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but I have taught long enough.'
"'Then you do not find another position? Are you to be--'"
Always here her heart sank. Was she? What real basis had all this sweet,
disturbing dream? To write so to a man after seven years! It was not
decent. She grew satiric. How embarrassing for him to read such a
letter in the bosom of an affectionate, flaxen-haired family! At least,
she would never know how he really felt, thank Heaven. And what was
left for her then? To her own mind she had burned her bridges already.
She was as far from this place in fancy as if the miles stretched
veritably between them. And yet she knew no other life. She knew no
other men. He was the only one. In a flash of shame it came over her
that a woman with more experience would never have written such a
letter. Everybody knew that men forget, change, easily replace first
loves. Nobody but such a cloistered, academic spinster as she would
have trusted a seven years' promise. This was another result of such

lives as they led--such helpless, provincial women. Her resentment
grew against the place. It had made her a fool.
It was Sunday afternoon, and she had omitted, in deference to the day,
the short skirt and walking-hat of her weekday stroll. Sunk in accusing
shame, her cheeks flaming under her wide, dark hat, her quick step
more sweeping than she knew, her eyes on the ground, she just escaped
collision with a suddenly looming masculine figure. A hasty apology, a
startled glance of appeal, a quick breath that parted her lips, and she
was past the stranger. But not before she had caught in his eyes a look
that quickened her heart, that soothed her angry humility. The sudden
sincere admiration, the involuntary tribute to her charm, was new to her,
but the instinct of countless generations made it as plain and as much
her prerogative as if she had been the most successful débutante. She
was not, then, an object of pity, to be treasured for the sake of the old
days; other men, too--the impulse outstripped thought, but she caught
up with it.
"How dreadful!" she murmured, with a consciousness of undreamed
depths in herself. "Of course he is the only one--the only one!" and
across the water she begged his forgiveness.
But through all her agony of doubt in the days that followed, one shame
was miraculously removed, one hope sang faintly beneath: she, too,
had her power! A glance in the street had called her from one army of
her sisters to the other, and the difference was inestimable.
Her classes stared at her with naïve admiration. The girls in the house
begged for her as a chaperon to Amherst entertainments, and sulked
when a report that the young hosts found her too attractive to enable
strangers to distinguish readily between her and her charges rendered
another selection advisable. The fact that her interest in them was fitful,
sometimes making her merry and intimate, sometimes relegating them
to a connection purely professional, only left her more interesting to
them; and boxes of flowers, respectful solicitations to spreads, and
tempting invitations to long drives through the lengthening afternoons
began to elect her to an obvious popularity. Once it would have meant
much to her; she marvelled now at the little shade of jealousy with

which her colleagues assured her of it. How long must she wait? When
would life be real again?
She seemed to herself to move in a dream that heightened and strained
quicker as it neared an inevitable shock of waking--to what? Even at
the best, to what? Even supposing that--she put it boldly, as if it had
been another woman--she should marry the man who had asked her
seven years ago, what was there in the very obvious future thus assured
her that could match the hopes her heart held out? How could it be at
once the golden harbor, the peaceful end of hurried, empty years, and
the delicious, shifting unrest that made a tumult of her days and nights?
Yet something told her that it was; something repeated insistently,
"Always I will wait."... He would keep faith, that grave, big man!
But every day, as she moved with tightened lips to the table where the
mail lay spread, coloring at a foreign stamp, paling with the
disappointment, her hope grew fainter. He dared not write and tell her.
It was over. Violet shadows darkened her eyes; a feverish flush made
her, as it grew and faded at the slightest warning, more girlish than
ever.
But the young life about her seemed only to mock her own late
weakened impulse. It was not the same. She was playing heavy stakes:
they