Chapter III: I

Nora began her last year at college by signing up for two of Professor Steele’s stiffest history courses, her programme bolstered up further by an advanced economics course. Mr. Powys still brought the elated glow of poetry into a sordid world, but Nora suspected his lack of the solid ballast of fact. She decided to drop sociology.

Ellen Standish had spent the summer trying to convert her father to her theories concerning factory management. She had secured a rest-room for the women workers, but before her other reforms he remained adamant. She carried the record of her failure to Mr. Powys. He, too, had a cotton manufacturer for a parent, with the same inability to see the light. A comparison of fathers made delightful conversation. Ellen soon developed so proprietary an attitude toward Mr. Powys that Nora could no longer decently have a share of him. Ellen followed him about, called him Michael in confidential asides, and was hopelessly in love, as Nora and other members of the Socialist League could plainly see. All of her former independent spirit was gone.

Mr. Powys was not immediately responsive. During these weeks of unrestricted submarine warfare, he was making feverish trips to New York almost daily, conferring with unseen powers, and giving Petersfield meagre crumbs of his time and careless lectures, which alienated the serious students. Through it all, Ellen boasted that no man was so willing a martyr to ideas as Michael Powys.

He departed early in December on a ship dedicated to peace, its passengers embarking for Europe over a mine-strewn sea with the immediate intention of ending the war. Just how their project was to be accomplished was not explained in detail. Ellen was sure that with Michael Powys on board the peace ship would do something. Miss Steele was reported to have remarked that she never expected to see the return of her dove of peace. Mr. Powys had escaped the British army once, but they would surely get him this time. She viewed the peace ship as another Children’s Crusade, equally pitiful and ineffectual.

On the subject of Pacifism, the Socialist League finally split. Ellen and her converts went their way. The others were now attacking the college curriculum in stormy sessions in a dusty room in the library tower.

The dissatisfaction with the present régime had started the previous spring. Nora Deming and Mary Howe refused to take part in the annual May fête. They would not even sit in the audience dressed as Elizabethan ladies or gallants.

Mary Howe was once more repeating the objections she had expressed then. ‘I’m tired of all this play-stuff. I’ve done it for three years. I’ve celebrated Christmas, Easter, and May Day quaintly until I’m bored stiff. All the silly plays—every one of them silly—the elaborate costumes, the rehearsals.’

‘You have said a mouthful,’ her audience applauded.

Mary went on. ‘All this college tradition——All freshman year I was lugged out rainy mornings to sing songs. I stood in snow banks singing songs, and in the boiling sun commencement week. I can’t sing. I don’t want to try. And the tree-plantings, the flower-fêtes, the water-fêtes, the snow-fêtes. What’s it all for?’

‘To keep little freshmen from getting homesick.’

‘To make us love dear old Petersfield.’

‘To make us come back as alumnæ and sing the same old songs fifty years from now.’

‘I want to be let alone,’ concluded Mary. ‘I’m a woman. At least I ought to be. My mother had me when she was my age.’

The remnant of the socialists proceeded, after the destruction of college sentiment, to reform the entire institution. The regeneration of the world was temporarily suspended.

‘Two years wasted on required algebra and science,’ one member began.

‘Why don’t they relate science to life? Botany—mostly deep-sea ferns. And chemistry—I never saw the good of it. There isn’t a course in food chemistry. Now biology—a good stiff course in physiology ought to be required. I think I know where my stomach is. Midnight feeds taught me that much. But I’m vague about the rest.’

A courageous member blinked a little, and then plunged into a problem which she felt it her duty to lay before her friends. ‘Take marriage, for example. I’ll swear half the girls in this college don’t know what it means. I found out last year. And yet most of us——’

An eloquent pause emphasized the truth of her words. The socialists, overcome by reticence and ignorance, tried to look blusteringly experienced, and failed.

‘We ought to have lectures with charts,’ persisted the courageous member. ‘They tried it at Wendover last year, and two girls fell into a dead faint. It’s disgusting—humiliating.’

Nora shifted to safer ground. ‘We’re treated like children. The faculty is afraid to speak out. You remember how Miss Norris discussed Byron’s amorous affairs and Shelley’s. As if we were schoolgirls. Why mention them at all if they’re scared? It was the same way with George Eliot in the novel course. We don’t even study Swinburne.’

