My memory of Katrina goes back to the morning when, at the tender age of ten, she was violently precipitated into our classroom. The motive power, we subsequently learned, was her brother Jacob, slightly older than Katrina, whose nervous system had abruptly refused the ordeal of accompanying her into the presence of the teacher. Pushing the door ajar until the opening was just large enough to admit her, he thrust her through, following her fat figure for a second with one anxious eye and breathing audibly in his excitement. The next instant the cheerful clatter of his hob-nailed boots echoed down the hall, followed by a whoop of relief as he emerged upon the playground.

It was Katrina's bearing as she stood, thus rudely projected into our lives, endeavoring to recover her equilibrium, and with thirty pairs of eyes fixed unswervingly upon her, that won my heart and Jessica's. Owing to a fervid determination of our teacher to keep us well in view, we sat in the front row, directly facing her. Having, even in our extreme youth, a constitutional distaste to missing anything, we undoubtedly stared at Katrina longer and harder than any of the others. We smiled, too, largely and with the innocent abandon of childhood; and Katrina smiled back at us as if she also tasted a subtle flavor of the joke, lost to cruder palates. Then she shifted her tiny school-bag from one hand to the other, swept the room with a thoughtful glance, and catching sight of frantic gestures I was making, obeyed them by walking casually to an empty seat across from my own, where she sat down with deepening dimples and an air of finality.

Several moments subsequently our teacher, Miss Merrill, aroused herself from the trance into which she apparently had been thrown by the expeditiousness with which this incident was accomplished, and coming to Katrina's side, ratified the arrangement, incidentally learning the new pupil's name and receiving from her hand a card, written by the principal and assigning her to our special grade. But long before these insignificant details were completed, Jessica and I had emptied Katrina's bag, arranged her books in her desk, lent her a pencil she lacked, indicated to her the boy most to be scorned and shunned, given her in pantomime the exact standing of Miss Merrill in the regard of her pupils, and accepted in turn the temporary loan of the spruce-gum with which she had happily provided herself. At recess the acquaintance thus auspiciously begun ripened into a warm friendship, and on the way home from school that night we made a covenant of eternal loyalty and love, and told one another the stories of our lives.

Jessica's and mine were distressingly matter-of-fact. We were both supplied with the usual complement of parents, brothers, and sisters, and, barring the melancholy condition that none of them, of course, understood our complex natures, we had nothing unusual to chronicle. But Katrina's recital was of an interest. She was, to begin with, an orphan, living with two brothers and an old uncle in a large and gloomy house we had often noticed as it stood with its faded back turned coldly to Evans Avenue. Seemingly her pleasures and friends were few. Once a month she went to the cemetery to put flowers on her father's and mother's graves. Katrina herself seemed uncertain as to whether this pilgrimage properly belonged in the field of pleasure or the stern path of duty; but Jessica and I classified it at once, and dropped an easy tear. We hoped her uncle was grim and stern, and did not give her enough to eat. This, we felt, would have made the melancholy picture of Katrina's condition most satisfyingly complete. But when we sought eagerly for such details, Katrina, with shameless indifference to dramatic possibilities, painted for us an unromantic, matter-of-fact old German, kind to her when he remembered her existence, but submerged in his library and in scientific research. We further learned that they ate five meals a day at Katrina's home, with "coffee" and numerous accompaniments in between. Moreover, Katrina's school-bag bulged at the sides with German cakes of various shapes and composition. Our stern disapproval of these was tempered in time by the fact that she freely shared them with us. We were not surprised to discover also, though these revelations came later, that the old house-keeper had difficulty in keeping buttons on the child's frocks, and that Katrina was addicted to surreptitious consumption of large cucumber pickles behind her geography in school hours. These were small faults of an otherwise beautiful nature, and stimulating to our youthful fancy in the possibilities they suggested. Unquestioningly we accepted Katrina as a being to be loved, pitied, and spared the ruder shocks of life. Lovingly we sharpened her pencils, cheerfully we covered her books, unenthusiastically but patiently we wrote her compositions; for Katrina's mind worked slowly, and literature was obviously not her forte. In return, Katrina blossomed and existed and shed on us the radiance of a smile which illumined the dim school-room even as her optimistic theories of life leavened our infant pessimism.

