, Dick says——"

"Oh, Nell," and Evelyn turned quickly to Ellen, "somebody told me about the speech you're to make. What a splendid chance you've got."

"I don't know about that," answered Ellen, "it's the hardest thing I ever had to do. I can't for the life of me——"

"But just think," interrupted Evelyn, "it means Bryn Mawr. That's what we think of when we think of college. Oh! I wish I could just for once say what I think of the dear place. But I never can talk about it in a sensible way."

"Just as well," put in Edith, "it's one of the things it doesn't pay to be sensible about."

"Edith, what do you mean?" interjected Louise, "when you speak in public you can't talk twaddle. Dick says, common sense is the only thing that holds people."

"He's faithful to his opinions anyway," answered Edith with a friendly nod, "you've just as much as ever."

"But, Nell," asked Evelyn, leaning forward in her interest, "what are you going to say?"

"That's what I don't know. I've gone from pillar to post trying to find out and——"

"No wonder you're weary," said Edith, "wasting your time that way. Why on earth didn't you ask us? Please tell us where you did go."

"Oh, to several places," answered Ellen evasively. "I never thought of bothering you people, you have so many outside things to attend to."

"Yes to be sure, husbands and children and all the——"

"You know that isn't what I mean," objected Ellen, setting down her teacup. "You always say you aren't interested in movements."

"Oh, no!" corrected Edith, "not movements."—

"Well, anyway I didn't succeed with the other people. 'College training fits us to be citizens'; 'college teaches us to live by ideas'; 'college is of value to none but those gifted with a susceptibility for the exquisite refinements of the intellectual existence.' What am I to do with that?"

Edith and Evelyn exchanged amused glances, while Louise looked scornful. Ellen continued, "I have to think how my words will affect Bryn Mawr, and also how they will strike my audience."

"Don't forget yourself," said Edith. "You've a way of leaving a bit of yourself behind when you get to work."

"Oh, it will come to you, don't fear," broke in Evelyn. "You do all that sort of thing so well, you'll be sure to make a hit. You couldn't help it talking about Bryn Mawr. If only I could do it. My four years there made life worth living."

"Come now, Evelyn," said Edith teasingly, "it will never do for you to say things like that, and you just engaged. Please think of poor Mr. Brandon. He'll get to hate Bryn Mawr, and I won't blame him a scrap. You must——"

"That has nothing to do with it," protested Evelyn, looking embarrassed, "but I know nothing could have been at all as it is if I hadn't gone there. With me the trouble wasn't so much a dearth of resources as a lack of opportunity for devotion. When I got to college I found that the thing demanded of me was devotion to Bryn Mawr. Every one expected it and I gave myself up to serving the first thing that needed me."

"But that wasn't anything in Bryn Mawr," objected Louise, "that was you."

"Don't you think," interposed Edith, "that the personal romance of our lives takes the place of all impersonal romance of that sort in time?"

"Perhaps," assented Evelyn slowly, "but it is the one romance that hasn't to rub up against realities. We lived there in a world of our own creation—a land of dreams. Our dreams for Bryn Mawr may always be realized; they are never shown to be impossible."

"Well, really," exclaimed Louise, "you seem to be getting very high falutin, all of you. My feeling about college is that if it hadn't been for my friends it would have been a hateful place—all hard work and nothing else. It's the friendships you make there that count."

"To be sure they count," said Edith, "but you might say the same of boarding-school. I know what it is. It's the student government."

"Now just listen to that," cried Ellen, "you're as bad as other people, you don't agree at all. You, Edith, talk of self-government, but that isn't general. And I can't tie myself down to Bryn Mawr. We all think Bryn Mawr the best of——"

sang a merry voice in the doorway and with one accord the girls sprang to their feet to welcome the singer. But she continued serenely,—"The same idea may be found in the lines of another well-known song:

The last lines were lost in the vehemence with which Ellen and Edith greeted the newcomer.

"You piece of absurdity," urged Edith impatiently, "stop your mimicry and tell us how you got here."

"Without adventure, my excitable Edith, till I came upon this strange gathering, perhaps the strangest gathering ever known to the scientist,—for as Leuwenhoek says——" The change of voice in the last words, and the immediate response from her listeners showed a traditional joke. But she went on immediately, "I'm on my way to Bryn Mawr and I dropped in to remind you that you've all promised to bear me company. I was afraid you might forget. A trip there from Philadelphia is less of an undertaking than one from Emmonsville, Montana. And I'm going to pass the night with you, fair Ellen. I wrote to you warning you of my intention about two weeks ago. My trunk is already at your house, and I have been there; but was sent to bring you home. Your mother was afraid you would forget you were to dine with Mrs. Boughton and help her with a Dean or a Bishop,—something architectural and impressive."

"I had forgotten all about it and I haven't a minute to lose," said Ellen, as she and Marjorie hurried off amid the protests of the others.

Ellen begged Marjorie to come upstairs with her and amuse her while she dressed; but Marjorie refused to talk, insisting on hearing all about Ellen's visits of the afternoon. She passed her comment on the characters in the narrative, comment genial, friendly, sympathetic, till Ellen came to Bertha Christie's part. On a sudden Marjorie's indignation blazed out.