‘Or Nietzsche. In philosophy they’re so afraid we’ll lose our religion they never get over apologizing for the Rationalists. The way we slide over those gentlemen——’

‘In men’s colleges it isn’t that way,’ explained the sister of a Harvard undergraduate.

‘Oh, men!’

‘Women’s colleges are all wrong.’

‘Coeducation is too distracting. I went to a mixed high school.’

‘If we only saw men oftener. I don’t mean at dances. To discuss problems. If socialist leagues in all the Eastern colleges met three or four times a year——’

‘You speak of the Millennium, my dear.’

The general conclusions of all such sessions were identical. Petersfield, artificially detached from the currents and floods of real existence, offered a false security which was no preparation for life. Life—life—how that word echoed in all college talk. But how was a reform to be reached? The trustees and the faculty, at least so far as they could determine, venerated the unchanged institutions of almost fifty years. Revolution was hopeless.

II

For seniors the immediate problem was to begin thinking about earning a living. With social service as a career dismissed, there seemed nothing for Nora but teaching. If she could be paid to study history year after year, not in Petersfield, but in a big stirring place like New York——But such jobs did not seem to exist in the files of the college employment bureau.

Nora woke up at night in a torment of perplexity. This question of a future brought back all the ferment of her freshman year. The delights of youth—she had long ago discovered the falsity of the common sentimental attitude—she could never be as wretched as she was now.

Is a person waiting for a train happy? Youth is like that. No security. Hopes of something better beyond. All the nervous tension of anticipation is the daily portion of the young. They use their studies, sports, dramatics, like narcotics, to dull these sharp pains. But it is life they want, an undefinable experience, all the more tempting because of its vagueness.

Nora had begun to sign application blanks for teaching jobs and to write careful letters to prospective employers. But she could force no spirit into these deadly preparations for the future.

She was listening carelessly one day to a lecture on Henry James, for whom she had once experienced a temporary enthusiasm. Professor Whitson had observed that his novels showed the writer’s tragic detachment from life.

‘In studying his biography, one is reminded of a person outside looking through a window at men and women in a brightly lighted room,’ the lecturer continued.

In a flash Nora saw that at Petersfield there was for her not even a view through a window. Her fellow socialists denounced their college for failing to equip them for the world they now aspired to conquer. Their airy arguments revolved in her troubled mind and stayed there. She had spent almost four years in digging through subterranean passages which in the end brought her no promise of light. The money her father had left for her education was almost gone. What had all her labor brought her?

In the meantime, there was the history essay contest which Nora had entered. The prize of two hundred dollars was one of the few tangible rewards of scholarship at Petersfield. Miss Steele had so organized the requirements that the winner was generally recognized as the honor student of her year. Nora’s subject, chosen after much trouble, was ‘British Empire Building.’ Those entering the contest had been assigned a quiet alcove in the library, where they could read without interruption. At one of the long tables Nora worked beside Amelia Donaldson, driven into excessive study by a spinal curvature and restless mental energy. Amelia was always there before Nora; her short-sighted eyes close to her books never turned in her neighbor’s direction. She permitted only the interruption of meals, wrinkled her forehead at the scraping back of the chair next to hers. She was writing an essay on the ‘African Slave Trade.’

Through the January blizzards, while the Verdun guns were crowding the headlines of every daily paper, the two contestants went through one document after another. By Easter vacation Nora had exhausted all the material on her subject in the college library, as well as a disorderly heap of Mr. Powys’s tracts left behind for the Socialist League. During Easter vacation, to be spent visiting Mary Howe in New York, she planned to use the public library.

III

Mary lived in an ugly but comfortable brown-stone front off lower Fifth Avenue. Her father, a rare specimen of American, had no definite employment except that of enjoying himself. Her mother was kept occupied in the nursery most of the day.

On the very first morning of her visit Nora started out in search of the library. Mary was sleeping upstairs.

‘You’re beginning rather early,’ Mary’s father suggested, as he politely accompanied his daughter’s guest to the front door.

At five o’clock Mary was waiting beside one of the lions at the entrance to the library to conduct Nora to Greenwich Village.

‘Daddy and mother are dining out for a night or two,’ she said. ‘We must make the best of this chance.’