Time swept us on, out of childhood school-rooms into the dignified shades of the academy, and Katrina developed from a fat little girl with yellow braids into a plump young person with a rather ordinary complexion, some taste in dress, and a really angelic smile. As a possible explanation of her lack of interest in intellectual pursuits, she explained to us that she continued to attend school only because her uncle suggested nothing else. Whatever the reason, we were glad to have her there; and though we still did most of her work, and she carefully refrained from burdening her mind with academic knowledge, the tie between us was strengthened, if anything, by the fact. Jessica and I were already convinced that more was being put into us than two small heads could hold. It was a grateful as well as a friendly task to pass the surplus on to Katrina.

When we were seventeen, Jessica and I were told that we were to be sent East to college, and Katrina's uncle, first stimulating thought by pushing his spectacles back upon his brow, decided that she was already sufficiently burdened by education, and that the useful arts of the Hausfrau should engage her attention forthwith. She should keep house for him and her brothers, he announced, until she carried out her proper mission in life by marrying and having babies. With this oracular utterance he closed further discussion by burying himself once more in his library, while Katrina came to tell us his decision.

She had looked forward to the pleasing social aspects of college life, so she seemed slightly disappointed, did Katrina, and the end of her nose held certain high lights. But aside from this evidence of sorrow she made no protest against the peremptory masculine shaping of her future. Stricken to the heart, Jessica and I stormed, begged, implored, wept. Katrina opposed to our eloquence the impassive front of a pink sofa-cushion.

"My uncle says it," she sighed, and was silent.

Jessica and I were not the natures to remain inactive at such a crisis. We appealed to her brothers, who promptly declined to express any opinion in the matter beyond a general conviction that their uncle was right in all things. Baffled, we proceeded to beard the uncle in his den. We found him wearing worn carpet slippers, a faded dressing-gown, a serene expression, and an air of absorption in science which did not materially lift at our approach. He listened to us patiently, however, greeting our impassioned climaxes with long-drawn "ach so's," which Jessica subsequently confided to me brought to birth in her the first murderous impulse of a hitherto blameless life. Once we experienced high hopes, when Jessica, whose conscience had seemingly not accompanied us to the conference, dwelt feelingly on Katrina's unusual intellectual achievements at the academy. Her uncle grew very grave at this, and his "ach so's" rolled about in the bare old library like echoes of distant thunder.

"Ach, that is bad," he sighed; "I did not think it; I was careless. I should have taken her away sooner, is it not so? But she will quickly forget—yes, yes." His face cleared. "It will do her no harm," he went on. "It is not good that the women know too much. Kirche, Kinder, und Kuchen—that is best for them. Ach, yes."

There being obviously little to gain by prolonging this painful discussion, Jessica and I bore our outraged sensibilities to the calming atmosphere of our homes. And in due time, our trunks being packed and our farewells said, we departed to apply our thirsty lips to the fountain of knowledge flowing at the Eastern college, leaving Katrina to embark upon her domestic career.

Time and distance, we reminded Katrina, could be bridged by letters, and Katrina responded nobly to the hint. She wrote every day at first, and we consumed most of our waking hours in inditing our replies. There seemed, indeed, little else to engage our attention in a community which was experiencing great difficulty in recalling our names and was in heathen darkness as to our brilliant achievements at the academy. As time passed, however, we grew more busy. For a few months the necessity of asserting our individuality to an extent which would at least prevent our being trodden upon in the halls engaged our attention, and after that a conscientious imitation of loved ones in the Junior class occupied much time.

The great news of Katrina's engagement fanned into a fierce flame the warm embers of our friendship. Oh, joy, oh romance, oh, young, young love! We wrote Katrina forty pages of congratulations, and Katrina coyly but fully replied. We could almost see her rosy blushes as she bent over the pages of her long letters to us. Her future lord was a German, a professor in the Lutheran college in our native city, and, it seemed, though Katrina dwelt but lightly on the fact, somewhat past the first fine flush of youth. So much Katrina naively conveyed to us, with the further information that the wedding was to be early in February, because Professor von Heller, the happy bridegroom, seemed unaccountably to be in haste, and had bought a home, to which he was anxious to take her.

