shwood said about it.

When lunch time came May found herself seized with a physical
contraction over her heart that prevented food from taking its usual
course downward. She endured as long as she could, but at last she got
up from the long silent table just as Robinson was about to go for a
moment into the pantry. She threw a hurried excuse for going at his thin
stooping back. She said she found she "hadn't time," and she examined
her watch ostentatiously as she went out of the room.

"I'm going to take my last farewell of Oxford," May said, looking for a
moment into Lady Dashwood's room. "I'm going for a walk. I am going to
look at the High and at Magdalen Bridge."

Lady Dashwood smiled rather sadly. "Ah, yes," she said.

May found Louise packing with a slowness and an elaborate care that was
a reproof somehow in itself. It seemed to say: "Ungrateful! All is
thrown away on you. You care not----"

May put on her hat, and through the mirror she saw Louise rolling up
Saint Joseph with some roughness in a silk muffler.

"Madame does not like Oxford?" said Louise, drily, as she stuffed the
saint into a hat.

"I care for it very much, Louise," said May, hastily putting on her
coat. "Oxford is a place one can never forget."

"Eh, bien oui," said Louise, enigmatically.

Then May went out and said farewell to the towers and spires and the
ancient walls, and went to look at the trees weeping by Magdalen Bridge.
It was all photographed on her memory. In the squalid streets of London,
where her work lay, she would remember all this beauty and this ancient
peace. There would be no possibility of her forgetting it! She would
dream of it at night. It would form the background of her life.

* * * * *

Back again in the Lodgings, she found that she had only a few minutes
more to spare before she must leave. She took farewell of Louise, and
left her standing, her hand clasping money and her eyes luminous with
reproach. There was, indeed, more than reproach, a curious incredulity,
a wonder at something. May did not fathom what it was. She did not hear
Louise muttering below her breath--

"Ah, mon Dieu! these English people--this Monsieur the Warden--this
Madame la niece. Ah, this Lodgings! Ah, this Oxford!"

In the drawing-room May found Lady Dashwood in a loose gown, seated on a
couch and "Not at home" to callers.

Only a few minutes more!

"I'm afraid I've been very long," said May. "B