meet her
guest down-town, hurried on to the address that Miss Raymond had given
her, one of the most desirable of the off-campus houses.

Miss Carter was in, the maid said, and a moment later she appeared to
speak for herself. She flushed with embarrassment when she saw Helen,
and her dreadful, disfiguring scar showed all the more plainly on her
reddened cheek.

"Oh, I supposed it was the woman with my washing," she said. "I don't
have many calls. You must excuse this messy shirt waist. Please sit
down."

"Won't you take me up to your room?" asked Helen, trying to think how
Betty Wales would have put the other girl at her ease. "We can talk so
much better there."

Miss Carter hesitated. "Why, certainly, if you prefer. It's in great
confusion. I'm packing, or getting ready to pack, rather," and she led
the way up-stairs to a big room that, even in its half-dismantled
condition, looked singularly attractive and quite different somehow from
the regulation college room.

"I have a dreadful confession to make," said Helen gaily, when they were
seated.

"I've taken your verses for the 'Argus.' I've already sent them in to
Miss Raymond, and now I've come to ask if you are willing. I do hope you
are."

"Why certainly," said Miss Carter quietly. "You are perfectly welcome to
them of course. You needn't have taken the trouble to come away up here
to ask."

Then she relapsed into silence. Helen could not tell whether she was
pleased or not. She had an uncomfortable feeling that she was being
dismissed; but she did not go. Never in her life had she worked so hard
to make conversation as she did in the next ten minutes. The "Argus,"
the new chapel rules, Miss Raymond and her theme classes, the sophomore
elections,--none of them evoked a responsive chord in the strange girl
who sat impassive, with no thought apparently of her social duties and
responsibilities.

"She must think I don't know how to take a hint," reflected Helen, "but
I don't care. I'm going to keep on trying."

Presently she noticed that from Miss Carter's window could be seen Mrs.
Chapin's house and the windows of her and Betty's old room.

"That was where I lived when I first came to Harding," she began
awkwardly, pointing them out. Then she looked at the girl opposite, read
the misery in her big gray eyes, and opened her heart. Betty Wales, who
had worked so hard to get at a little of the story of Helen's freshman
year would have been amazed at the