pontaneous, had to be forced to her lips when she
went to take her place, with the score of other happy graduating nurses,
in the amphitheatre of the Harvard Medical School, next door, where the
exercises were to be held.

"What is the matter with my Rose?" wondered Miss Merriman, who had
managed to be present. And, "What is the matter with _my_ Rose?" thought
Dr. Bentley. He had seen her for just a moment that morning, and,
through the warm, lingering pressure of her hand, received the thanks
which she could not speak.

It was, in truth, a very sober Smiles who only half-heard the words of
the impressively simple exercises, during which the newly made laborers
in the Lord's vineyard received the diplomas which bore the seal of the
hospital--a Madonna-like nurse, holding a child. Its original, cast in
bronze--the work of a famous modern sculptor--hung in the
administration building of the hospital, and she had often stood before
it with tender dreams. And it was a very sober Smiles upon whose dress
was pinned the blue and gold cross, the emblem alike of achievement and
service.

Miss Merriman spoke her thought aloud, as she took the girl into her
arms, afterwards. "You looked too sweet for words, dear. But, tell me,
why that woe-begone expression on this, of all days? One would think
that all the worries of the world lay on your young heart."

"Perhaps they do," was the non-committal answer. And Rose pleaded a
previous engagement when the older nurse begged her company for the
afternoon, and Dr. Bentley for the evening.

The happy laughter, the parting words, both grave and gay, which were
spoken by those who had been her companions during the long journey,
fell on ears which heard, but transmitted them to her mind vaguely, and
her answers were inconsequential, so much so, that more than one friend
regarded her with troubled surprise and whispered to another that Rose
was either not well, or was dazed with happiness. And when Dorothy
ventured to hint at the latter alternative, the girl acknowledged it
with a strained imitation of her usual smile, and straightway found her
thoughts scourging her because of this new deception.

It seemed to her that the day, for which she had builded so long, was
tumbling about its foundations, and yet, when she now and again brought
her runaway thoughts up with a round turn, she could not assign any
logical reason for her feeling as she did.

"After all, what is it to me?" she wo