In the dry, warm darkness of a May evening two girls lay on the grass near the tennis-courts north of Taylor. It was in the days when the present athletic field was only a roadway and a damp hollow where dog-tooth violets grew. Radnor and Merion loomed across the campus, their few lighted windows betraying how little the spirit of study possessed the hour. All the light and brilliancy of the college seemed concentrated in Denbigh dining-room, whence, through wide open windows, came the laughter and songs of the supper the juniors were giving the seniors.

There were sound and movement, too, in the obscurity under the windows. Now and then a hand and arm, or a head, rose from the shuffling, murmuring mass, and for a brief moment came into relief against the bright oblong of the window, the hand in its withdrawal seeming always to carry with it something very like a cup or a plate, which was received below with shrieks or even some boldly distinct remarks.

One of the girls on the grass sat up suddenly, a stiffness of disapproval apparent in her attitude, even in the dim light from the library windows.

"That is all a disappointment to me." She supplemented her remark by a quick movement of one arm in the direction of Denbigh.

"Why?" The other girl turned, resting her head on her curved arm.

"To think that college girls can be so frivolous, so silly. It isn't at all what I expected before I came."

"You didn't suppose we talked in Greek all the time, did you, Lilian?"

"Of course I didn't think absurdities, Clara. But I did think college girls would be dignified and serious, and wouldn't act like a rabble of street boys. And that, I think is immoral." She rose with her back to Clara, as from Denbigh came, full and strong, reËnforced by the voices of the freshmen under the windows, the chorus:

Clara West clasped her arms around her knees and rested her cheek on them, murmuring in a sort of ecstasy, "I love it all."

Clara West was a quiet girl with odd impulses. One of these had been to ask Lilian Coles to sit with her for a while on the campus, as they happened to leave the library together. The oddity in this case was not that Clara was a sophomore and Lilian a freshman—class lines were then very loosely drawn. But Lilian was not the sort of girl every one would choose to sit on the grass with under the stars and listen to college songs. Lilian had accepted only because she was waiting for a reference book she wanted. It was this she now went in quest of, after bidding Clara a rather impatient good-night.

As she stopped by the half-open door of one of the first floor studies in Merion, a tall girl with smooth, red-brown hair parted in a straight white line, swung herself around from her desk and smiled.

"Oh, Miss Coles! You have come for the 'Augustan Poets'? I have just finished."

She wore a pretty organdie gown, for she was as scrupulous in maintaining the tradition of dressing for dinner as in every other detail of her well-ordered existence. The study seemed rather bare, but there were a few rich rugs on the floor and on the flat couch, and large photographs of Greek sculptures on the walls. A tea table by the hearth was loaded with cups and saucers, cakes and sandwiches; and thin steam was beginning to come from a kettle hanging on an iron tripod.

"Won't you stay and have some tea?" Edith Dareham asked, as Lilian turned away with the book. "Some of the girls are coming in to talk over our play for the freshmen next fall."

"No, thank you, I don't drink tea, and—I don't believe in plays." With this bomb-like deliverance Lilian disappeared. Edith looked bewildered and rather pained.

"The people evidently don't want your 'panis et circenses,'" mocked a voice close at hand, and a pretty head thrust itself beyond one of the bedroom portiÈres.

"Oh, Blanche dear, are you there? Won't you come out and help me make the tea?"

Lilian hurried out of Merion, meeting groups of freshmen and sophomores. A few of them nodded indifferently to her, but the majority seemed not to heed her. As she crunched over the gravel toward Radnor, where more lights were appearing, she had a sharp feeling of discomfort, unrelieved by any sense of heroism. She was well constituted for martyrdom, but just now the performance of duty seemed a very ungracious task.

Lilian was a victim of a world-old opposition, taking form in her in a conflict between a habit of thought imposed by training, and certain essential, though still latent, qualities of her nature. She was in a stage of intense admiration for Edith Dareham, unconsciously influenced by much in Edith that appealed to the undeveloped side of her character, though attributing her admiration wholly to the obvious traits revealed in Edith's fine conscientious work. Yet she felt an antagonism toward the fact that Edith gave encouragement, or at least tolerance, to certain features of college life that seemed very reprehensible to Lilian, according to the peculiar tenets of the religion in which she had been trained.

Her father was a member of a small religious sect, most numerous in the West, whose creed would seem, to the uninitiated, to be wholly negative, in its exclusion of all that makes for the brightness of life. The sect, though small, was vigorous in proselytism, and Lilian's father had been sent out as a missionary, first to Germany, then to Switzerland. Here had been for Lilian a vast increase in the chances for education; and with a natural aptitude and a child's facility she acquired a good knowledge of French and German. The leaders of this sect had established a small so-called college—really a school for the study of the Bible, with their doctrinal interpretations—because, in the anticipation of an imminent ending of the world, they deemed time too short to be spent on any other line of study.