There was much in all this to arouse our girlish enthusiasm; the charms of our beloved Juniors paled into temporary insignificance as we followed Katrina's love-affair. We could not go home for the wedding, for reasons which seemed sufficient to the faculty, and this was a bitter blow. But we spent more than we could afford on the wedding-present we sent Katrina, and we still occupied most of our waking hours writing to her.

The wedding, according to Katrina's account, was in the nature of a brilliant social function. She found time during her honeymoon to write us lengthy accounts of its splendors. She obviously had taken considerable satisfaction in the presence of the entire faculty of Professor von Heller's college and in the effect of her gown, which was of white satin, with orange-blossoms. She also sent us a box of her wedding-cake, some of which we ate and upon the rest of which we conscientiously slumbered, experiencing horrible nightmares. Then, as the weeks passed, her letters became less frequent, and we, in turn, whirling in the maelstrom of spring examinations, gave to her paradise the tribute of an occasional envious thought and respected her happy silence.

When we went home for our summer vacation our first caller, most properly, was Katrina. She was a subdued, rather chastened Katrina, whose thoughtful, slightly puzzled expression might have suggested to maturer minds that some, at least, of the vaunted joys of domestic life had thus far escaped her. She urged us to come to her at once—the next day, in fact—and we accepted her invitation with the alacrity it deserved. We could not dine with her, we explained, as Jessica's sister had thoughtlessly made another engagement for us; but we would come at two and remain until after five, unbosoming ourselves of the year's experiences in a long talk and listening to the wisdom that flowed from Katrina's lips.

The next day was very beautiful, and Jessica and I, casting off a haunting suspicion of our individual unimportance which we had not quite succeeded in leaving behind us at college, expanded joyfully, and lent ourselves to the charms of a sunlit world. The Lutheran fount of knowledge was on the edge of the city, and Katrina's home was a short distance beyond it. It was quite a country place, this home, over the big, bare lawn of which an iron dog fiercely mounted guard. A weather-beaten house confronted us, with a cold, forbidding expression. We felt chilled as we opened the gate, but Katrina presented herself at the first click of its latch, and her welcome was so hospitable and eager that our temporary constraint vanished. Simultaneously we fell upon her neck; loudly we assured her of our envious delight; noisily we trooped into her hall. As we entered it, a large, cheerful room confronted us. Through its open door we could see soft, leather-covered easy-chairs and big windows overlooking distant hills. Jessica started toward this, but Katrina checked her with a gentle touch.

"Not there," she said, gravely; "that is my husband's study, and he may come in any moment. This is our sitting-room."

She opened another door as she spoke, and we followed her dazedly across the threshold into a space which, properly utilized, might have made a comfortable single sleeping-room. It was quite seven feet by nine and had one window, looking out on a dingy barn. The painted floor was partly covered by a rug. Katrina's zither stood stiffly in a corner, three chairs backed themselves sternly against the wall. Katrina indicated two of these, and dropped on the third with her radiant smile.

"We use this as the sitting-room," she remarked, casually, "because my husband needs plenty of light and space when he works. Oh, my dear girls!" she broke out; "you don't know how glad I am to see you! Tell me everything that has happened since we met—all about college and your friends there."

As she spoke, there was the sound of heavy footsteps in the hall, followed by the noisy opening and shutting of a door. The pushing about of chairs in the next room and the drop of a heavy body into one of them suggested that the professor was at home and in his study. Katrina corroborated this surmise.

"My husband," she murmured, with a little blush. "He is early to-day."

The words were drowned by a roar.

"Katrina," bellowed a bass voice of startling depth, "bring my slippers!"

Katrina rose on the instant.

"You will excuse me?" she said, hastily. "Talk till I come back."

