fore it
had hardly more than begun. Her recent experience had left her in no
mood for explanations. She decided to try slipping quietly in at the
rear door of the house. There was, of course, a possibility that it
might be locked, but if it were not--so much the better for her.

There was an instant of breathless suspense as she noiselessly turned
the knob. It yielded to her touch, and she stole into the kitchen and up
the back stairs like an unsubstantial shadow of the night, rather than a
very tired and sore-hearted girl. Once in her room she sat down on her
bed to think things over. She dared not move about for fear of being
heard by Marjorie or her mother. Long she sat, moodily reviewing the
year that had promised so much, yet had yielded her nothing but
dissension and sorrow. One bare, ugly fact confronted her, looming up
like a hideous monster whose dreadful claws had shredded her peace of
mind and now waved at her the tattered fragments. It had all been her
fault. For the first time she saw herself as she really was. A jealous,
suspicious, hateful girl. It was she, not Marjorie, who had been
unfaithful to friendship. But she had gone on blindly, unreasoningly,
preferring to think the worst, until now it was too late to bridge the
gap that she had daily widened between herself and her chum by her
absurd jealousy. She could never regain her lost ground. She felt that
Marjorie's patience with her had long since been exhausted. She dared
not, could not, plead for reinstatement. All that remained to be done
was to go through the rest of that dreadful year alone. When she and
Marjorie had finished their sophomore course she would go quietly away,
and they would, perhaps, never meet again.

Alone with her bitter remorse, Mary wept until she could cry no more.
As is usually the case with youth, she was sweeping in her
self-condemnation. But that bitter hour of self-revelation did more to
arouse within her the determination to conquer herself and establish the
foundation for a noble womanhood than she could possibly believe.

At last she pulled herself together to play the final scene in her
evening's drama. Mrs. Dean had given her a latchkey, in order that she
might let herself into the house, should she return from the party after
the Deans had retired. At half-past ten o'clock she heard Marjorie and
her mother come up the stairs to their rooms. Mr. Dean was away from
home on a business trip. When all sounds of conver