At about the time of Lilian's return to America, the school had been placed in charge of a man of good academic training, but of a difficult temper that had driven him from place to place till he had accepted this position as almost a last resort. When Lilian was placed in the school he quickly discovered the possibilities of her mind, and for three years gave her a rigorous training. He then advised her father to send her to college. Mr. Coles was not blind to some of the advantages shrewdly presented by the little instructor. He laid the matter before a committee of elders of the society, and consent was finally given. Before her departure, Lilian was called into the presence of the elders, and her opportunities for witnessing to the "light" in a new field, her duty of non-compliance, were solemnly, almost threateningly impressed upon her. The college was chosen by the instructor. The question of money presented difficulties at first, but was finally arranged, and Lilian went on for the examinations with a confidence born of her teacher's encouragement, and justified by her success.

To-night, as she went through Radnor, she could hear laughter, singing, rustling and skurrying,—all the relaxations of a Friday night, with festivity in progress. There was something almost greedy in the haste with which she lighted her lamp, closed her door, and drew down the window shade. Her unworded thought was that others might so waste their time if they chose; she could not afford to. Something of Lilian's reaction to her present environment might have been divined from her face. The forehead was of good shape, but too full for the thin, refined lower features. At her temples the veins were very distinct.

She studied until after the seniors and juniors returned from their supper. Her thoroughness in work was largely temperamental. She still looked upon her opportunities in college simply as means to greater efficiency in the missionary work she had been chosen to do—work that was in fact the propagation of certain peculiar theories. To her simple thinking, it was a sacrifice of herself to make the world better. Her anxiety over the approaching examinations was great.

The next morning she would gladly have gone to the library immediately after breakfast, but it was characteristic of her that she went instead for a two mile walk which she did not in the least enjoy. The Gulph road, behind the college, was a green cathedral aisle, starred with the white flowers of the dogwood. She did not know it. The rhododendrons were in brilliant bloom on the well-kept lawn of a country-place near the pond. She did not see them. But when she came in she was sure that she could not fail on Grimm's law.

Lilian's marks at the mid-year examinations had been good, but not high enough to be striking, and as she left college as soon as the May examinations were finished and thus escaped the inevitable comparing of marks, no one knew how high were the grades she received. The excellence of her work, however, unperceived during her first year, save by very few, could not fail of notice as her sophomore year went on, and after the result of the February examination was known, aroused a dim uneasiness among some very devoted friends of Edith Dareham's. The general rough grading of the members of the class during the first year is apt to be accurate, and, with a little shifting, is accepted as permanent in the second year. Edith Dareham was now the recognized European Fellow of the class of '9—.

"You don't suppose there is any danger, do you?" was the query put to a group in a cozy Denbigh study one February afternoon before dinner. It was growing dark with a gathering storm, and the wind was whirling clouds of snow across the campus. In the room the gas was lighted, a coal fire was glowing in the grate, and two alcohol lamps were steadily burning. The querist was Katherine Leonard, "a junior by courtesy," she frankly qualified herself. Indeed a degree for her did seem at least problematical, not so much through neglect of hard work as through a perverse inclination to interest herself ardently in courses of reading quite foreign to her majors. She was absorbed in literature and philosophy while painfully struggling with mathematics and physics, and as these latter subjects scarcely permit a divided allegiance even to minds most gifted in that direction, the issue threatened to be disastrous for Katherine. But when urged to change her majors she simply shook her head. She needed the discipline, she said.

"Danger of what?" demanded Blanche Merrill, Edith Dareham's roommate, with an abrupt turn to Katherine.

"That Lilian Coles may take the fellowship from Edith."

"Of course not! How absurd!" replied Blanche superbly.

"Don't be too sure, Blanchette, dear," interposed a tall girl who was writing at a table under the gas. She was copying a lecture from her hostess's notebook into her own, and kept on while she was talking.

"Don't use that absurd name, Clothilde, any one would think I was a Trouville donkey. You might as well say 'Papillon.'"

"Thank you, I will. But revenons—the fellowships are very uncertain certainties, and who can say what will happen with a girl who gets high credit in the gym."

"Then Edith may as well give up." Katherine's small form yielded to a spasm of laughter at the recollection of Edith's doing two hours a day in the gymnasium in order to avoid a condition.

"Yes," commented Blanche, "when Edith went to the gym before breakfast, Katherine would go and hold Thucydides up before her, so that Edith could put a last polish on her translation while she was doing chest weights and quarter circle."