We did not talk, having some abysmal suspicion that if we talked we might say something. I gazed steadily at a little German picture on the wall—one I had given our hostess years before—and Jessica hummed a college-song under her breath. We heard Katrina's feet fly up-stairs, down again, and into the study. Almost immediately she returned to us, her cheeks pink from her exertions.

"Now," she began, "I want to hear all about it—the nicest teachers, the chums who have taken my place."

The voice in the next room boomed out again.

"Ka-tri-na!" it bellowed. "My pipe! It is up-stairs."

Katrina departed for the pipe. Jessica and I indulged in the luxury of a long, comprehending gaze into the depths of each other's eyes. Katrina returned, and we all talked at once; for five minutes reminiscences and confidences flowed with the freedom of a mountain stream after a thaw.

"Ka-tri-na!"

Katrina sat still. She was listening to the end of Jessica's best story, but one willing foot went forward tentatively.

"Ka-tri-na!" Katrina should have heard that call though she lay with folded hands beside her mother 'neath the church-yard mould.

"Katrina, get me Haeckel's Wonders of Life!"

Katrina got it, by the simple and effective process of going into the room where the professor sat and taking it from its shelf. We heard the soft murmur of her voice, fallowed by the rumble of his. When she returned to us, Jessica finished her story in the chastened spirit which follows such an interruption, and there were ten minutes of talk. We forgot the bare little room; old memories softly enfolded us; the Katrina we knew and loved dominated the situation.

"Ka-tri-na!"

Katrina's soft lips were not smiling now, but she rose at once, and with a murmured apology left the room. We heard the suggestion of the rest of her task as she closed the door.

"Where is that box of pens I got last week?"

Apparently their lurking-place was a distant one; Katrina's absence was long. When she returned, she volunteered to show us the house. We surmised that her desire was to get away from the sound of that summoning voice, and even as we rose we realized the futility of such an effort.

The dining-room, into which she led us for cake and tea, was almost comfortable. Its furniture, dark, serviceable oak, was a gift, Katrina told us, from her uncle. Twice as she served the tea she responded to a summons from the professor's study. Once he desired a handkerchief, and the second time he wished an important letter posted at once. His wife went out to the rural box which adorned the fence in front of the house and cast the envelope into its yawning mouth. Returning, she showed us her kitchen, an immaculate spot, the floor of which was evidently scrubbed by her own hands, for she mentioned that she employed no servant.

"Hans thinks we do not need one," she added, simply.

To the right of the dining-room was a fine, bright, cheerful room, full of shelves on which stood innumerable jars and bottles of evil odor.

"My husband's laboratory," announced Katrina, proudly. "He has to have light and air."

Up-stairs there was a bedroom containing a huge double bed; a companion room off this was evidently used by the professor as a dressing-room and store-room. His clothes and several startling German trunks filled it. There were other rooms, but not one of them contained a rug or a piece of furniture. Slowly, convincingly, the knowledge entered our sentimental little hearts that Katrina's sole refuge for herself and her friends was the tiny, so-called "sitting-room" down-stairs. She continued to show us about with housewifely pride. So far as we could see, her unconsciousness of her wrongs was complete. She was wholly untouched by self-pity.

"Do you mean to say—" began Jessica, warmly, and then suddenly realized that she herself could not say it. It was as well, for there was no opportunity. Even as Katrina was beginning to explain that her husband did not think it necessary to complete the furnishing of the house for a year or two, he summoned her to his side by a megaphonic demand for water to thin his ink. His impatience for this overcame his obvious aversion to exertion, and he came into the hall to take it from her hand as we descended the stairs. She introduced him to us, and he bowed gravely and with considerable dignity. He had a massive head, with iron-gray, curling hair, and near-sighted eyes, which peered at us vaguely through large, steel-rimmed spectacles. He surveyed us, not unpleasantly, but wholly without interest, nodded again, partly to himself and partly to us, as if our appearance had confirmed some dark surmise of his own, took the water from Katrina's hand, grunted an acknowledgment, and retreated to his fastness in the study. He had not spoken one articulate word. Even Katrina, smiling her untroubled smile, seemed to feel that something in the situation demanded a word of comment.