"Ellen, is it that you have failed to understand Bryn Mawr, or that you have willfully misunderstood? You have accepted the judgment of the outside world and have treated those freaks as representatives of Bryn Mawr. Have you forgotten how they were ignored, jeered at, anything but accepted by everybody but a few freshmen? They defied college spirit, mocked at common sense and still do. And the world sets them down as types! Bertha Christie with her menagerie of intimates intolerant of the commonplace! I could pity them if people like you didn't make them of so much importance."

"Intolerant, maybe I am," in answer to a feeble protest from Ellen, "I'm rather proud of being intolerant of a set of sophisticated hermit-crabs, a few puling nuns who've gone to school to the melancholy Jacques. No wonder I hear queer things about Bryn Mawr when you go to them for ideas and pass by Edith and Evelyn and a host of others. It's enough to make one turn cynic. Tolerance! Tolerance of evil, breadth of mind it calls itself, is the most discouraging thing I meet with. And yet how absurd it all is. You, so well-balanced, so lofty in your aims, going to those geese to learn wisdom——"

"They're not geese," protested Ellen at length, "they're unusually clever girls."

"'A goose,' please remember," quoted Marjorie, regaining her temper with the reassertion of her sense of humour, "is none the less a goose, though sun and stars be minced to yield him stuffing! You'd better be off or you'll have to apologize to the Bishop for keeping him from his dinner."

II

Greatly to her astonishment Ellen found that she had fallen to the Bishop's care at dinner. She was not, however, easily appalled by distinguished people, and she chatted lightly to the stranger. His beautiful face, benignant and merry, set her completely at her ease,—the secure ease of the American woman, it seemed to him as he made mental notes of the effect produced by the exquisite dress, the vivacity and readiness, the almost boyish frankness, the worldly wisdom. And all the time he wondered why there recurred to him the thought of a serious nature, an intellectual nature, free from worldliness and triviality.

Ellen was giving herself up to the enjoyment of the moment, giving her best to a listener so responsive and stimulating and she was all the more ready to do so because of the concentrated thought of the day. But she was not to escape for long, for she heard her companion say, "You have been a student at Bryn Mawr, they tell me, Miss Blake, and I have been greatly interested in hearing so; for I think it a most lovely spot, quite an ideal sort of place. Its airs of age are very clever too, very deceptive. It impressed me as an old place. An almost reverential feeling stirred me, so marked was the sense of dignity. It is in a word academic. Everywhere one may see that bewildering mixture of history and aspiration."

"We can't help feeling a little proud that after so few years of existence it should begin to be impressive as well as beautiful," said Ellen, who hardly welcomed the return to the subject that had engrossed her thoughts so long, though she could not resist the enthusiasm of one familiar with the English universities.

"Of course, in this country one never wonders at rapidity of growth, but I must confess that Æsthetic charm does not always accompany it. That delightful president of yours has secured both."

"She is a worker of wonders. She has plans for the place now that exceed all our dreams."

"Of course years may mellow the ugliest spot and association endear it, but after all 'virtue is loveliest in lovely guise.' The gift of beauty is not to be despised. Even the most casual visitor must acknowledge a spell in that college of yours altogether independent of the mysterious charm that you who know it intimately find for yourselves,—to some degree what I am sure people would find in my own university were they to go there ignorant of its wealth of history. But they are outsiders," he continued musingly, almost as though he had forgotten the existence of the girl to whom he was talking, "they see only the outward show, they are forever shut out from a share in that spirit that is the immortal part of the university, that persists in spite of change."

The old man's memories awoke at these words, and in his reminiscences he unfolded for Ellen picture after picture of that old world school, and flattered her with a sight of the thing her Alma Mater might become. For she listened to tales that made distant things seem real and present to her, stories of the frailties of men whose names had been beacons to her intellect. Her emotions were stirred by the tender humour that summoned up for her the personalities that had touched his own boyhood, and had left their impress on the life of Oxford.

The bishop's attention was challenged by a gentleman across the table with a question on South Africa, and for the rest of the evening Ellen shared her friend with the other guests.

Before she left she found a chance to tell Mrs. Boughton how delightful her companion had been. "Well, Ellen, to be candid," with an indulgent smile at the girl whom she liked in spite of her brains, "I should not have honoured you so much had he not asked to have you for a neighbour. But you needn't lay the credit to your attractions. I was running over the people he would meet this evening and when I came to you, that he might not expect an angel, I mentioned your only faults,—that you had been to college and spelled woman with a large W. But I told him that as a rule you kept these peculiarities in the background. However it was your having been to college that interested him, for he wanted to see what sort of women Bryn Mawr turned out. Of course I told him he couldn't judge by you—you were an exception—that he would have to see a few specimens like your friend Miss Christie or Augusta Barneson Coles."

As she drove home Ellen's thoughts turned to Marjorie Heywood and her plans for the next day. The talk at dinner had decided Ellen to go with the others. Though she lived so near, she found little pleasure in going out to Bryn Mawr nowadays, for everything seemed changed and she felt nothing but resentment that the past should have been so easily forgotten, its ways so quickly superseded.

