to escape for long, for she heard her companion say, "You have been a student at Bryn Mawr, they tell me, Miss Blake, and I have been greatly interested in hearing so; for I think it a most lovely spot, quite an ideal sort of place. Its airs of age are very clever too, very deceptive. It impressed me as an old place. An almost reverential feeling stirred me, so marked was the sense of dignity. It is in a word academic. Everywhere one may see that bewildering mixture of history and aspiration."
"We can't help feeling a little proud that after so few years of existence it should begin to be impressive as well as beautiful," said Ellen, who hardly welcomed the return to the subject that had engrossed her thoughts so long, though she could not resist the enthusiasm of one familiar with the English universities.
"Of course, in this country one never wonders at rapidity of growth, but I must confess that æsthetic charm does not always accompany it. That delightful president of yours has secured both."
"She is a worker of wonders. She has plans for the place now that exceed all our dreams."
"Of course years may mellow the ugliest spot and association endear it, but after all 'virtue is loveliest in lovely guise.' The gift of beauty is not to be despised. Even the most casual visitor must acknowledge a spell in that college of yours altogether independent of the mysterious charm that you who know it intimately find for yourselves—to some degree what I am sure people would find in my own university were they to go there ignorant of its wealth of history. But they are outsiders," he continued musingly, almost as though he had forgotten the existence of the girl to whom he was talking, "they see only the outward show, they are forever shut out from a share in that spirit that is the immortal part of the university, that persists in spite of change."
The old man's memories awoke at these words, and in his reminiscences he unfolded for Ellen picture after picture of that old world school, and flattered her with a sight of the thing her Alma Mater might become. For she listened to tales that made distant things seem real and present to her, stories of the frailties of men whose names had been beacons to her intellect. Her emotions were stirred by the tender humour that summoned up for her the personalities that had touched his own boyhood, and had left their impress on the life of Oxford.
The bishop's attention was challenged by a gentleman across the table with a question on South Africa, and for the rest of the evening Ellen shared her friend with the other guests.
Before she left she found a chance to tell Mrs. Boughton how delightful her companion had been. "Well, Ellen, to be candid," with an indulgent smile at the girl whom she liked in spite of her brains, "I should not have honoured you so much had he not asked to have you for a neighbour. But you needn't lay the credit to your attractions. I was running over the people he would meet this evening and when I came to you, that he might not expect an angel, I mentioned your only faults—that you had been to college and spelled woman with a large W. But I told him that as a rule you kept these peculiarities in the background. However it was your having been to college that interested him, for he wanted to see what sort of women Bryn Mawr turned out. Of course I told him he couldn't judge by you—you were an exception—that he would have to see a few specimens like your friend Miss Christie or Augusta Barneson Coles."
As she drove home Ellen's thoughts turned to Marjorie Heywood and her plans for the next day. The talk at dinner had decided Ellen to go with the others. Though she lived so near, she found little pleasure in going out to Bryn Mawr nowadays, for everything seemed changed and she felt nothing but resentment that the past should have been so easily forgotten, its ways so quickly superseded.
Her careless reading of Marjorie's letter had made her arrival a surprise, and Ellen experienced a sense of relief at Marjorie's appearance. Her relief showed how apprehensive she had been of the changes possible in ten years' time, and above all in a ten years so trying as those that Marjorie had passed through. Just when she had seemed well started in her chosen work she had had to give up everything and care for a worthless brother. She had had to fight poverty for herself and him, and for him disease and evil. The cheerful letters that had come to Ellen now and then, had brought her little satisfaction, they were so impersonal. It had been in vain that Edith reminded her that Marjorie had always been impersonal, reticent. Putting herself into everything she did and said was her way of talking about herself. It had been in vain too that Edith contended that Marjorie's enthusiasm for righteousness and humorous freshness of mind were her safeguard against old age. "Marjorie will be just the same," she maintained, "when she is a hundred years old." To-night for the first time, Ellen believed her. Ten years! Could it be ten years? And Marjorie still the same, the old spirit of raillery gleaming in her eyes, the irresistible quiver at the corners of the mouth?
Ellen found her mother and Marjorie in the full swing of a good talk. They had been linked in their sympathetic understanding of one another since early in freshman year, when Marjorie had spent a Sunday with Ellen. And to-night they had no remembrance of the interval that had passed since they had last been together. Ellen longed to throw herself into one of the easy chairs and share in the ardour of conversation; but she remembered her speech.
"If I am to fall in with your plan, and I am afraid I am too weak to defy your indomitable will, I must write that wretched speech to-night. I don't dare trust myself to write it at Bryn Mawr with you to beguile me," was her answer to Marjorie's entreaties that she should stop and tell them all about her evening.
"Oh, sit up all night, if you'll get to Bryn Mawr by doing it," answered Marjorie with a nod to Mrs. Blake who was about to remonstrate. "I'll assist you by the subtle influence of my presence and read the while.
"What do I want to read? Oh, anything at all, thank you, Mrs. Blake—something that will keep me from interrupting Ellen. Yes, that's just the thing," and she took the book that Mrs. Blake handed her and started upstairs.
As the girls reached the room Ellen said, "I've a good mind to give the whole thing up. I'm perfectly hopeless about it."
"You'll do nothing of the kind," asserted Marjorie. "You'll just sit down there and write."
"It will be a perfunctory business at that rate," objected Ellen, "I don't feel as though I could write a word."
"Never mind that," retorted Marjorie, "but just see that you get through with it to-night. A body can't get any good of you with it on your mind. And that's one of the things I came on for."
With that Marjorie opened her book and Ellen sat down to her task. It went slowly at first. She wrote little and that with constant reference to her notes. But after a time she seemed to find the thoughts coming more quickly.
Marjorie's book did not seem to hold her attention. Her thoughts seemed borne beyond it, and her eyes wandered about the room, noting the restfulness of the golden brown on the walls, the preponderance of etchings—landscapes for the most part—the low bookcase stretching the full length of the wall, the ornaments, obviously the choice of one more susceptible to form than to colour. There was in the room nothing brilliant, nothing conspicuous. Taking in the details, her glance came at length to rest on Ellen herself as she bent over the old-fashioned desk. She was turned so that Marjorie could see a little more than her profile. And Marjorie's expression was one of affectionate amusement as she watched the serious, almost stern lines of the face, the gravity in the eyes, when they were occasionally raised.
For some time Marjorie observed her closely and then broke in upon the silence with—"I'm drifting irresistibly to conversation or drowsiness, I don't know which, but in any case I'd much better away to bed. So good-night and good luck."
Then just as she reached the door she turned laughingly to Ellen and said, "Your hair is just as nice as ever; but I'm afraid you've got the world tied to your little finger."
But
