n," said Marion, looking demurely, not at Mr. Forbes,
but at Irene, "I could explain it to you. You don't allow anything for
sentiment and the natural desire to please, and it ought to be just
pathetic to you that these girls, obeying a natural instinct, missed the
expression of it a little."

"Men are such critics," and Irene addressed the remark to Marion, "they
pretend to like intellectual women, but they can pardon anything better
than an ill-fitting gown. Better be frivolous than badly dressed."

"Well," stoutly insisted Forbes, "I'll take my chance with the
well-dressed ones always; I don't believe the frumpy are the most
sensible."

"No; but you make out a prima facie case against a woman for want of
taste in dress, just as you jump at the conclusion that because a woman
dresses in such a way as to show she gives her mind to it she is of the
right sort. I think it's a relief to see a convention of women devoted
to other things who are not thinking of their clothes."

"Pardon me; the point I made was that they are thinking of their
clothes, and thinking erroneously."

"Why don't you ask leave to read a paper, Forbes, on the relation of
dress to education?" asked Mr. King.

They rose from the table just as Mrs. Benson was saying that for her
part she liked these girls, they were so homelike; she loved to hear
them sing college songs and hymns in the parlor. To sing the songs of
the students is a wild, reckless dissipation for girls in the country.

When Mr. King and Irene walked up and down the corridor after breakfast
the girl's constraint seemed to have vanished, and she let it be seen
that she had sincere pleasure in renewing the acquaintance. King himself
began to realize how large a place the girl's image had occupied in
his mind. He was not in love--that would be absurd on such short
acquaintance--but a thought dropped into the mind ripens without
consciousness, and he found that he had anticipated seeing Irene again
with decided interest. He remembered exactly how she looked at Fortress
Monroe, especially one day when she entered the parlor, bowing right and
left to persons she knew, stopping to chat with one and another,
tall, slender waist swelling upwards in symmetrical lines, brown hair,
dark-gray eyes--he recalled every detail, the high-bred air (which was
certainly not inherited), the unconscious perfect carriage, and his
thinking in a vague way that such ease and grace meant good living
and le