Her careless reading of Marjorie's letter had made her arrival a surprise, and Ellen experienced a sense of relief at Marjorie's appearance. Her relief showed how apprehensive she had been of the changes possible in ten years' time, and above all in a ten years so trying as those that Marjorie had passed through. Just when she had seemed well started in her chosen work she had had to give up everything and care for a worthless brother. She had had to fight poverty for herself and him, and for him disease and evil. The cheerful letters that had come to Ellen now and then, had brought her little satisfaction, they were so impersonal. It had been in vain that Edith reminded her that Marjorie had always been impersonal, reticent. Putting herself into everything she did and said was her way of talking about herself. It had been in vain too that Edith contended that Marjorie's enthusiasm for righteousness and humorous freshness of mind were her safeguard against old age. "Marjorie will be just the same," she maintained, "when she is a hundred years old." To-night for the first time, Ellen believed her. Ten years! Could it be ten years? And Marjorie still the same, the old spirit of raillery gleaming in her eyes, the irresistible quiver at the corners of the mouth?

Ellen found her mother and Marjorie in the full swing of a good talk. They had been linked in their sympathetic understanding of one another since early in freshman year, when Marjorie had spent a Sunday with Ellen. And to-night they had no remembrance of the interval that had passed since they had last been together. Ellen longed to throw herself into one of the easy chairs and share in the ardour of conversation; but she remembered her speech.

"If I am to fall in with your plan, and I am afraid I am too weak to defy your indomitable will, I must write that wretched speech to-night. I don't dare trust myself to write it at Bryn Mawr with you to beguile me," was her answer to Marjorie's entreaties that she should stop and tell them all about her evening.

"Oh, sit up all night, if you'll get to Bryn Mawr by doing it," answered Marjorie with a nod to Mrs. Blake who was about to remonstrate. "I'll assist you by the subtle influence of my presence and read the while.

"What do I want to read? Oh, anything at all, thank you, Mrs. Blake,—something that will keep me from interrupting Ellen. Yes, that's just the thing," and she took the book that Mrs. Blake handed her and started upstairs.

As the girls reached the room Ellen said, "I've a good mind to give the whole thing up. I'm perfectly hopeless about it."

"You'll do nothing of the kind," asserted Marjorie. "You'll just sit down there and write."

"It will be a perfunctory business at that rate," objected Ellen, "I don't feel as though I could write a word."

"Never mind that," retorted Marjorie, "but just see that you get through with it to-night. A body can't get any good of you with it on your mind. And that's one of the things I came on for."

With that Marjorie opened her book and Ellen sat down to her task. It went slowly at first. She wrote little and that with constant reference to her notes. But after a time she seemed to find the thoughts coming more quickly.

Marjorie's book did not seem to hold her attention. Her thoughts seemed borne beyond it, and her eyes wandered about the room, noting the restfulness of the golden brown on the walls, the preponderance of etchings—landscapes for the most part—the low bookcase stretching the full length of the wall, the ornaments, obviously the choice of one more susceptible to form than to colour. There was in the room nothing brilliant, nothing conspicuous. Taking in the details, her glance came at length to rest on Ellen herself as she bent over the old-fashioned desk. She was turned so that Marjorie could see a little more than her profile. And Marjorie's expression was one of affectionate amusement as she watched the serious, almost stern lines of the face, the gravity in the eyes, when they were occasionally raised.

For some time Marjorie observed her closely and then broke in upon the silence with,—"I'm drifting irresistibly to conversation or drowsiness, I don't know which, but in any case I'd much better away to bed. So good-night and good luck."

Then just as she reached the door she turned laughingly to Ellen and said, "Your hair is just as nice as ever; but I'm afraid you've got the world tied to your little finger."

But Ellen merely nodded and smiled at the sound of Marjorie's voice, not hearing one word of the taunt.

III

Marjorie had had her way and the five friends were now spending the last day of their visit to Bryn Mawr, as they had spent the others, picking up old threads and discovering new ones.

The changes since their day were many and to Marjorie, seeing them for the first time, they seemed like personal affronts, rousing in her that passion of resentment which is the lunacy of the graduate. The old gate was done away with. The old road no longer existed. A long stretch of buildings struck her eye unfamiliarly. Taylor had shrunk itself among the trees and its dear ugliness was retired from the gaze of approaching visitors. But the alterations were so skillful that the alumnÆ soon felt an admiring ownership in them and quickly embraced the changes.

Almost the only familiar figures to be seen were those of college servants there since the beginning, one of whom, William, once well-nigh universal in his activities, was now so highly differentiated that he seemed to do nothing but carry the mails. He was a repository of traditions, and he delighted forlorn alumnÆ by his air of proprietorship in the past as well as in the present. Small wonder that, when they found their doings sunk into a mere tradition and marked the shortness of memory and self-importance of the undergraduates, they turned for cheer to William's flattery and refused to consider its ambiguities.