"That isn't really true, you know," Katherine coolly joined in the laughter of the others. "That is, it's true only to the spirit, not to the fact. I would have done it if it had been necessary. But really it would be unjust to the college to give the fellowship to a girl who won't go to a tea."

"Is Miss Leonard here?" In response to a low rap some one had opened the door to Lilian Coles who stood a little bewildered at the contrast between the still unlighted hall and the bright room. Katherine freed herself from the group on the floor.

"Oh, you have brought that book. I wish you hadn't. I'll have to read it now. Come up, and I will give you the other. I haven't read it. I have been skating all the afternoon. Mabel, please hand me my skates."

"Won't you come in and have a cup of cocoa? It is so cold outside," Lilian was temptingly urged by the fair-haired girl who was nominally mistress of the study, though both she and her roommate were usually obliged to work in the library, so thoroughly did a reputation for hospitality characterize their room. Lilian wanted to go in, but without hesitation declined and started away with Katherine.

"Wait a moment," Katherine touched Lilian's arm and turned back to the open door. Two girls had begun to sing, in response to the guitar of a third,

While Katherine listened to the song, Lilian's eyes rested curiously first on the sensitive face, then on the black sweater, short corduroy skirt and heavy boots that made up Katherine's skating costume.

"I am glad I am not so conscientious as Helen Arnold," Katherine said, at the close of the song. "When her aunt wanted to take her to Bayreuth last summer, she wouldn't go, because, not having an intellectual appreciation of music, she couldn't, forsooth, permit herself so much emotional enjoyment." Lilian looked puzzled yet stern. She could not but approve the action, though the motive seemed to her unnecessarily refined.

Katherine's rooms were on the second floor. When the two girls entered, the study was in the shadowy dimness of grey twilight cheered by a warm fire. Katherine lighted an old Venetian lantern and some red-shaded candles, then drew the sash curtains which were of dark red silk with arabesques of fine gold lines. Above the mantel hung two carbon photographs of Fra Angelico angels in vellum frames; and at one end stood a bronze of the Flying Mercury, at the other a cast of the Olympian Hermes. On the walls were photographs of Matthew Arnold, Christina Rossetti, and Cardinal Newman; also some prints that Katherine fondly believed to be original DÜrers. These objects had not the interpretative value for Lilian that they might have had for another; but the whole suggested luxury to her, and her eyes turned away disapprovingly to fall with a sort of startled horror on the recess left between two bookcases, where, against a dark background, hung an exquisite ivory crucifix. Lilian's attitude toward Catholicism was of the original Puritan inflexibility, strengthened by the exaggerated hatred of the class of people among whom she had lived. And she knew nothing of any concessions due to the opinions of others. The crucifix represented merely a sympathy, not a tendency on Katherine's part. But this fact, even if it had been known to Lilian, would have served none the less to intensify in her a feeling of radical difference between Katherine's governing ideals and her own.

When she entered Radnor on her return, two girls were coming slowly down the stairs, absorbed in confidential chat. They smiled at Lilian as she passed, but she knew that she had no share in the friendship expressed even by the touch of Clara's hand on Ethel's shoulder. She drew herself up sharply, remembering her longing to enter Florence Baker's bright, gay study.

Her way to her room took her past the single suites. The door of one was open, and within were trunks and signs of packing.

"Are you going away?" she paused to ask. Gertrude Elbridge, a pretty little freshman, came forward and drooped against the door.

"Yes, you know I have been ill since the examinations, and papa has sent for me."

"I am sorry." This was true, as Lilian had a mild fondness for the child, despite the fact that, through evenings of loud and prolonged hilarity, Gertrude and her friends had made life a burden to Lilian, and with direct consequence, to the members of the Executive Board of Self-Government. Lilian went on to her room, indignation possessing her. She knew why Gertrude was going away. Before each examination Gertrude had studied all night, her head bound in a wet towel. The towel really bothered her, but she knew that was what her brother did. She had kept awake on strong tea and coffee supplied by sympathizing friends. But evidently even these frantic efforts had not proved redemptive.

"Why," Lilian asked herself, "did not the stronger girls of the college bring a pressure of sentiment to bear against these follies, instead of encouraging them by their own customs?" Was it not her duty to make some protest? An unavailing one it would doubtless be, but surely it is only a lukewarm reformer that considers results rather than principles.

She had returned to college in the fall with a strengthened antagonism to what her father called the worldliness of college life. His influence was still dominant with her. His vision was crude, and he denounced, with a solemnity appealing to the girl's native earnestness, all the joyous innocent froth of amusement that danced over the current of the real, serious life of the college.