The Dragon was Mary’s choice that evening. A green beast with an elongated jaw decorated the outside door and the interior, and a green color scheme emphasized the complexion of the presiding deity. Waitresses in shepherdess costume, possibly the dragon’s victims, were exchanging pleasantries with a tableful of young men when the two girls entered.

‘Now you mustn’t act stiff, or you’ll spoil all the fun,’ warned Mary, not explaining further what the fun was.

They sat down at the end of the room, with a full view of their neighbors. Middle-aged women in outward appearance as sensible as the Petersfield faculty formed a goodly proportion.

‘We’ve come too early,’ Mary sighed. ‘It ought to be more exciting than this.’

Soon a dark young man accompanied by a woman not very young, with a drooping hat, dangling earrings, and a large jade ring on her first finger, sat down at their table. Mary nudged Nora. The young man, simultaneously with a careful study of the menu, draped his arm over his companion’s shoulders. Her hand reached out coyly to meet one of his. They began to talk in unsuppressed tones, Mary keeping up a battery of nudges at the most momentous stages in their conversation. The woman, an eavesdropper gathered, was describing a condition resembling intoxication which she had experienced at a Village dance the night before. She had then performed courageous and unexpected feats, now chronicled with some pride. When the young man’s soup arrived, he dropped the hand he had been holding. He was very hungry. During the wait for the next course, he became fond once more. Throughout the meal he followed the same alternation of satisfying love and an appetite. Nothing was allowed to interfere with his enjoyment of his dinner, which his companion paid for.

‘You see,’ Mary announced proudly, like a Greek chorus. ‘That’s the way it’s done.’

Soon the crowd shifted. At near-by tables young girls, like them dining alone, were every moment being approached by Villagers in broad-brimmed hats, flowing ties, and incipient beards. Mary sat in a feverish glow of anticipation. At last one hovered near their table, measured the icy glint in Nora’s eyes, and retired.

Mary turned upon her friend. ‘You’ll never get experience that way.’

‘Experience——Is this experience?’

‘Of course. You’re driving them off. Look this way.’ Mary assumed a come-hither expression which sent Nora off into wild giggles. ‘Well—I——’ Mary sputtered helplessly. Then she opened her bag, brought out a box of cigarettes, and passed them to Nora. Nora shook her head. Mary lit one. It went out. She tried once more, coughed, and then succeeded in puffing out a thin column of smoke. A table of boys next to them, not very different from the Prom crowd at Petersfield, watched Mary, and then in pantomime reproduced her struggles. Soon their table was in an uproar. But Mary, occupied with an uneasy cigarette, held primly in the exact centre of her mouth, smoked on, the wild young men keeping away, in spite of her designedly shameless conduct.

For a second venture, Mary arranged to meet Eddie Gaston at his favorite Italian restaurant south of the Square. She had made his acquaintance in Maine the preceding summer, and to him she owed some of her most inspiring ideas. A tall youth with a mop of curls, similar to the ambrosial locks placed on most statues of Jove by enterprising sculptors, leaned against the doorway of a stuffy little place opening into a street full of explosive children, lean cats, and a strong smell of garlic. He looked like a poet. There was a battered beauty in his ashen face. His brown eyes had the soft melancholy usually associated with an interest in rhythm. Best of all, he talked like a poet. At least like Nora’s conception of one. His swift wonderful sentences were full of words she had hitherto confronted only in her researches in Roget’s Thesaurus and some contemporary æsthetic criticism lent her by Mary as a preparation for meeting Eddie.

In the flow of these exquisite sentences Mary was giving a cibarious concentration to the greasy menu card. ‘Yes, they’ve got ravioli. And chicken and spumoni. Order the same, Nora. They’re all wonderful.’

Nora was following the elaborate processes of Mr. Gaston. He had first extracted from his vest pocket a leather tube, which he snapped open, revealing an amber cigarette holder reposing on a red satin pillow. He then produced an elaborately designed cigarette case; and when his cigarette was fitted neatly into its amber cap and lighted, he was free to transfer his attention to the wine list. He politely consulted the tastes of his companions. Nora’s ignorance drove her to prohibition. Mary ordered _vin ordinaire_. A graceful sweep of Mr. Gaston’s arm brought the waiter, a very tall and blond Italian, who belied the popular conception of his race. ‘A bottle of _vin ordinaire_ and a Martini cocktail.’ The cigarette in its holder Mr. Gaston gave an impressive flourish.