"No, no, miss, none of our young ladies now are like the young ladies when you were here. In your time they certainly was young ladies.

"And your name, miss? It's the same I suppose, I'm afraid to call any of you by name, there's so many married, you see, and they might be offended if I didn't remember the gentleman's name, you see. I keep track of you all by reading the list of names and who's dead and married. Talking of marriages, miss, so Dr. —— is married. Well, he's the last of our professors I'd a thought of marrying. Well, changes is changes, miss, when all's said and done."

On this their last afternoon, Susan Everett and Beatrice O'Hara had joined the five where they were sitting under the cherry tree in front of Taylor. Their talk was of the undergraduates and the zest with which they listened to tales of those first days.

"Their seeming disregard of us and our doings is the result of ignorance, not of indifference," Edith was saying, "but their curiosity is now thoroughly aroused."

"Oh, yes indeed," groaned Marjorie, "they've decided they'll collect the traditions and if you've the age of Methuselah and the memory of Macaulay, they wind you up and you can be doing nothing at all but telling them stories. And you've to stop and explain to them who the Polyglot is and the Gifted, and even I can't quite make clear to them those treasures of individuality. All you get for your pains is, 'Oh yes! one of the professors.'"

Her plaint seemed to be justified, for across from Pembroke some girls came running and when they saw the group under the tree, one of them called out,—"Oh, here you are, Miss Heywood! May we not come and learn some more history?"

And as though Marjorie's consent were a foregone conclusion, they sat down on the grass at her feet and settled themselves as children will for the treat in store.

"Come, Tommie, tell us a story and play the fool for us, as you used to do," said Susan Everett lapsing into the old name and desirous that Marjorie should assume her old character.

"I should have drifted naturally into my accustomed rÔle, had you kept still a moment; but introductory remarks are death to spontaneity. And, like Amanda Jones, I want my little fun spontaneous.

"Now, you never knew Amanda Jones," she continued to the undergraduates, "but by that historic utterance she deprived you of a custom. Did you ever think why you never had a class-day at Bryn Mawr? You know you never have had one, and if you ever do the ghost of Amanda Jones will haunt the campus.

"It was the year we graduated, and we," indicating her companions, "had been sitting up into the small hours arranging for a class-day. The first class had gone out in solemn dignity, but we craved something more; we would have a class-day. We had an elaborate program made out, amusing, but academic, without doubt the cleverest entertainment that has ever been or ever will be. We had written an inimitable parody of the Clouds,—so funny, so much funnier than anything Aristophanes ever did. Humour so subtle was never heard. We couldn't read it ourselves without weeping with laughter. Well, the parts were assigned, the costumes half made, the invitations sent out, when of a sudden a class meeting was called at Amanda's request. As soon as preliminaries were over she arose, made a telling arraignment of class-day, referred touchingly to former graduations at Bryn Mawr, and then she, who had never even gone to an entertainment, much less invented one, paused dramatically, and slowly enunciated, 'we've always had our little fun spontaneous!' She carried the day, and still carries it, and there is no such thing as class-day at Bryn Mawr."

"Amanda wasn't about when we were practicing for our comb-orchestra," laughed Beatrice. "Poor Amanda! She didn't know that the deliberations beforehand were half the fun."

"Do you remember," asked Ellen, "the evening we spent sitting in the trunk-room in Merion, helping Alice Marston write the Professor?"

"Dear me, I had forgotten," sighed Louise, "and I don't think anything has ever seemed really funny since that."

"The sad part of it is," continued Evelyn, "that the warning in the motto we used would now be a necessity. Who but ourselves would understand those jokes? What was the motto?" to an inquiring freshman,

"Don't apologize for talking Latin, Evelyn," said Marjorie, with a comical glance at the group, "it's like our mother tongue."

"That was the way the Latin lecture used to begin," explained Ellen, for the benefit of the undergraduates. "You see we used to have lectures in Latin as a sort of elective."

"That sounds impressive; it did to me when I first heard it," responded Marjorie, "but those Latin lectures were the most humorous things you could imagine. You watched the Polyglot's face, and you knew when to laugh and when to weep, and you were a little dull if you didn't understand enough to raise your hand when he called out 'Quot intellixistis?'

"Do you remember the one on Irish bulls? In your honour wasn't it, Pat?" turning to Beatrice O'Hara, whose vaunted Irish blood was evident in her speech.

"I wish I'd kept a record of Pat's bulls," remarked Susan. "I often feel as though one of them was just the tonic I needed."

"Never mind," answered Beatrice, good-humouredly, "I once saw through one all by myself. That time I told you I was carrying a stool with me because I had to stand up."

"I often think of the way the Gifted chuckled, because you would say 'whenever a man died,'" added Ellen.

"I didn't deserve his ridicule; for I was the only person capable of understanding what he meant by his favourite 'on a mutual hand,' or of appreciating the beautiful idea of his 'tell all that you don't know about this subject.'"

"Oh, Marjorie," exclaimed Edith, "have you forgotten how you disgraced yourself just because you thought you noticed the joke introducing expression on a learned lecturer's face? You would go to the German lecture on Ulfilas, thinking it wise to make the most of all opportunities for getting up your German for your orals."