In truth, Lilian had departed further from her father's beliefs than she realized. She had already gained an historical perspective and a certain habit of cool unbiased judgment that were forcing her to see in what ignorance and narrowness of mind those beliefs were conceived and accepted. At the same time the studies that had modified her views, tended to increase her sense of the preciousness of time, of the seriousness of life. Her loyalty to her father's teachings was stirred by an unanalyzed appreciation of the change in herself. And now, in the failure of Gertrude Elbridge she seemed to find a justification of the rigidly prohibitive lines her father would throw around all conduct. She could not see, yet, that the weak have their hard lessons to learn in the opportunities of the strong.

Unfortunately opportunity was not lacking Lilian Coles for that word of protest she felt bound to utter. She always attended the Sunday evening meetings, though little in sympathy with their spirit. The next Sunday she went early. Into the dimly lighted gymnasium came the girls, eyes sparkling and cheeks red from the clear cold air without. Nearly all were wrapped in shawls, but one girl wore a hat and coat and carried a bag. There was a big bunch of violets on the lapel of her coat, and she smiled rather consciously at some comments of the girls she joined. In the first row of chairs were some dignified seniors whom Lilian rather feared, and a junior who at once attracted and repelled her. She was, in spite of herself, fascinated by a cleverness that manifested itself in every department of the college, that would be a force in literature some day, so every one said; and at the same time she had a feeling that there was nothing the girl would not sacrifice to ambition.

At last Helen Arnold, who was to lead the meeting, came in accompanied by Edith Dareham. Helen was the girl who had refused to go to Bayreuth. She busied herself with great care in arranging the books and lamp on a little table. Her friends knew that she was embarrassed. She was a frail-looking girl, one who set a high value on things that were still unapprehended by Lilian, in their real nature.

She began with a short quotation and took, as a point of departure, the lines:

With well-chosen words she modestly brought out her thought of the duty of each one to seek for this thread of beauty in all things. Then she spoke, with a little more insistence, of the beautiful in art and in nature, which, she believed, demanded for its true appreciation the highest cultivation not only of mind and age, but of soul as well.

After a short silence, Elizabeth Carrington, Helen's roommate, spoke, weaving Helen's thought into the larger one of that endeavor toward perfection sacredly enjoined upon us. With an impatience born of the incomprehension of her mood, Lilian had listened to Helen. She did not hear Elizabeth, who had scarcely finished speaking, when Lilian rose. The girls looked surprised; but after the consecrated formula—"It seems to me"—various expressions replaced the surprise. Some of the listeners looked coldly bored or contemptuous, a few were amused, but the majority sat ill at ease with pained faces. Lilian was arraigning them for so much time spent in idle conversation, and in "feasting"—she fiercely put it. She denounced them for their plays, their dancing. In her excitement she assumed the tone and phraseology of the denunciations she had been accustomed to hear from childhood and she went farther than she intended. She said their pursuit of knowledge was only for its vain shows. The nature of the silence into which her words fell should have warned her, but some confused association of ideas carried her on to a bitter allusion to Catholicism. She was recalled to herself by the indignant protest on Helen's face. Clothilde and one or two others present were Catholics. Lilian choked and stopped.

"Shall we not sing?" suggested Helen. Clothilde started the hymn. There was no more speaking. Lilian was the first to leave the meeting. She went out with unseeing eyes and hot cheeks, alone. There are times when even the kindest hearts are cold, and for the moment there could be nothing but alienation from one who had found tongue against the college spirit—for they felt that the attack was really against this vague, shadowy, stern, beloved thing of many hues and many forms—the spirit of the college.

Outside, the moon had risen in a clear star-powdered sky, and was silvering the crusted snow and the ice sheaths that rain and frost had left on every twig and branch of the trees. The sparkle and splendour of the night only smote Lilian as a part of that whole body of beauty which, it seemed to her excited thinking, had been presented that evening as of equal importance with goodness and morality.

There is little tea drinking on Sunday evening. Many girls are away. It is the time for writing home letters, or doing a little quiet reading. The rooms never seem so warm or the lights so bright as on other nights. The halls are still and everybody goes to bed early. But this night there was a little more excitement as girls stopped to talk with indignation, amusement or indifference of Lilian's outburst. Katherine Leonard found several girls in Edith's room when she stopped, after an errand in Radnor. She sought each face questioningly, then dropped on the couch. "How awfully funny—how dreadful it was!"

"I can't understand the state of mind that would lead to that," said Alice Warburton. "Where has such narrow-minded egotism been fostered? Such injustice! What an arid life she must have known."

"I admire her!" said Elizabeth Carrington decisively. "I was near enough to her to-night to see how tightly she clung to the chair in front of her. Her knuckles were all white and shiny. It was real heroism. I doubt if any one of us will ever show as much."