"He is not at ease with girls," she murmured, gently. "He has taught only boys, and he does not understand women; but he has a kind heart."

Jessica and I ruminated thoughtfully upon this tribute as we went away. We had learned through the innocent prattle of our hostess's busy tongue that she desired a garden, but that Hans thought it a waste of time; that she had suggested open plumbing, and that Hans declined to go to the expense; that she saw little of her brothers nowadays, as Hans did not approve of them; that her old friends came to see her rarely since her marriage, as, for some reason unaccountable to Katrina, they seemed not to like her husband. We waited until we were out of sight of the house, and then seated ourselves gloomily on a wayside rock under a sheltering tree. A robin, perched on a branch above our heads, burst into mocking song. The sun still shone; I wondered how it could.

"Well, of all the selfish beasts and unmanageable brutes!" Jessica began, hotly. Jessica's language was frequently too strong for elegance, and even at this exciting moment my sense of duty forced me to call the fact to her attention. I moreover, essayed judicious weighing of the situation as the most effective means of cooling her off.

"If the secret of happiness is work, as most authorities agree," I reminded Jessica, "Professor von Heller's wife ought to be the happiest bride in this country."

Jessica turned one disgusted glance upon me, rose with dignity, and moved haughtily down the road to a street-car which was bumping its way toward us on its somewhat uneven track.

"Oh, well, if you are going to be funny over a tragedy in which one of your dearest friends is a victim," she observed, icily, "we will not discuss the matter. But I, for one, have learned a lesson: I know now what matrimony is."

I had a dim sense that even this experience, interesting and educative though it was, could not be fairly regarded as a post-graduate course in matrimonial knowledge, and I ventured to say so.

Jessica set her teeth and declined to discuss the matter further, resolutely turning the conversation to the neutral topic of a cat-bird which was mewing plaintively in a hedge behind us. Late that night, however, she awoke me from my innocent slumbers with a request for knowledge as to the correct spelling of irrevocable and disillusionment. She was at her desk, writing hard, with her brows knit into an elaborate pattern of cross-stitching. I knew the moment I looked upon her set young face that the missive was to Arthur Townsend Jennings, the brother of a classmate, whose letter urging her to "wait five years" for him Jessica had received only that morning. It was quite evident, even to the drowsiest observation, that Jessica was not promising to wait.

Jessica's pessimism on the subject of matrimony dated from that hour, and grew with each day that followed. Coldly, even as she had turned from the plea of Arthur Townsend Jennings, did she turn from all other suitors. She grew steadily in charm and beauty, and her opportunities to break hearts were, from the susceptible nature of man, of an almost startling frequency. Jessica grasped each one with what seemed even to my loyal eyes diabolical glee. She was an avenging Nemesis, hot on the trail of man. Grave professors, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Juniors and Seniors, loyal boy friends of her youth who came in manhood to lay their hearts at her feet—all of these and more Jessica sent forth from her presence, a long, stricken procession. "I know now what matrimony is," was Jessica's battle-cry. If, in a thoughtless partisan spirit, I sought to say a good word for one of her victims, pointing out his material advantages or his spiritual graces, or both, Jessica turned upon me with a stern reminder. "Have you forgotten Katrina?" she would ask. As I had not forgotten Katrina, the question usually silenced me.

For myself, I must admit, Jessica's Spartan spirit had its effect as an example. Left alone to work out the problem according to my elemental processes, I might possibly have arrived at the conclusion that Katrina's domestic infelicity, assuming that it existed, need not necessarily spread a sombre pall over the entire institution of matrimony. But Jessica's was a dominant personality, and I was easily influenced. In my humble way I followed her example; and though, lacking her beauty and magnetism, the havoc I wrought was vastly less than hers, I nevertheless succeeded in temporarily blighting the lives of two middle-aged professors, one widower in the dry-goods line, and the editor of a yellow newspaper. This last, I must admit, my heart yearned over. I earnestly desired to pluck him from the burning, so to speak, and assist him to find the higher nature of which he had apparently entirely lost sight. There was something singularly pleasing to me in the personality of this gentleman, but Jessica would have none of him. I finally agreed to be a maiden aunt to him, and, this happy compromise effected, I was privileged to see him frequently. If at any time I faltered, quoting him too often on the political problems of the day, or thoughtlessly rereading his letters in Jessica's presence, she reminded me of Katrina. I sighed, and resumed the mantle, so to speak, of the maiden aunt. Unlike Katrina, I never had been good at running errands, and now, in my early thirties, I was taking on stoutness: it was plain that the risk of matrimony was indeed too great.