At the conclusion of his cocktail, the poet began to question his guests about poetry. He hoped they didn’t like Rupert Brooke.

‘We’re all reading him,’ Nora admitted. ‘We love him.’

‘War sentiment,’ Eddie pronounced. ‘Gibson is better. His realism—at least there’s some not bad observation at times. But Brooke——Of course, all the war poets!’ Again Eddie’s cigarette spun a reënforcing curvet. ‘My god is Dowson. Ernest Dowson.’ Eddie tipped up his glass. He was now drinking some of Mary’s _vin ordinaire_.

‘I like Housman better,’ Nora said.

‘Oh!’ Eddie commented, his exclamation rising and falling in a variation of polite disdain. Eddie, Nora suspected, always deliberately chose a poet of his own. ‘But Davies is a rare spirit, a wilder singer.’

Mr. Gaston ordered a whiskey-and-soda. He next fingered a small glass holding an emerald-green fluid. He held it up to the light, twisting and turning it, until it shot out rays, and then drank it in lingering, voluptuous sips.

‘“That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,”’ murmured Mr. Gaston.

This last teratological touch was too much for Nora, fed on historical documents and crammed daily with the horrors of a contemporary sphere.

‘I’m afraid even drinking won’t do that,’ she said with schoolgirl bluntness.

But Mr. Gaston had now ordered a large cigar, which he was trimming with a very new shiny cigar-cutter.

‘Oh,’ protested Mary. ‘I wanted you to recite some of your own poetry, Eddie.’

Eddie’s delicate features, before the columnar substantiality of the cigar, had the wraith-like evanescence of the spirals of smoke gambolling over his curls. He faded away into complete silence. Mary was describing the horrors of her mother’s parties. Both girls were suddenly conscious of Eddie’s unresponsiveness.

‘I’m afraid we’re boring you, Eddie,’ Mary said.

Eddie was very pale. Every moment he was paler. He became a sickly green. He was staring in front of him, one hand clutching an empty wine glass. He made a valiant effort to be polite. ‘No—I—I’m not bored. I’m only drunk.’ He rubbed his hand over his head, then half rose. ‘If—if you’ll excuse me,’ he said hurriedly.

Mary’s monologue had come to an abrupt stop. Her eyes had the round, questioning gaze of wonder. Eddie got out of his chair and fled.

‘I’m going to leave this minute,’ Nora announced.

‘No, you can’t. He’s ill, poor boy. We’ll have to wait until he feels able to go home. Maybe’—Mary’s face shone with excitement—’we’ll have to go home with him.’

‘I won’t.’

‘He may be in such a state he can’t go alone.’ Mary suggested hopefully.

‘I won’t go.’

‘You wouldn’t desert a poor young man that drank a little too much. He gets so intense writing poetry. He’s just like ashes. I saw him that way in Maine. Then afterward——’

‘He gets drunk, I suppose.’

‘Poets have always led very irregular lives. You know that, Nora.’

‘He’s disgusting.’

‘You wait until he recites some of his verse. It’s wonderful. You’ll forget everything.’

Mr. Gaston’s return cut off any further argument. He sat down heavily. When his glance fell upon his half-smoked cigar, he turned green all over again. Hurriedly he summoned the waiter for a whiskey-and-soda. Nora flashed signals to Mary, who tried to keep her attention safely directed elsewhere. Nora’s chair dug at her back. Her head ached. She had been shut up in this vile place hours—hours with the tormenting length of weeks, years. Some Italians at the next table had started a shouting din of song. A man near the window was trying to quarrel with the waiter. Eddie Gaston continued to stare in front of him. In another moment, if he didn’t make a second hasty flight, Nora knew he was going to be sick. A low groan. Nora now felt a dizzy swell overtaking her. The remnants of Eddie’s cigar sent up sickening fumes. She couldn’t stand it any longer. She lifted her limp body out of her chair. Mary pulled her back with a jerk.

‘More whiskey,’ Eddie demanded.

‘He needs it to set him up,’ Mary whispered. ‘Nora, if you——’

Mary heroically started a cheerful monologue, Nora staring at Eddie opposite her, surely now in the lowest depths of sickness. But the whiskey gave him a sudden reviving spurt. He straightened up in his chair, patted his curls, turned his head cautiously. Mary seized the favorable moment to nod to Nora that Eddie was, for the time being, restored.