"Not a bit of it," interrupted Marjorie, "I came to myself to find the distinguished guests and the members of the Faculty gazing at me as though I were crazy, and you pinching me black and blue. And all because I had worked myself into hysterics of laughter over the Lord's Prayer in Gothic."

"Wasn't it queer in those days when everything was new?" inquired one of the audience.

"My dear child there never was a time when everything was new, and I know what I'm talking about, for I was the first freshman that ever spent a night in Bryn Mawr, and I then learned that Bryn Mawr already had a history that was venerable, customs that were inviolable. That first night I learned the Manus Bryn Mawrensium and the Maid of Bryn Mawr. I was early taught the tradition of the sacredness of the Harriton family cemetery, taken there by two sponsors, who felt the necessity of impressing us, the newcomers, with the past.

"In that stretch of woodland," here her voice took on a sentimental tone, "known as the Vaux woods, and still frequented by Bryn Mawr students, there lies nestling among the trees a secluded burying ground. Grey walls of ancient date bound it within narrow compass. The masonry sturdily defiant of time, has been mellowed by a growth of moss and lichen. To any eye a picturesque spot! In its calm but cheerful solitude, no inhospitable resting-place! You feel in a sense possessors of that place; you are aware that in some subtle manner it belongs to you; but fully to comprehend your own feelings you must hear the droll, though sentimental reminiscence of the first class of Bryn Mawr; you must picture to yourselves a group of students on the worn steps and the nervous, enthusiastic figure of that 'learned doctor,' as he walks up and down in front of them, declaiming ore rotundo and with all possible expression, the parting of Hector and Andromache. Yes, he taught us Horace," answering a question from one of the groups on the grass. "Oh, you have no such classes now. I couldn't imagine college without his Horace class."

"How we had to work in it, though," sighed Louise.

"Oh yes, but you know we always had his permission to shirk all other work that we might do his," came from Beatrice.

"And at last we had to protest," continued Edith. "Had we done all that was expected of us, we should never have gone to bed. Our protests passed seemingly unheeded, till one day just before Thanksgiving, the Polyglot entered the room, one shoulder heaved on high with the great pile of books he held under his arm. Having as usual begun his lecture in the corridor, he was saying as he came inside the door, 'I have with me a most interesting find, a manuscript Latin poem, unexpectedly come into my possession. I shall write it on the board and then ask some one to volunteer with a translation.' Then standing on tiptoe, at times jumping so that he might write at the very top of the blackboard, he began to copy some verses, but long before he had finished, the class was convulsed with laughter. For it was a graceful little apology for overworking us."

"When I think of Bryn Mawr," said Marjorie, "few things have left so vivid an impression on my mind as his class-room. I was under the spell of literature from the moment I heard him give out his first parallel passage. There was in his classes a magical exhilaration never to be forgotten. And to think you poor things don't know anything about it!

"It must seem very different to you now," put in a senior, sympathetically.

"To be sure it does, and I think nothing strikes me more than the light-hearted way in which you do things that we didn't dare to do for fear of bringing down rules on our heads. Like our ancestors we were constantly 'snuffing tyranny.'"

"Hadn't you self-government then?" asked a freshman in amazement.

"We had no government of any sort, and no despotism could have been more compelling than the nameless fear that hung over us, that we might some day do something that would lead some one to take away our liberty."

"I have always regretted the establishment of self-government," said Elizabeth Gordon, a graduate who was to receive her Ph. D. the next day.

"Not at all, not at all," Marjorie hastened to declare. "You were always so immersed in work that you never bothered with other people; but those of us that thought it our duty to keep an eye on the freshmen found our hands full. Why the trips that I have made with my Memorabilia under my arm to administer sugar-coated pellets of college-spirit have cost me many a good mark."

The reminiscences had filled the afternoon, and now the college-bell rang out, warning the various groups that dinner-time was at hand. With an apologetic laugh Marjorie started up, saying as she walked along, "Six o'clock, and I've talked almost all afternoon! Well! Well! 'Tis but a sign of age."

"Age, you goose," laughed Edith, "weren't you always the 'garrulous particle'?"

"Well, weakness then, and a mistaken notion that there is no place like Bryn Mawr."

IV

The beauty of the long June evening was not to be resisted, and as soon as dinner was over, the students hurried out of doors. An air of relaxation was everywhere noticeable. Those fagged out by examinations gained cheer and liveliness from the more careless, or loitered about in unregarded lassitude not disturbed by any sense of obligation as contributors to the brimming talk of their companions. It was the perfection of easy intercourse where every sentence is a free-will offering.

However far the little knots of good company might wander, they sooner or later gathered about the steps of Taylor Hall to listen to the senior singing. The effect was almost like a stage setting in its perfection, the grey buildings, the intense green of the grass, the blossoms on the trees, the dresses of the girls, the group upon the steps, with the rays of the setting sun falling full upon it. This custom of singing on the steps was an innovation on the manners of the first years, but an innovation picturesque and pathetic. Its pathos touched the group of alumnÆ standing at a little distance from the steps. Throughout the afternoon they had almost fancied themselves students again; now they had stepped aside and had become mere spectators, while the seniors were making the most of their last days.