"I should hope not!" Blanche commented energetically.

There was a girl lying on the couch who had been reading Diana of the Crossways, all this time. She occasionally made notes on the margins. Now she looked up. "For my part, I prefer goodness to cleverness," was all she said. Then she went on reading again. The girls all laughed a good deal. Then there was silence, and some of them laughed again—a little. Some of them were very much of Lilian Coles' opinion in regard to this girl, who was the junior Lilian had noticed in the gymnasium.

"She has greatly relieved my mind, at any rate," said Katherine. "She can never hope for the fellowship now."

"You have no right to say that." Edith was a little sharp. She was somewhat troubled within herself. She liked the serene state of mind that her usual conduct of life granted her, and hated a mean feeling with an intensification of the disgust that any contact with uncleanness gave to her physical fastidiousness. In the dissatisfaction that she had occasionally felt of late, it had occurred to her that she might settle issues with herself by some plan involving sacrifice on her part. But injustice was no dearer to her than selfishness. She fell asleep that night with the healthy resolve not to be troubled by what she could not help.

Meanwhile Lilian Coles was lying on her bed, in the dark, with wide-open eyes. She was restless with a shamed sense that she had violated her finest instincts. She continually wondered how she could have done such a thing. Then all the questionings that had been forming in her deeper consciousness for nearly two years, came forward, insisting on a hearing. Helen Arnold's talk that evening passed through her mind with a new meaning and force, but she was too much exhausted then to come to any conclusions. She finally fell asleep, hoping that every one would be too busy to remember her speech very long.

One Saturday morning in the spring Lilian started downstairs. It was late, she was tired and vexed at her slothfulness. She had gone to bed the night before so tired that one night's rest was wholly insufficient. As she reached the foot of the stairs a girl came out of the bathroom with a kettle of water. She nodded to Lilian, went on, then turned.

"Miss Coles, you are sure not to find anything hot for breakfast. Won't you come into my room? We are going to have breakfast there."

Lilian hesitated. Something, perhaps an animating suggestiveness in the spring air that was sweeping through the windows, perhaps the mere yielding of tired flesh to kindly human influences, moved her to accept.

Hester Grey's room looked over the fields and low hills. Two study tables had been put together and were covered with white embroidered cloths. A bowl of violets was on one table and a dish of strawberries on the other, while the more substantial provisions for the breakfast were on a side-table. This separation was due to an arbitrary distinction of Hester's, food taking precedence in her ideas according to its appeal to the eye.

There were two girls in the window-seat and another in a steamer-chair. This one sprang up and insisted on giving Lilian the chair, tucking the pillow behind her with an unceremonious friendliness very grateful to Lilian.

Then she began cutting bread, urging that some one else pass Lilian the olives.

"Do you think you will want more sugar in your cocoa?" Hester asked Lilian. "Of course she will," said one of the girls in the window, without looking up from her book. "You never make it sweet enough." Lilian thought this was very rude, but Hester didn't seem to notice it. She carried a cup to Lilian, who looked at her curiously. Lilian had always had a thought of scorn in her opinion of this girl, whose erratic work, spasmodic brilliancy and general idleness were known to the whole college. Lilian knew that she would sit for hours on the stone wall of the Harriton burying ground doing nothing, even if examinations began the next day. No one ever seemed to be able to foretell whether she would get High Credit or a condition in any examination. Lilian had seen her absorbed in Treasure Island the day before the English essays were due. Hester's essay on Keats was written in one night, so rumour said. It received the only High Credit. Lilian had read it, with something like astonishment at the feeling aroused in herself by the revelation of another girl's mind. She had come to have a feeling like reverence for this girl, realizing at last that some gifts of the spirit are not to be measured by so many hours of study, so many hours of exercise. And now this same girl was apparently concentrating her whole mind on the amount of sugar to be added to each cup.

Then Lilian had to think a little about the other girls in the room. They had always seemed to her commonplace, doing but indifferent work. At least they had won no distinction. She knew that the five were close friends, that they couldn't have the fullest enjoyment with her in the room, yet they were unaffectedly genial and hospitable to her. While she, with a perversity which shocked her, did not care if they did enjoy themselves a little less on her account. She wanted what they were giving her.

It is a truism that some actions most important to ourselves or others often seem but pure whim. Hester could have given no reason—in fact, it was not her habit to await reasons—for asking Lilian Coles to take a walk with her that morning. And Lilian, to whom even tying her shoe was often occasion for a mental inquisition, did not care to explain to herself why she accepted the invitation with eagerness. She had intended to spend the morning in making a tabulation and synopsis of some second year English reading. But the pain of that unforgettable Sunday evening had wrought in Lilian a distrust of her own valuations, and she went with Hester willingly.