‘Well,’ Mary remarked tactfully, ‘perhaps we might be going.’

Eddie’s attention was directed to a cigarette still clasped by its amber holder. He reached for it, gathered together all his scattered powers, and, after an uncertain fumble or two, abstracted the one from the other, got the holder back into its case and into the correct pocket.

‘Well,’ sighed Eddie with the satisfaction of a real conquest.

The waiter cut short the beginning of a feeble argument as Mr. Gaston was paying the bill. He got the young ladies and the poor young gentleman into their coats and conducted them to the door. Mary hailed a taxi-cab mercifully pausing at the corner and gave a strange address. During the short ride, Mr. Gaston began to recite the sonnet which had come to him only that morning. Yes, he was sure it was that morning.

No murmur from beyond the iron gate
That guards the world of deeds steals here, no rue
For burning words or anger’s bitter brew:
We are immune from sorrow, now, and hate.
Let cool winds find my throat insatiate;
Let glaucous hollows gleam as the retinue
Of pale gold sunrise-clarions sound elate;
Let keen blue swords of beauty cleave me through!

So calm comes dropping slowly down, and sorrows,
Desires unsated, melt like fevered dreams
From days untroubled and unstirred tomorrows:
In one dissolved wave of peace there streams
Our mingled effluence; and, clinging girdless,
We greet the dripping dawn with lips drowned wordless.

He went on and on. The search for beauty, the futility of wasted youth, the bitter bitterness of love—one felt all this in the succession of verses which poured from his lips.

When the taxi stopped at Mr. Gaston’s door, he turned to Nora. ‘I’m going to begin life on a higher plane,’ he told her, ‘a higher plane. I’ll begin to-morrow. A poet—his sacred duties—his——’

‘I think he’d better,’ Nora agreed, as she watched him climb the front steps, clinging to the rail. ‘He can’t begin any too soon.’

‘I hope he gets upstairs to his room safely,’ said Mary. ‘He’s very poor. He lives by writing—articles for the papers—book criticisms and a poetry column. It’s killing for a poet—that kind of drudgery.’

‘He ought not drink up his money.’

‘He’s a real genius. The only one I’ve ever known. But mother won’t let him come to the house. He came once when——’

‘I don’t believe I appreciate genius.’

‘No, you don’t, Nora. Here you had a great chance to—to——’

But Nora never saw Eddie Gaston again. And what is more significant, never heard of him again. Mary Howe’s experiences went that way.

IV

The morning after the May baskets had been hung on the doors of faculty and class officers with the singing of appropriate Elizabethan melodies, Nora was summoned to Professor Steele’s office.

Miss Steele placed a chair for Nora in front of her desk. ‘Miss Deming, the committee has read your essay. It puzzled me, as well as the others, that a young girl in the midst of this present emotional crisis should be—so—so detached.’

Nora tried to evade Miss Steele’s direct glance. ‘I—I can’t help it,’ she faltered. ‘I’ve always been detached.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I—maybe it’s because—after my father and mother died—I felt detached. Cordelia—the friend who brought me up—she’s very good. But she’s detached, too.’

Miss Steele looked down quickly toward the papers on her desk. ‘I wasn’t criticizing you,’ she said. ‘I meant to give you high praise. The committee awarded you the prize unanimously. It is excellent work. Remarkable for an undergraduate.’ Miss Steele cleared her throat. ‘It made me decide——We want you in our department next year as an instructor. It will mean some drudgery at first, years of study, and then——’

‘But I—I’m not good enough.’

Miss Steele rose and went over toward the window. ‘You are interested in modern history, aren’t you? And in its foundations? I’ve followed your work the last two years carefully. Except for a temporary aberration in sociology’—Miss Steele’s face twisted into a reluctant smile—’you have been the only student with no bias—no hasty conclusions. Of course it means you are an historian.’

‘I—I don’t know.’

‘But you mustn’t go into it—into historical study—with the idea that—it is hard to tell you.’ Miss Steele seemed to be tortured with the duty of a shamed confession. ‘I must warn you—before you decide—you mustn’t make my fatal error. Since the war began—they—my colleagues saw the change—that I——But I couldn’t explain. For years I had been embracing a fatal delusion.’