For we had been growing older, Jessica and I, and many things more or less agreeable had happened to us. We had been graduated with high honors, we had spent four years abroad in supplementary study, and we had then returned to the congenial task of bringing education up to date in our native land. We taught, and taught successfully; and our girls went forth and married, or studied or taught, and came back to show us their babies or their theses, according to the character of their productiveness. We fell into the routine of academic life. Occasionally, at longer intervals as the years passed, an intrepid man, brushing aside the warnings of his anxious friends, presented himself for the favor of Jessica, and was sternly sent to join the long line of his predecessors. Life was full, life in its way was interesting, but it must be admitted that life was sometimes rather lonely. My editor, loyal soul that he was, wrote regularly, and came to see me twice a year. Professor Herbert Adams, a victim long at Jessica's feet, made sporadic departures from that position, and then humbly returned. These two alone were left us. Jessica acquired three gray hairs and a permanent crease in her intellectual brow.

During all these changing scenes we had not seen Katrina. Under no circumstances, after that first melancholy visit, would we willingly have seen her again. At long intervals we heard from her. We knew there were three fat babies, whose infant charms, hitherto unparalleled, were caricatured in snapshots sent us by their proud mother. Jessica looked at these, groaned, and dropped them into the dark corners of our study. Our visits home were rare, and there had been no time in any of them for a second call at the home of Professor von Heller. Seven years after our return from Europe, however, Jessica decided that she needed a rest and a summer in her native air. Moreover, she had just given Professor Adams his final conge, and he had left her in high dudgeon. I sapiently inferred that Jessica had found the experience something of a strain. As Jessica acted as expeditiously in other matters as in blighting lives, I need hardly add that we were transported to our home town with gratifying despatch. We had stepped from the train at the end of our journey before a satisfactory excuse for remaining behind had occurred to me, and it was obviously of little avail to mention it then. Twenty-four hours after the newspapers had chronicled the exciting news of our arrival, Katrina called on us.

We gasped as we looked at her. Was this, indeed, Katrina—this rosy, robust, glowing, radiant German with shining eyes and with vitality flowing from her like the current of an electric battery? I looked at Jessica's faded complexion, the tired lines in her face, the white threads in her dark hair, and my heart contracted suddenly. I knew how I looked—vastly more tired, more faded than Jessica, for I had started from a point nearer to these undesirable goals. We three were about the same age. There were six months at the most between us. Who would believe it to look at us together?

Katrina seized us in turn, and kissed us on both cheeks. To me there was something life-giving in the grasp of her strong, firm hands, in the touch of her cool, soft lips. She insisted that we come to see her and at once. When would we come? We had no excuse now, she pointed out, and if we needed a rest, the farm—her home—was the best place in the world for rest. With a faint access of hope I heard her. The farm? Had she, then, moved? No, she was still in the same place, Katrina explained, but the city had lurched off in another direction, leaving her and Hans and the children undisturbed in their peaceful pastoral life.

"Ka-tri-na!"

I almost jumped, but it was only a memory, helped on by my vivid fancy. I had tried to picture the peaceful pastoral life, but all that responded was the echo of that distant summons. Jessica, however, was explaining that we would come—soon, very soon—next week—yes, Tuesday, of course. Jessica subsequently inquired of me, with the strong resentment of the person who is in the wrong, how I expected her to get us out of it. It was something that had to be done. Obviously, she said, it was one of those things to do and have done with.

She discoursed languidly about Katrina in the interval between the promise and the visit.