Before the singing stopped darkness had crept upon the scene. Taking advantage of it Ellen slipped away unnoticed and wandered down the hillside. As she heard the strange voices singing the old songs, she suddenly perceived how far she had drifted away from her college days—from all that had been revived by the chatter of the afternoon. She could not but feel that Marjorie's power of awakening those trifling memories, and Edith's quick response to her whims and sallies, her humorous allusions indicated not a less, but a greater share in all that was vital and permanent than any she could claim for all her seriousness. A passionate regret rushed over her, aware now that in her hurry, her business, her very faithfulness, she had lost, almost past recovery, many of the privileges that had been hers; that, in her pursuit of ends, worthy enough to be sure, she had made no demands on the really precious things in her experience at college. For in this moment of reflection, those trivial and petty reminiscences, mere accidents in their student-life, became for her the summons to an act of recollection.

She had strolled across the daisy field and was standing on the brow of the hill looking out toward the west. The moon had risen. Seen in its light the sweep of landscape seemed to her more picturesque, fuller of appeal to the imagination. Details were lost sight of, contrasts of light and shade emphasized. The slope before her lay in the full moonlight. Beyond it a clump of trees showed dark against the lucent sky. In the farther distance the hills were wrapped in a soft mist, brightened here and there by the gleams from the clustered houses. The familiar scene was full of remembrances, but remembrances for the most part of her friendship for Marjorie and Edith. Long tramps across those hills had been their favourite exercise through the winter. The daisy field, the haunt of idle moments in the warm days of spring or autumn, had also been for them a special sort of study, reserved for choicest reading. Toward it too they had always wandered after the Sunday evening meeting. As they walked along their talk would drift from the subject of the evening to things more personal, closer to their hearts, their individual perplexities, their individual faiths. Each one was then at her best, in the light of sympathy, showing herself as good or as noble as she really was. Those conversations, assumed to her kindled imagination, an actuality, a power, hitherto unperceived, becoming not only the record of their preferences in all matters great or small, their criticism of the activities and the thoughts of their own little world, but also the measure of their share in it. The little world thus recalled to her, had, she was beginning to remember, its care for holiness, for truth, for courage, and it had too its care for orderliness and beauty in its very frivolities—and there had been a discipline really stimulating even in that. The genius of the place expressing itself in this care showed itself in light-hearted frolic no less than in scholastic endeavor, for it determined the way in which things were done rather than actual achievements, thus uniting in voluntary submission to its influence those whom individual powers separated from one another, informing them with its spirit, till it became a part of them, not to be changed without the loss of something individual.

How vivid it all was, how persistent, yet how baffling its secret! Why could she not penetrate this secret and possess it? But as before she could neither arrest nor depict the ideas that were passing to and fro in her mind. Her thoughts flew to her speech. In it she had ignored everything but the definite, the tangible, and in so doing she had failed. Yet, even if she could seize the sentiment and translate it into words, she dreaded misapprehension—she could not forget her audience.

"Oh, here you are, Ellen," Marjorie broke in on her reverie, "I've just been singing your praises. It seems there are difficulties in the way of self-government, and I thought I'd help them by giving them a bit of our experience. So I told how you brought us through that bitter time, when we so nearly lost our liberties. As I told them I realized as never before how impossible it is to pass on experience. I could see before me the faces of the girls so drawn, so stern, with that pitiful sternness that only young faces catch; and then I seemed to hear Dr. Rhoads in chapel that next morning, reading to us that chapter about Grace and Law; and I could remember just how he stopped and looked at us after he read the words,—'For sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid,'—and then went on to tell us that he believed that those words expressed our spirit and that as long as that spirit guided us we could be trusted to govern ourselves. It seems strange that while the impression of that time will never fade from our minds, we can pass on nothing but the tradition. There is no Dr. Rhoads now," she continued after a pause, "and I think I miss him more than I do any one else. He always used to gather up the events of our life here and put them into their proper relations."

"Yes, he entered with all his heart into the college spirit just as though he were one of us," agreed Edith.

"And for that very reason," said Ellen, "no part of his influence is lost. That spirit is the touchstone for all of us. However variable it is the one thing that persists and, so far, it has been as he understood it. Each student, whatever her gifts, must make it her own if she is ever to be anything but an alien here."

"It always needs Ellen to give the finishing touch," said Edith.

"If it had not been for you and Marjorie," insisted Ellen, "I should still have taken counsel of the cynical outsiders."

"Listen a moment," interrupted Marjorie, "that's it after all."

A band of girls was coming toward them through the moonlight and as they came they sang:

V

One morning some days later, Ellen was looking out upon a delightful garden in Indianapolis. The day was fine, if warm, and in the garden the roses were in full bloom. She was in the highest spirits; but her gayety of mood was a thing of the past five minutes and had nothing to do with the sunshine or the flowers. She was reviewing the occurrences of the last week and entertaining herself greatly.

