! Go on!" everybody called out, but she turned away to show some
other apparatus.

"Wasn't she fine?" exclaimed Mrs. Blakesly to Ware.

"Beyond praise," he replied. She went at once to communicate her morsel
of news to her husband, and at length to Miss Powell.

The company passed out into other rooms until no one was left but Mrs.
Blakesly, the professor, and Ware. Miss Powell was talking again, and to
Ware mainly. Ware was thoughtful, Miss Powell radiant.

"I didn't know what life was till I could do that." She took up a large
dumb-bell and, extending it at arm's length, whirled it back and forth.
Her forearm, white and smooth, swelled into strong action, and her
supple hands had the unwavering power and pressure of an athlete, and
withal Ware thought: "She is feminine. Her physical power has not
coarsened her; it has enlarged her life, but left her entirely womanly."

In some adroit way Mrs. Blakesly got her husband out of the room and
left Ware and Miss Powell together. She was showing him the view from
the windows, and they seemed to be perfectly absorbed. She looked around
once and saw that Mrs. Blakesly was showing her husband something in the
farther end of the room. After that she did not think of them.

The sun went lower in the sky and flamed along the sward. He spoke of
the mystical power of the waving daisies and the glowing greens which no
painter ever seems to paint. While they looked from the windows their
arms touched, and they both tried to ignore it. She shivered a little as
if a cold wind had blown upon her. At last she led the way out and down
the stairs to the campus. They heard the gay laughter of the company at
their cakes and ices, up at the central building.

He stopped outside the hallway, and as she looked up inquiringly at him,
he said quietly: "Suppose we go down the road. It seems pleasanter
there."

She acquiesced like one in a pleasure which made duty seem absurd.

Strong and fine as she was, she had never found a lover to whom she
yielded her companionship with unalloyed delight. She was thirty years
of age, and her girlhood was past. She looked at this man, and a
suffocating band seemed to encircle her throat. She knew he was strong
and good. He was a little saddened with life--that she read in his
deep-set eyes and unsmiling lips.

The road led toward the river, and as they left the campus they entered
a lane shaded by natural oaks. He talked on slowly. He asked her what
he