The morning freshness was still in the air. Hester took Lilian through the woods where the starting leaves wreathed the grey tree-trunks and slim branches like trails of green smoke; to a wide bed of spring beauties; past the pond fringed with willows; across the fields to a stream that flung itself over the rocks with a sparkling abandon to the joy of spring. Lilian saw all these things; and she saw, too, the contrast between the rich black of new ploughed fields and the vivid green of winter wheat. She heard a bluebird singing above them. They went on to an old ruined mill, shadowed by tall dark pines whose roots were washed by a wide, shallow creek. Across the stream, there were woods. Here the girls sat under the pines and Hester read aloud from Undine. Gradually the wash and splash of the creek were transferred from Lilian's outward to her inward hearing and seemed to be singing to her of a spirit that was in the water. Suddenly she had a vision of the meaning of the old pagan ideals. She lay back on the grass and let her eyes look very far into the blue above the pines. It occurred to her that she would take some books home in vacation and read all the poems noted on the margins of her Horace. She understood now, she thought, something of the delight in that year's work which all the others in the class had expressed and which she had, in some way, missed.

They stopped to rest again on the stone wall of the old burying ground in the woods, and Hester read from Chaucer following her own liking wholly. Lilian went back to her room with a new sense of the beauty of nature, and of the dignity of free, wholesome joyous human life.

There was no time before luncheon for the intended tabulation of ballad poetry, and in the afternoon she turned at once to the assigned reading in Wordsworth and Coleridge. Before coming to college Lilian had been allowed to read very little. Even her study of the Bible had been scarcely more than a search for texts and illustrations in support of the beliefs of her sect. All through this year the reading presented to her had been stimulating her imagination and perception. But partly from habit and partly from the fact of having detected a pleasure in the exercise of these faculties, she had continued to read mechanically and blindly. Now for the first time she permitted herself to read with something more than a desire to go over so many pages in a given time. As she finished the Hymn of Chamouni she caught her breath as one whose spirit has been lifted to an unknown height.

The twofold process of growth, of putting off the old and acquiring the new went on in Lilian with alternations of pain and pleasure, the latter increasingly predominating. When she entered college and for sometime after, she had her father's contempt for what he called "mere learning." But she was led to a very different way of thinking by a better understanding of what scholarship means—of its untiring zeal and care for truth, and of its outlook beyond the fact to the including law. She even came to accept an opinion that, later on, she found thus expressed: "... our deeper curiosity. There is a sense in which it is all superfluous. Its immediate results seem but vanity. One could surely live without them; yet for the future, and for the spiritual life of mankind, these results are destined to become of vast import." Lilian's nature was such, however, that she must always care chiefly for the immediate practical application of the idea.

During her junior year she did some elective work in sociology which completely revised her ideas of philanthropy. She saw how very inadequate were the measures that she had once thought essential to doing good in the world. Her hope of being a missionary was too much a part of herself to be given up easily, yet she knew that she could not represent her former views. She became greatly interested in college settlement work but she found no time to give to it, for she gave to tutoring all the time that she could spare from her regular work. The mental submission and the claim upon her future involved in the arrangement by which her expenses were paid had become impossible to her, and she wished to become self-supporting as soon as possible.

One Saturday morning she was sitting in the biological laboratory, carefully correcting her drawings of nitella, when Miss Hardy, a graduate student with whom she had done some work in sociology, came in and bent over her.

"Should you not like to go into town with me this evening to one of the social meetings of a working-girls' club which has been organized recently? I think you would be interested."

After a moment's thought Lilian decided to go. A girl whom she tutored every Saturday afternoon was ill and that time could be given to the usual Saturday evening work.

When they reached the Broad Street Station, Lilian was surprised to find Helen Arnold, who had been spending the afternoon in town, waiting for them. The clubhouse was in the lower part of the city. After their arrival there, Lilian spent an hour in eager inspection of the small library, the schedule of classes, and the furnishings of the rooms. Helen had disappeared. Lilian asked for her, and Miss Hardy explained, "She comes every Saturday if she can find any one to go to and from the station with her. She is teaching two or three girls who can have better positions as soon as they can write and spell better. This is the only time they have."

Then they went into a large, brightly-lighted room with a waxed floor. There was a piano at one end, and some one was beginning to play. The girls, most of them neatly and prettily dressed, were gathered near the piano, while a few young men, with very smooth hair and rather conspicuous ties, stood in stiff self-consciousness near the door.

"Young men of good character are invited in once a month," whispered Miss Hardy.