Her speech had been made the day before with really brilliant success. It had been the most important event in a series of notable meetings and had been received in a way that might well have roused her to fresh endeavour. Yet in the moment of her greatest success she had shown herself strangely indifferent to her manifest duty. This was the result of her having discovered, just as she had begun to accept the fact of her triumph and the rewards that lay before her, that it was all due to a surprising mishap, something altogether beyond her control. She showed that she felt the importance of the occurrence by thinking of it steadily for the rest of the day and well on into the night. This was not because she wanted to think of it particularly; indeed she had made every effort to dismiss her preoccupation; but she could not rid herself of the idea that an accident was responsible for her triumph. In her perplexity she went over the whole thing time and again.

There had been an inspiring audience, so much she acknowledged, casting her mind over it. She had observed it in the moments before the meeting was called to order. Looking at the impressive throng she had been annoyed to think that she might have to use her notes. As she rose and moved toward the desk there had been a sudden hush and concentration of attention upon the platform, of so much she had been distinctly conscious. She had felt too that after she laid her notes on the table and began to speak, the intelligent interest which had greeted her opening sentences soon gave way to an eager, fixed intentness and breathless silence. Then all was a blank, till the restrained enthusiasm broke forth.

As soon as the meeting was over she had been overwhelmed by congratulations. Her one desire had been to escape, and she felt it difficult to be gracious to her admirers. She had managed at length to get away, and handing her notes to a reporter, had hurried to the door. There she had been stopped by an old gentleman, who, though an utter stranger to her, greeted her as an old friend.

"Now, Miss Blake, you'll come home with us. You'll not stop another minute at the hotel. No, I'll not hear a word. I won't take a refusal. Nobody has as good a right to you as I, your father's old friend, Ned Cartwright." Then he had grasped her warmly by the hand, exclaiming delightedly,—"My dear young lady! My dear young lady! It was your father over again, Harry Blake, Prince Hal we used to call him. And is that the way you girls feel about college? Bless me, I'd never have believed it. I have heard so much solemn nonsense talked about what you do and say and think. But I'll never believe it again. Why, you might have been talking about my own college days, and your father's too,—Prince Hal we used to call him. I'll never forget how we stole the clapper, he and I. And they do it still, my dear, just as we used to, and you steal your clappers too, and, bless me,—I'll send every girl I can to college, if that's the way you all feel about it. That's education! It isn't all books,—never was and never will be. Just ask your father and he'll tell you so too. Yes, I give you my word, every one of them shall go. I'll see to it. I'd as soon shut them off from fairy stories and Walter Scott, and falling in love, because they were girls. It's romance, that's what it is and they've a right to their romance; for I'm an old man, my dear, and perhaps you'll take my word for it, it's the romance of life that counts,—for the girls as well as the boys."

While he was still talking Mrs. Cartwright had come up with a welcome as hearty as his. Their hospitality had been irresistible, and Ellen, powerless before it, was soon walking with them to the carriage. But just as she had been about to get in she had been stopped once more.

"Pardon me, Miss Blake," some one had said, and there had stood the reporter with her manuscript.

"I think there must be some mistake," he had gone on to say, "the paper you gave me deals with the practical value of college life and you talked this morning on what you called 'the Poetry of College Spirit.'"

Then, as in a flash, Ellen had seemed to understand the sense of something strange and bewildering in the experience of the past hour, for she then remembered that when she had stood facing her audience in the moment before she began to speak, she had seemed to forget her notes, her listeners and herself, and to apprehend the meaning of her four years at Bryn Mawr so clearly that it came to have for her a sort of personal identity. Carried beyond herself by her delight in the assurance of something actual, she had spoken unpremeditated thoughts. One might almost say, she thought, that the memories revived by the visit to Bryn Mawr, then crowded out by her intense preoccupation in the business of the convention had, as in revenge, taken possession of her, forcing all other thoughts from her—had almost as it were expressed themselves. Much that had puzzled her in Major Cartwright's criticism was now explained. A trick of memory accounted for all—even her triumph. But she could recall nothing of her speech. The words were forever lost.

She had been overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all, and, do what she would, she could not keep her thoughts from wandering from the Major's eager questions of her father's doings to her own perplexing experience. At one moment she had seemed to be on the point of remembering the speech, to have the words on the tip of her tongue; the next to lose them more surely than ever. Though the Major was constantly bringing it to mind she was none the wiser for his references. That he had thought well of it she could not doubt, but she wanted to know what she had said. Long after she had gone to her room that night she had sat thinking. The poetry of college spirit! What had she said about it? Perhaps she had said something absurd, had made her subject ridiculous. It hardly seemed so from what she had heard. And yet,—could she think that the inspiration of that moment of discovery had lasted through an hour of unconsciousness? How much more probable that the shadowy something she had tried to define had been so real to the memory or the imagination of her hearers that the mere mention of it had for them an instant fascination.

And now this morning, finding herself the first downstairs, she had picked up the paper. She would find out at last. A few moments ago she had finished reading, and throwing the paper aside with the impatience of disappointment, had stepped out on to the porch. In those five minutes she had come to view the whole thing with a lively enjoyment.

