Jane always called him the professor, a name which that individual accepted without comment, as he did everything else. In fact, since he had been possessed of titular rights, but two people had ignored them—his mother and Mary. His mother had been dead—oh, a very long time, and it was nineteen years and some months since Mary had followed her. When Mary had died people said that Jane was coming to live with the professor; Jane came, and now people said quite unthinkingly that the professor lived with his sister. Jane was high-minded, also strong-minded; her hair was very thin and very straight, a fact for which she was sternly and devoutly thankful. Jane was stern and devout in everything—even in cooking preserves. To the professor, Jane had been surrounded by a sort of halo of preserves, ever since he had recovered from his awe of her unapproachable angularity as to allude to her before admiring play-mates as the "old maid."

When the professor had married, Jane had strongly disapproved—Mary's cheeks were much too pink, her hands much too soft, and her ways of life led her into the flowery meadows of the world and the flesh, if not the devil. The professor had been infatuated, and the year or so of married life seemed only to augment such infatuation, and incidentally Jane's ire. Well, the golden year was over, and the little butterfly had gone to its rest, fretfully, fearfully. And then Jane wrote; wrote that the professor needed somebody to superintend him, to see that he did not take cold, and to cook his preserves; so she was coming. The professor did not wish to be superintended, he wanted to take cold in comfort without being asked how he took it, and he abominated preserves; to all of which Jane was supremely indifferent. Jane came; the professor wore overshoes and ate preserves—meekly.

So the professor lived with his sister. At first the direful system which ruled everything from the time of the cat's entrance to the date when the furnace fire should be started, chafed on him. His declarations of independence were received pityingly, as the prattles of a tired child. Gradually he resigned himself, and the germs of discontent followed the wake of the other germs which Jane had promptly and forcefully annihilated.

So the years went on; in time the professor grew tired of ranting and mild objections gave way to sighs of resignation. There had been bones to pick in plenty. The professor had a sneaking fondness for dirt—not mud, but historic dust, so to speak; Jane decreed all foreign matter as damned eternally. The professor liked fiction; he had once in the first years of Jane's rule started a novel, which having been inadvertently left in the living-room, was consigned to the flames; Jane had intimated, moreover, that the authors of such monstrosities would probably end in the embrace of the same element. Whereupon the professor's wrath was great; but his house was built on the sand; so was his novel; and five years afterwards he knew it.

Although Jane's fanatical cleanliness had been far-reaching, the professor's study was nearly immune. In the first place the door was usually locked and the key discreetly lost; and in the next place the professor had mildly but very obstinately insisted, through all the twenty years, that his desk, which is the sanctum sanctorum of the man with a past, remain untouched. Jane sniffed copiously over this stipulation, and, as she liked to do a thing thoroughly or not at all, the study remained as a whole comfortably mussy. Sometimes, however, Jane had twinges of conscience, resulting in the disappearance of all old, unbound, and destructible matter which presented itself. So the professor painstakingly replaced equally old and disreputable matter around the study when the whirlwind had passed, and waited till the dust settled.

Of late the professor had been ill with a chronic rheumatism. He grumbled a good deal about the "positively senile" character of his affliction and finally agreed to take to his bed for a few days in the hope of luring nature to a hasty cure. The professor was rather helpless when he was ill; Jane was painfully and triumphantly energetic. One memorable day, when the invalid had fallen into a restless sleep, he was awakened by the vigorous ministrations of Jane, who was creaking around the room in an ostentatious effort, to be quiet. The professor looked and wondered what she would do if he were to yell. Seeing he was awake, she stepped over briskly and began to arrange his bedclothes and pillows. Her hand touched his sore leg. He winced and groaned inwardly.

"I am going to sit here and read to you," she announced with the stern cheerfulness which gave the recipient of her benefits a fitting sense of the self-sacrifice which prompted them. Jane usually read tracts, and the professor did not feel religious; in fact he was conscious of an emotion of most unchristian belligerence.

"Aren't you neglecting your house-work to attend to me?" remarked the victim with clumsy and obvious intent.

"My house is always in order, professor," answered the supremely ignorant one tartly.

"How fortunate; my study, too,—I suppose that is in order?" The professor felt most out of place as an inquisitor but he was desperate.

Jane looked at him, with as near a quizzical expression as her very unquizzical nature would permit.

"You know I'd do it if you weren't so stubborn about using a wastebasket instead of that desk," she said.

"Better clean it out, Jane—clean it all out—anything, anything,—" but she was gone. He took the tract which she had left on his table and carefully tore it in four pieces, and hid them under the mattress. Then he went to sleep. The professor was in distinctly a rebellious mood.

In the natural course of time, which, when one has numerous queer pains in most unexpected places, is short,—the professor awoke and lay on his back watching a fly walking around the edge of a rosebud. Pretty soon the fly flew away—then the professor thought of something else—something he had not thought of for some years. Strange how inactivity of the body affects one. The professor raised himself in bed with some effort and drew on his dressing gown and slippers. Then he hobbled across the room, out of the door, and down the hallway towards his study.