‘You thought there wouldn’t be any more wars.’ Nora leaped to the truth without waiting for Miss Steele.

‘Exactly.’ The older woman’s voice was dry and hard. ‘It has been the folly of my generation to take evolution too seriously. Unconsciously I applied it to history. As I studied the past, I saw the world passing through various evolutionary stages—that slowly—then—perhaps in my time war would go—and then——’

‘But Greece and Rome—and Japan.’

‘Yes, I forgot them. I was a student of modern Europe. I didn’t go far enough back. And I limited myself more and more to that patch of western Europe which for me had become the world. I forgot the Balkans and Russia and Turkey. Of course it was all childishness.’

Yes, Nora could understand now why they thought her essay was detached. She hadn’t forgotten certain things. But it was remembering—not having delusions—which made one feel so alone sometimes.

‘So you must have no hopes, my child. It’s my duty to warn you. The world will go on making the same errors. Not even different errors. We record the same stupid folly. Our function is to record—to interpret. But if you start out—not a dupe—the sweep of the past, the glimpse of the present—watching it—like a spectator at a play——’

‘But I——’ From these chilly heights Nora in the warm ardor of her youth shrank back afraid.

‘Will you join us? I’m beginning to—please don’t think me foolish—the war—I’m not young any more. I feel so tired. I want some one young to start where I left off. You’—Miss Steele reached for Nora’s hand and gave it a stiff, embarrassed jerk—’Nora, I want you to go on with my work. There is no one else here I trust. I——’

Nora’s eyes, from whose burning directness her contemporaries looked away sometimes, were lifted to Miss Steele’s face, a hard, furrowed face which had attempted to build up fortifications for a too sensitive and timid spirit. Miss Steele, so aloof on her lecturer’s platform, so self-sufficient in her study, producing scholarly works, Nora had admired. But this weary old woman reaching out for the sturdy support of some one young, she loved.

‘I—I’ll do what I can,’ Nora heard herself saying in a clear, ringing voice. ‘If you want me, I’ll come.’

Hurrying across the campus, with the spring breeze spreading out her muslin dress like a cloud, she had the swift upliftment of a young immortal entrusted with an urgent message for a stupid world. She passed Faculty House, where three deliberate, stiff-gaited professors were walking back and forth involved in a discussion of some infinitesimal college business evidently carried away from a committee meeting. Their academic tones, which years of the process of delivering authoritative information produce, swept Nora down to the baffling indecisions of the mortal plane. In an instant of rash folly she had dedicated herself to a future represented by the women she saw before her.

She turned and fled from the campus. To the east a path led to open country, with fruit trees in their pale green fringing the hillside. Up toward the hilltop she ran, breathless and terrified. What had she done? Why? She didn’t want any more of Petersfield. She must escape—go far away. As she looked behind her, the regular ranks of red-brick buildings were like prison walls, waiting to enclose her, to keep the fresh air away from her, rob her of youth and hope. No, she wouldn’t. She would tell Miss Steele she had changed her mind. She wanted to do something else—something big and free. But what? Against this wall Nora’s wild spirit beat. She reached the hilltop and threw herself down in the grass under a sprightly apple tree flaunting the luxuriance of its prime.

In the college paper the winner of the history essay was announced as Nora Deming, class of ’16, of Maronac Harbor, Wisconsin, who had been appointed to an instructorship in history. This official bulletin of campus news, every year close to its last gasp of an existence bounded by college seasons, was crowded with interesting items. Below Nora’s honor was spread out the array of college engagements. The class of ’16 displayed a roster of unusual length. Among the names was that of Eleanor Porter, engaged to Fuzzy’s brother, athletic like Fuzzy, and so solidly established in his father’s automobile business that they could be married at once. Petersfield had also disposed of Eleanor’s future in less formal fashion than Nora’s, but with equal sureness.

On the evening that Nora’s honors were published, Mary Howe beat against Nora’s door. ‘Come to Amelia’s room quick. She’s carrying on fearfully about not getting the prize. Almost hysterical, I guess. She wants to see you.’

Amelia sat huddled over her study table, her eyes red and swollen. ‘Why did you take it away from me?’ she accused Nora. ‘You didn’t try so hard. And I—I didn’t have anything else. You—you with everything.’