There was a column about it in the paper, but no outline, nothing but praise and the hope that she would make her speech fully effective by publishing it. Was there perhaps a touch of malice in that suggestion? Had the reporter grasped more of the situation than she had chosen to tell? With that thought amusement overpowered her,—amusement at herself above all. That she of all persons should be at a loss to know how she had done precisely what she desired to do—please everybody—seemed to her the perfection of irony. Her comic imagination, once kindled, swept everything before it, her self-importance, her views, even her curiosity. Then a delightful feeling of irresponsibility came upon her. The speech was none of hers.

"Well now, what an early riser you are. I hope you are not used up by the excitement of yesterday," came in cordial tones from the doorway and Major Cartwright came out to bid her good-morning.

"What, all alone!" looking about him. "Haven't you seen Mrs. Cartwright yet? She's been down a long time. I suppose she's out among the roses. We'll go on without her if you don't mind. She likes to take her time and cut all the roses before the sun gets hot, but it worries her to think she is keeping me waiting. So I humour her and myself too."

"Well, you'll not be asked to wait this morning, my dear Edward, I've got them all gathered." And Mrs. Cartwright came up from the garden with a basket of roses on her arm. "Come away to breakfast now. I'll arrange these afterward," leading the way to the dining-room.

The Major picked up the paper in passing, and looked at it.

"Oh here's all about your speech!" he cried, "I hope they didn't garble it very much."

"Far from that," laughed Ellen, "they don't attempt to tell what I said."

"What? You don't mean it. Nothing at all about it?"

"Oh, yes, compliments enough to turn my head. But the thought was evidently too much for——"

"Just listen to this, Lucy!" interrupted the Major after a glance at the criticism. "I don't believe you know what a distinguished young lady we have with us this morning,—'Indianapolis has heard much of the eloquence of Miss Blake, but Indianapolis was not prepared for the glowing words of yesterday.'" He read to Ellen's great amusement. "'It would be folly to attempt an abbreviated report of that splendid piece of oratory. Instead we take pleasure in printing extracts from an article on a more practical phase of college life, confident that any words on woman's education from so able an exponent will be of the highest interest to our readers.

"'The speech made yesterday we predict, without hesitation will never be surpassed by Miss Blake,—it will be remembered as her masterpiece.'"

While he was reading Mrs. Cartwright had been watching Ellen and had decided that she had been blind the night before, for she had missed much of the attraction in her face. Just now Ellen's eyes twinkling with fun were fixed on the major's face, and Mrs. Cartwright watched her with a pleased smile.

"Your masterpiece he calls it," she exclaimed, as her husband finished; "isn't that just like a reporter? How does he know you'll never surpass it?"

"Bless me, I don't see how she could surpass it," ejaculated the Major, "I'll not call the fellow a false prophet yet."

"I don't believe you'll have the chance—ever," retorted Ellen. "I haven't an idea what I said and by the time I make my next speech no one else will remember."

"What do you mean, my dear young lady?" he asked astonished. "It was never in the world extempore."

"That or nothing." And Ellen, sensitive to a genial change in herself, though, perhaps but dimly conscious of it, told the whole story with so keen a relish for the satiric elements in it, that her listeners were delighted. Her unconcern met with no protest from companions too unfamiliar with her ways to reproach her for not being quite herself. Elsewhere she might not have dared to disregard the imperious demands of what was expected of her; but here she was not coerced by any preconceived notions of what she was likely to do.

"And it's all gone from you?" said Mrs. Cartwright.

"Yes, just as completely as if the thing had never happened. It's just as though you had done something very clever in a dream, and found when you tried to do the same thing after you were awake that you had forgotten the most important part of it."

"But the fellow ought to have attended to his business better," said Major Cartwright. "What was he there for if not to report?" He took up the paper again. "The man's a fool. A plea for the higher education!"

"That's what it was meant for," murmured Ellen.

"It converted you, anyway," contended Mrs. Cartwright, nodding at him.

"Never heard anything so absurd," he went on disregarding them. "Where did he get all this stuff about the practical value of the higher education?"

"From me, I am afraid. You see when he found he couldn't have the best, he decided to take the next best, and asked me for the notes of the speech I intended to make. I tried very hard indeed to catch my thoughts about Bryn Mawr and pin them down for inspection as my views on college life. But they escaped me, I'm glad to say."

"I can't believe it of you. Why when you got through you had stirred in me afresh the enthusiasms of years ago."

"That's not so much of a compliment as it seems, my dear," interrupted Mrs. Cartwright. "His enthusiasm on some subjects is perennial. It needs only the word 'college' to set him going. But come along and help me with the roses. If we go on like this, we'll begin to think you just made an ordinary speech after all."

"And I do want to think it my masterpiece," said Ellen, rising to follow her. Then she turned to the Major with a humorous diffidence that hid a feeling too strong to show itself. "Perhaps it is just as well that I have to stand on my attainment. If it were down in black and white some critical person would be sure to discover how much I owe to the eloquent ears of my audience."

Marian T. MacIntosh, '90.

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