"Well! Of course she's well," drawled Jessica. "She's the kind that wouldn't know it if she wasn't well. For the rest, she's phlegmatic, has no aspirations, and evidently no sensitiveness. All she asks is to wait on that man and his children, and from our glimpse of Hans we can safely surmise that he is still gratifying that simple aspiration. Heavens! don't let's talk about it! It's too horrible!"

Tuesday came, and we made our second visit to Katrina's—fourteen years to a month from the time of our first. Again the weather was perfect, but the years and professional cares had done their fatal work, and our lagging spirits refused to respond to the jocund call of the day. Again we approached, with an absurd shrinking, the bleak old house. The bleak old house was not there; nay, it was there, but transformed. It was painted red. Blossoming vines clambered over it; French windows descended to meet its wide verandas; striped awnings sheltered its rooms from the July sun. The lawns, sloping down to a close-clipped hedge, were green and velvety. The iron dog was gone. A great hammock swung in the corner of the veranda, and in it tumbled a fat, pink child and a kitten. The fat child proved that all was not a dream. It was Katrina reborn—the Katrina of that first day in school, twenty years and more ago. Rather unsteadily we walked up the gravel path, rather uncertainly we rang the bell. A white-capped maid ushered us in. Yes, Frau von Heller was at home and expecting the ladies. Would the ladies be gracious enough to enter? The ladies would. The ladies entered.

The partition between two of the rooms had been taken down and the entire floor made over. There was a wide hall, with a great living-room at the right. As we approached it we heard the gurgle of a baby's laugh, Katrina's answering ripple, and the murmur of a bass voice buzzing like a cheerful bumblebee. Our footsteps were deadened by the thick carpet, and our entrance did not disturb for a moment the pleasing family tableau on which we gazed. The professor was standing with his baby in his arms, his profile toward the door, facing his wife, who was laughing up at him. The infant had grasped a handful of his father's wavy gray hair and was making an earnest and gratifyingly successful effort to drag it out by the roots. Von Heller's face, certainly ten years younger than when we saw it last, was alight with pride in this precocious offspring. Seeing us, he tossed the baby on his shoulder, holding it there with one accustomed arm, and came to meet us, his wife close by his side. They reached us together, but it was the professor who gave us our welcome. This time he needed no introduction.

"My wife's friends, Miss Lawrence and Miss Gifford, is it not?" He smiled, extending his big hand to each of us in turn, and giving our hands a grip the cordiality of which made us wince. "It is a pleasure. But you will excuse this young man, is it not?" He lowered the baby to his breast as he spoke, while his wife fell upon our necks in hospitable greeting. "He has no manners, this young man," added the father, sadly, when Katrina had thus expressed her rapture in our arrival. "He would yell if I put him down, and he has lungs—ach, but he has lungs!"

He busied himself drawing forth chairs for us, apparently quite unhampered by his small burden. We contemplated the baby and said fitting things. He had cheeks like beefsteaks and eyes that stuck out of his head with what appeared to be joyful interest in his surroundings Katrina exclaimed over a sudden discovery:

"But you haven't taken off your hats!" she cried. "Hans, give the baby to Gretchen and take my friends' wraps and hats up to the guest-room. I don't want Miss Lawrence to climb stairs."

The professor obediently summoned the nurse, dropped the baby, burdened himself with our garments, and ambled off with the tread of a peaceful elephant. When he returned, with the eager look of a retriever waiting for another stick, his wife promptly met his hopes.

"Arrange the easy-chair for Miss Lawrence, dear," she said, comfortably, "and put an ottoman under her feet. I want her to rest while she is here."

The professor did it, while we gazed. He also inquired feelingly as to the state of Jessica's health, showed a sympathy almost human in her replies, and placed a pillow behind her back. Subsequently, during that call, he did these things:

He answered the telephone half a dozen times, faithfully repeating to his wife the messages of her various friends, and carrying hers back, as she declined to be torn from us long enough to talk to them herself.

He rounded up the remaining two children and presented them for our inspection, straightening his son's shoulders with an experienced hand, and tying with consummate skill the bow on his little girl's hair.

He went to the stable and ordered the family carriage, that we might drive later in the afternoon.