A half-grown girl, in heavy shoes, a crumpled red dress, with a soiled ribbon knotted around her neck, crossed the room and stood in front of Lilian. Her open scrutiny was beginning to be embarrassing when Helen came in. She touched the girl on the arm, and was soon leading the clumsy shoes lightly through a waltz. After two or three turns Helen sought some one else, and the girl returned to Lilian.

"Say, ain't she sweet?" she said, looking after Helen with eager eyes. "She teaches somethin' here, and I'm go'ne to learn it. And I want some white ties like she wears."

It was still early when they started for the station, but on the streets Lilian saw one or two things that made her glad to think of the many girls they had left in the simple pleasures of the carefully-guarded clubrooms.

A slight delay caused them to miss their train, and they had to spend half an hour in the waiting-room. Miss Hardy found some evening papers. Helen declined the one offered her, and drew a book from her shopping-bag.

"What reading is this, Helen?" Miss Hardy laughingly questioned. Helen blushed a little. "It is really only the third." On the train the book happened to lie for a moment in Lilian's lap. She noted the title. It was Marius, the Epicurean, and at her earliest opportunity she procured the book and read it.

She read it with intense interest. Here were a care for life—for its pleasures—and a consecration of time that found no necessary detail too small for perfection. The charm of the book was upon her—its flawless form, its sanity, its strenuousness. There was something of the old defiance in her attitude toward this epicureanism, though the character of it was so exalted and pure. But at the close, when Marius simply puts himself aside and accepts death that his dear friend may live—happy in a love denied Marius—she put the book down very softly. By the profound stirring of her sympathies she felt how absolute was her acceptance of the whole character—as consistent with itself in sacrifice as in Æsthetic enjoyment.

The constantly increasing deference given Lilian because of the quality of her work contributed much to her contentment. The freer play of her intelligence was making itself felt. By the beginning of their senior year Lilian Coles and Edith Dareham were undoubted rivals for the European Fellowship. But the real excitement over the fellowship was not apparent until after the mid-year examinations. Then the strain began to be wearing on the two girls and their friends.

"I wish the Faculty would come to a decision," said Katherine Leonard one evening in Clothilde Barry's room. She was on the window-seat between a big palm and a pile of notebooks. "If they don't very soon, I'll not get a degree in June. I love this place but I don't want to stay here all my life. It would be hard to fix my affections on another class. But I can't study till I know."

"I think that possibility would stimulate them, if they only knew—" began Blanche.

Just then the door was flung open and Alice Warburton came in impetuously—her usual manner, but some dramatic quality in this present haste must have made itself apparent, for the other girls assailed her breathless silence with questions. What she finally said was: "There is a Faculty meeting in Taylor." After a moment of comprehending silence, Blanche went out quickly. Katherine followed her.

"Blanche, if you find out before the doors are locked, won't you come and tell me?"

"I don't know how it will be." Blanche looked anxious and wouldn't stop. Katherine went back to Clothilde's room, and after she had tipped over the palm and broken the jardiniÈre was advised by Clothilde to go home and go to bed. In her own room she took a physics laboratory book and made a feeble attempt to put order into its chaos, but only succeeded in dropping ink over two important calculations. Then she took down a volume of Mazzini's writings in which she had lately become much interested. At the end of half an hour she became aware that she had not turned a page. She left her room and went down to the parlour. All the lights were out, even in the rooms. Over in Taylor there was a dim light in a second floor window. It had no connection with the Faculty meeting, but she chose to consider that it had, and crouched, shivering, in the window until it went out. Then she went stiffly to bed and slept badly. The next morning Blanche came to her soon after breakfast. "Edith wants to see you."

"Oh, Blanche?" But Blanche was already backing out of the door. "I can't tell you anything. Edith hasn't told me anything." Every line of her face was non-committal.

Edith was sitting at her desk writing when Katherine entered. She looked over her shoulder and smiled, but she was very grave. "I have it, Katherine."

Katherine sat down on the window-seat, and bending over pressed her forehead down on Edith's shoulder. Edith turned about and lifted Katherine's face. She was crying—Katherine, in whom the repressions of stoicism had been the least fleeting of many moods. After a while Katherine said, "We were afraid at one time, Blanche and I—that you might do something—rash." It was not necessary for Edith to ask what she meant. She hesitated before speaking. "I have felt troubled. It isn't reasonable, but I haven't been able to get rid of an uncomfortable feeling about Lilian Coles. I could go to Europe without the fellowship, and I suppose she can't. But—I wanted it. I did try to think of some way of helping her when I heard last year that there was danger of her having to leave college. But even if I had had the money—that's a sort of thing it is almost impossible to do. It might have seemed a generous thing for me to let my work go a little, but I could not be sure that she wouldn't do better than even my best. And," Edith gripped the desk hard, "it would have seemed to me a simply wicked sentimentalism to do poor work deliberately for any reason whatever."

