with an intense light, like the
nucleus of the creature under the microscope. Suddenly she had
passed away into an intensely-gleaming light of knowledge. She
could not understand what it all was. She only knew that it was
not limited mechanical energy, nor mere purpose of
self-preservation and self-assertion. It was a consummation, a
being infinite. Self was a oneness with the infinite. To be
oneself was a supreme, gleaming triumph of infinity.

Ursula sat abstracted over her microscope, in suspense. Her
soul was busy, infinitely busy, in the new world. In the new
world, Skrebensky was waiting for her--he would be waiting
for her. She could not go yet, because her soul was engaged.
Soon she would go.

A stillness, like passing away, took hold of her. Far off,
down the corridors, she heard the gong booming five o'clock. She
must go. Yet she sat still.

The other students were pushing back their stools and putting
their microscopes away. Everything broke into turmoil. She saw,
through the window, students going down the steps, with books
under their arms, talking, all talking.

A great craving to depart came upon her. She wanted also to
be gone. She was in dread of the material world, and in dread of
her own transfiguration. She wanted to run to meet
Skrebensky--the new life, the reality.

Very rapidly she wiped her slides and put them back, cleared
her place at the bench, active, active, active. She wanted to
run to meet Skrebensky, hasten--hasten. She did not know
what she was to meet. But it would be a new beginning. She must
hurry.

She flitted down the corridor on swift feet, her razor and
note-books and pencil in one hand, her pinafore over her arm.
Her face was lifted and tense with eagerness. He might not be
there.

Issuing from the corridor, she saw him at once. She knew him
at once. Yet he was so strange. He stood with the curious
self-effacing diffidence which so frightened her in well-bred
young men whom she knew. He stood as if he wished to be unseen.
He was very well-dressed. She would not admit to herself the
chill like a sunshine of frost that came over her. This was he,
the key, the nucleus to the new world.

He saw her coming swiftly across the hall, a slim girl in a
white flannel blouse and dark skirt, with some of the
abstraction and gleam of the unknown upon her, and he started,
excited. He was very nervous. Other students were loitering
about the hall.

She laughed, with a blind, da