At the turn of the narrow corridor the odor of long-hidden dust met him,—and he hobbled faster. His lips were set in a manner that was strange to him, and a fear was in his heart—a fear of the cleanliness which may be akin to godliness, but to which a pressed flower is as the dust upon the walls. At the door he hesitated, bewildered. On his desk was heaped a pile of papers, in which letters, lecture notes, old pamphlets, were scattered in contemptuous disorder. Jane had just dropped an armful into the fire which blazed with that comfortless instability common to paper fires in the daytime. She had gathered another armful and was advancing toward the hearth, when she saw the apparition in the door-way and stopped. The professor was paler than usual, and his hands shook a little.

"Do you know what you're doing, Jane?" he asked, quietly enough.

"Yes," she answered defiantly, "I do. You've had 'em hanging around long enough."

"You know whose letters they are?"

"Yes," she said. "Why, what—"

The professor, forgetting his rheumatism, had advanced in two strides, and with one blow knocked the papers from her arms, so that they lay scattered on the floor.

There are wrongs committed against the sacredness of sentiment which cannot be put in words. The professor checked the torrent which rose to his lips: Jane would never understand. The only thing which she did comprehend was a strength in her brother of which she had never dreamed—not the strength of the worm which turns, but of the man who had endured because he wished to, and whose endurance was at an end.

"You never had a heart, did you, Jane?" he said finally. "The past is not sacred to you, and the present—-well, the present does not count for much when one has no dreams—or visions…. I think, Jane, you had better go."

"Where?" she questioned vaguely. There was no asperity in her voice now, only puzzled helplessness. It was the inevitable surrender of the commonplace in the light of a greater understanding—in the realization of an unknown law to the significance of which some never attain. She had come inadvertently to a marriage feast for which she had no wedding garment; and she was naked and ashamed.

"Anywhere—anywhere; only go," said the professor. His thoughts were far away now.

"I shall not come back, professor—perhaps it is better," she said.

There was a new tone in her voice, and the professor turned sharply. Jane hesitated. Then he caught sight of a photograph lying among the letters on the floor.

"That, too," he murmured. He stood and looked at it; Jane passed out of the room.

Slowly and painfully the professor stooped down and gathered up his wife's letters and his wife's photograph. He sat down in the big plush chair by the fireside and thought for a long time. He was thinking of an old quotation from some Sanskrit poem—"Every yesterday a dream of happiness, every to-morrow a vision of hope—" That was all he could remember, but his mind said it over and over. Well, his yesterdays—the yesterdays of long ago—were dreams of happiness—he had no visions; to-morrow offered him nothing. After a while he took Mary's picture and looked at it. His dreams slowly settled to earth—and he began to adjust his perspective. It was a long, long time since he had even remembered—since the dream had been more than a vague light shining through the mist. Now he wondered, as he stared at the pictured eyes, so laughingly helpless, at the chin, so characterless, at the pretty mouth from which no word worth listening to had ever proceeded—wondered whether the light was other than a reflection from Youth's glamour. Then he took up the letters and read them one by one. He wondered why they seemed so shallow—why he had never noticed their irresponsible dancing from light to shade, from light affection to unreasonable and trifling fretfulness. The last letter he held in his hand for some time after he had read it. It was written from a summer resort. "You had better not come down," it read, "you would just spoil the delightful little time I am having with Mr. Sanders—so stay at home with your books like the dear old bore you are. Please send me …" He remembered how it had hurt. He remembered shortly afterwards how she had been taken ill, and how she had chafed and feared, and how the dark had taken her while she cried in terror. He remembered—so much. He wished that he had not tried to remember.

It began to grow dark. The professor lifted the bundle of letters and the photograph, and placed them in the fire-place as carefully as if they had been burnt-offerings. Well, they were—to a dead Romance. The charred paper crumbled where he had laid the letters—a few black pieces floated drunkenly up the chimney. The fire had gone out long before. The professor fumbled in his pocket for a match. When he had found it he struck it on the brick hearth, but his hand trembled so that it burnt his fingers and he dropped it. He lit another, carefully, deliberately, and held it to the pile of papers. They caught, the edges blackened and curled; finally the whole mass blazed viciously. The photograph had fallen to one side and remained unburnt. He stooped over and placed it on top of the blazing papers; then it, too, burned.

A light flared from the gas jet, and the professor looked up. Jane stood there in her black travelling dress. Her eyes were red with tears.

"Good-bye, professor," she said. "I thought you wouldn't mind if …" She hesitated. The professor thought she looked rather pitiful and thin and tired.

"No, Jane," he answered quietly. "You are not to go. I don't suppose you will understand, but my dreams have all gone—and the vision has come. And I need you, Jane."

"Then you forgive me?" she said tremulously. "I did not know …"

"There is nothing to forgive, Jane. I did not know, either."

Jane broke down and the professor rose and put his arms around her, awkwardly, and kissed her. He had not kissed her in years. They sat down together before the hearth and gazed into the blackened ashes. He held her hand in his. Finally she spoke. She almost understood—

"Shall we have apple dumplings for supper, professor? The kind you used to like?" She was smiling now.

"No, Jane," he said gravely, "we'll have peach preserves."

Literary Monthly, 1909.