"I have to go in, the shades are down already."

Pellams' courage came up with a flash. By blind instinct, he reached out
and caught her hand. She did not struggle, though the moment he released
his pressure she drew her hand away, and quickened her pace. He followed
close, and she turned upon him.

"This is what I might have expected when I cheapened myself with you!
Will you let me go in?"

"Not until I have said what I came to say; Katharine, can't you--can't
you guess it? Oh, I know--Kathie, you _must_ have seen it--you know why
I cut the dance--you know"--and again words failed him and he reached
for her hand.

But she put him off this time. "I am sorry to spoil such a beautiful
piece of acting; but our arrangement is going to end, and this is a
worn-out joke."

They had come by now to the corner of Roble, where it is indiscreet to
talk over private affairs, and neither said anything until they reached
and mounted the steps into the shadow of the porch. Then she said:

"After all, since it is over, I won't be unkind. Good-bye. We've had a
pleasant semester, haven't we?" and this time she gave him her hand.

A girl raised one of the hallway curtains just then. The sudden flash of
light came upon Katharine where she stood with her hand in Pellams'.
She had meant that look, that softening of the eyes, that little quiver
of the mouth, for darkness and concealment, and he caught it all before
she could blot it out with a smile.

And, having argued to a conclusion, it mattered not to either that Miss
Meiggs stood looking out at them with supreme contempt.

AN ALUMNI DINNER.

An Alumni Dinner.

"And it's we who have to rustle
In the cold, cold world!"

Dr. Williamson's landlady would not listen any further. She stood on the
threshold of her lodger's combination of bedroom and office and said,
with an offensively clear enunciation:

"You haven't any patients, and no more have I any longer, and I want
that money to-morrow or I rent the room."

The door closed.

Williamson listened to her footsteps, as hard and uncompromising as her
voice, and when they had ceased he got up from his chair, a despairing
soul. After all, this was the rope's end. He would have to own up to a
failure.

If Williamson had been a man of more force he would not have
acknowledged so much, perhaps; but he had been conscientious and
faithful to the limit of his understanding, patient to the verge of
philos