He searched for and found the morning newspaper, thoughtlessly dropped in the waste-paper basket by the maid, and he read aloud to us a paragraph to which Katrina had referred chronicling the achievements of a classmate of ours. He brought to Katrina, at different times and from remote parts of the house, one white shawl, six photographs of the children, an essay written by their son, aged ten, two books, a bib to meet a sudden need of the baby, and Katrina's address-book. He did these things, and he did them cheerfully, and with the unmistakable ease of frequent repetition. I glanced at Jessica. The expressions of incredulity and amazement to which she had freely yielded during the first half-hour of our call had given way to a look of deep reflection.

Subsequently Katrina showed us her home. The room that had been the professor's study was now part of the large general living-room. The laboratory was now Katrina's personal sitting-room. Through its French windows we saw Katrina's garden blossoming like the rose. Jessica asked the present location of the professor's study and laboratory. She subsequently admitted to me that she should not have done it, but that to leave the house without the information would have been a physical and moral impossibility. Katrina looked at her vaguely, as one seeking to recall a fleeting moment of the long-dead past; but the professor responded with gratified alacrity.

"But you shall see them!" he cried. "Surely, yes;" and like a jovial school-boy he led us up to the third floor. There, indeed, was his study—a hall bedroom, much crowded by his desk and easy-chair; and off it, in a closet, were his beloved bottles and chemicals. I felt a throb of sympathy for the professor, but he was evidently blissfully ignorant of any reason for such a sentiment.

"The Mutterchen and the babies need the rest," he smiled, complacently. "They must not climb too many stairs—no;" and he led the way back to comfort with unconsciousness of the painful contrast between past and present conditions that made Jessica and me carefully refrain from meeting each other's eyes. The children, when they espied him upon our return, uttered shrieks of joy. The baby sprang to his arms, the little boy swarmed up his leg. The picture of Professor von Heller as a perfectly trained husband and father was complete.

In silence, after our prolonged farewells, Jessica and I left the house. In silence we entered the trolley-car; in silence we rode home. At last I voiced a sudden suspicion.

"Do you think," I asked, hopefully, "that it was all a—a—well, that she persuaded him to do it just this once, for our edification?"

Jessica shook her head.

"I thought so, at first," she conceded, slowly. "That in itself would have been a miracle—one I'd never believe if I hadn't seen it with these eyes. But everything disproves the theory. Do you think she could have trained those children to advance and retreat like a Casino ballet? On the contrary, it's evident that they literally live on him. They've worn the creases off his trousers! Didn't you notice where the creases left off and the sliding-place of the babies began?"

I reluctantly admitted that this detail had escaped my observation.
Jessica sighed.

"Incredible as it is," she summed up, "it's all true. It's the real thing."

"It opens quite a vista," I observed, thoughtfully. "If you would like
Professor Adams's present address, I can give it to you. He is in the
Adirondacks with his sister Mollie, and I had a letter from her this
morning."

Jessica looked at me and urged me not to be vulgar. Her thoughtful expression did not lift.

"If Katrina can do that with that man," I murmured, reflectively, as we entered the house, "I really believe you could work wonders with Adams. He would probably do the cooking and marketing—"

"If you're so impressed," remarked Jessica, in incisive tones, "I wonder you don't yield to the prayers and tears of your editor man."

My reply made Jessica sink into a hall chair which was fortunately at hand.

"I am going to," I said, placidly. And I did.

Jessica's nature being less womanly and yielding than mine, her surrender was a matter of longer time. In the interval I quite forgot her unimportant affairs, being wholly absorbed in the really extraordinary values of my own. Two weeks before the reopening of college, my reformed yellow journalist, who had come West to spend his brief vacation with me, was seated by my side one evening studying the admirable effect of a ring he had just placed on my finger. It is singular how fraught with human interest such moments can be, and Edward and I failed to hear Jessica as she opened the door. She looked over our heads as she spoke to me, Her face was rather red, but her voice and manner expressed a degree of indifference which I am convinced no human being has ever really felt on any subject.

"Did you say that you could give me Mollie Adams's address?" asked
Jessica.