Nora stood rigid in front of Amelia, quite untouched by pity. ‘How do you know I had anything else?’ she demanded. Then, turning away, she closed Amelia’s door between them.

Nora marched in the long procession of academically gowned seniors to receive her diploma. She was a B.A. from Petersfield, who shook hands with Prexy and received the congratulations of the faculty. Her next act was to superintend the moving of her battered furniture to the wing of Faculty House occupied by the young instructors, known among themselves as ‘scrub faculty.’ She stood in the barren room for a moment. This, then, was life, of which her Socialist League had so feelingly spoken. So extravagant a waste of words over so little.

V

In Maronac, Nora found that the war had already laid its insidious touch upon the long-established peace of the American and German settlement. Once more the river formed an impassable boundary. The Germans on the south side of town, who sent money to their starving relatives abroad, were bewildered by the strange tales circulated against their birthplace. Their sympathies soon became the subject of much bitter talk on the north side. They were traitors, aliens, ungrateful for all the United States had given them. Father Stokesbury had been in a training camp the last time he wrote to Cordelia. Britain needed more soldiers. He might be in the trenches by this time. To Cordelia the war was now a holy cause.

But Cordelia still continued her Sunday visits to Della. She and Mrs. Schuster had domestic battles to settle. Della’s mother was pushing her old-maid daughter into a marriage with a widower, the father of three children.

‘It’s all Della hears,’ scolded Cordelia. ‘He’s a good enough man, but he’s twenty years older. I know he is.’

‘My Della’s bein’ courted by a goot German man,’ Mrs. Schuster announced to Nora on her first visit. ‘A fine fella.’ She wore the cheerful expression of triumph which confirmed Cordelia’s worst fears.

‘But who will take care of the garden if Della leaves you?’ teased Nora.

‘I’ll have some goot grass. All them flowers—they’re no use to me.’

‘But living all alone——’

Mrs. Schuster only grinned. ‘I’ll keep the parrot. He’s a goot boy.’

The parrot shrieked back, ‘Della old maid—old maid.’

‘Silly boy,’ Mrs. Schuster said. ‘Silly boy.’

By the end of the summer Della was married in Saint Margaret’s, her three stolid step-children in the front pew with Mrs. Schuster staring solemnly at the bride in a long veil and all the conventional habiliments of a wedding ceremony. In the pew with Cordelia and Nora sat Amy Henderson, taking an hour off from Weyhausen’s to see her old fellow worker on the Altar Guild married. If Amy had bitter memories as she looked at Della’s bridal array, they were hidden by the elegance of a blue crêpe dress which gave her the vivid pink freshness of her girlhood. A salary of twenty-five dollars a week, an unprecedented sum for a woman to earn in Maronac, may have helped her to forget. Old Mr. Weyhausen recognized real capability. Lizzie Guildford occupied her usual place with the same elegant superiority, never looking in the direction of her neighbor. Except for her studied hostility, one would think she had entirely forgotten the tragedy which joined her to Cordelia. Father Stokesbury’s successor, a timid little Cockney hurriedly produced by the Bishop, mumbled the service at galloping speed, and soon the wedding guests were leaving the church.

At the next wedding in Saint Margaret’s Nora was one of Eleanor’s bridesmaids. Mrs. Porter after much trouble had persuaded the Bishop to read the service. He was very feeble, and his voice broke several times.

Nora found Cordelia stretched out in the Bishop’s chair when she returned from the wedding breakfast. ‘I hope I won’t be going to another wedding for a long time.’

Cordelia looked up. ‘Yes—two this summer. But Mrs. Porter is so relieved. There was no one for Eleanor here.’ She turned away from Nora. ‘There’s no young man that you——’

‘No,’ Nora answered sternly.

‘You think you’ll like to—to—stay on there where it’s mostly women.’

‘I’ve got my work to do,’ Nora reminded her.

‘Yes, work—it helps. But——’ Cordelia’s fingers fluttered over a letter on the library table. Nora saw her gather it up, and conceal it under her white apron. ‘I heard this morning—from Father Stokesbury. He’s in France close to the front—any time——’

Nora shrank from the revelation in Cordelia’s face. ‘It can’t touch him,’ she said. The memory of her girlish dreams made a swift tug at her heart. ‘Any one so—so alive. He can’t die.’

Cordelia had stumbled toward the hall door, and was gone.