Katherine released the sleeve of Edith's gown that she had held crumpled in her hand. "I am so glad you felt just that way."

Blanche came in then to gather up her notebooks.

"How did you find it out, Blanche?" Katherine asked.

"Oh. I found the note under her door when I came down from Ethel's room last night"—Ethel was Blanche's sister—a freshman. "We had been sitting up watching. But Edith was sleeping like a baby. I lit a candle and roused her and gave her the note. I must say she was rather excited until she got the note open and read it." Blanche stopped. "Did she tell you then?" prompted Katherine.

"She hasn't told me yet. That honour was reserved for you. She lay down again and I kissed her and covered her up and told her to be a good fellow. Then she laughed and so did I, as silly as two loons. She went to sleep. I went upstairs and awakened Helen and Elizabeth. I did not tell them anything, but they understood, and we talked until two in the morning. Imagine Elizabeth and Helen sitting up till two!"

Katherine was popular enough in college, but that did not account for the way numerous groups, from seniors to mid-year freshmen, obstructed her going from Merion to her own room, and thence to Taylor. They asked her unimportant questions, and eyed her curiously. Her face was impassive. The chapel was unusually full. Edith's friends had gathered around her in her usual seat, well forward.

"But that doesn't mean anything," whispered a high freshman voice, "they'd be there just the same anyway."

Lilian's chief supporters were among the graduate students. Those from other colleges looked rather defiant. A few members of the Faculty came in and sat in the back seats. After the short exercises, the announcement was very quickly made. During the storm of applause that greeted Edith's name Lilian sat apparently unmoved. Her hands were very cold, but no one knew that. And no one would ever know how much she had wanted that fellowship. She had been having a very bad quarter of an hour since Clara West, who was back as a graduate student in Greek, managed to find out and let her know that the decision had been made. Three times before, Lilian had heard a similar announcement made, and each time she had thought that the applause would have been just as loud if the other possible girl had been named. Now she knew that there would not have been the same gladness on the faces or the same heartiness in the hand-clappings if she had been the one instead of Edith. She could have made more friends, she believed, but she had thought that she knew a better use for her time. A keen heart-longing was mingled with her disappointment.

A few weeks later the presence of the students in chapel was again specially requested, and more announcements were made, among them, that the Fellowship in History had been given to Lilian Coles.

"I am so glad!" repeated Clara West that evening, strolling with Lilian about the campus. That Lilian was strolling was not without its significance. It was a misty evening after a rainy day. All about them were the tender, yet vivid, colours of early spring—the fields beyond the edge of the campus, and the distant uplands, were veiled in green mist. Near Taylor the Judas-tree was in purple bloom, and further away the Japanese cherries lifted pink sprays against a soft grey sky. Lilian was moved to an appreciation that did not exclude a quality the picture received from the dignity of the buildings, or even from the well-kept condition of turf and walks. She turned to Clara. "No one can ever know," she said, "how glad I am to come back."

It was the day before commencement. Lilian Coles was in the library, selecting some books to take away for the summer. She went to a window that looked toward Rosemont and Villa Nova. She had come to have a sense of wide distances from this window. For the moment, with a swift, scarcely-conscious recognition of new ideals, new standards of life, she felt in herself something of the triumphant onward rush of the Winged Victory dominating this end of the library. This morning the sky was deep blue with a few white clouds. The air was fresh, the trees and grass very green. The slope beyond the tennis-courts was white with daisies. Some professors, in white flannels, were playing tennis on the nearest courts. Girls in white duck or fluffy muslins were moving toward the gymnasium. The college breakfast was to be there at twelve o'clock. Lilian was going. She had refused all invitations until her examinations were over. Then she went to several teas, to a picnic luncheon and to the class supper. She intended to go to the alumnÆ banquet Thursday evening.

Lilian found her place at one of the long tables in the gymnasium beside Clara West and opposite Hester Grey. The balustrade of the running-track had been transformed into a frieze of mountain laurel. Laurel and ferns decorated the tables.

The breakfast was nearly over, and the black waiters were serving the ices.

"Can you see Lilian Coles?" Blanche bent around an intervening neighbour to ask Katherine. Katherine, happy in the fact that she would get a degree on the morrow, looked across the tables just as Lilian touched glasses with a freshman, her lips moving in the chorus,

It was Hester Grey who saw a solemn look on Lilian's face as they rose to join in "Manus Bryn Mawrensium." But at that moment it seemed to Lilian herself, that of all the "lÆtissimÆ puellÆ" she, in her way, was the most joyful.

Elva Lee, '93.

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