er lips parted a little, her eyes were
fixed on a point incalculably distant. Her mind emptied itself of
everything but her joy in the glorious cadences....

If she had been asked what she and Judith had been talking of, she
could not have told; but when, after the second movement was finished,
old Reinhardt put down his violin and began to loosen his bow (he
never played the presto finale), it all came back to the girl as she
looked around her at her father's guests. She hated the way the young
men's Adam's apples showed through their too-widely opened collars,
and she loathed the way the thin brown hair of one of the co-eds
was strained back from her temples. She received the President's
condescending, oleaginous hand-shake with a qualm at his loud
oratorical voice and plebeian accent, and she headed Cousin Parnelia
off from a second mediumistic attack, hating her badly adjusted
false-front of hair as intensely as ever Loyola hated a heretic. And
this, although uncontrollably driven by her desire to please, to
please even a roomful of such mediocrities, she bore to the outward
eyes the most gracious aspect of friendly, smiling courtesy. Professor
Marshall looked at her several times, as she moved with her slim young
grace among his students and friends, and thought how fortunate he was
in his children.

After the chicken-salad and coffee had been successfully served and
eaten, one of the Seniors stepped forward with an awkward crudeness
and presented Professor Marshall with a silver-mounted blotting-pad.
The house was littered with such testimonials to the influence of the
Professor on the young minds under his care, testimonials which his
children took as absolutely for granted as they did everything else in
the home life. On this occasion Sylvia was so afflicted because the
young rustic appointed to make the presentation speech, forgot most of
what he had planned to say, that she felt nothing but the liveliest
impatience with the whole proceeding. But her father's quick heart was
touched, and more than half of his usual little speech of farewell
to his Seniors was an expression of thanks to them. Before he had
finished the last part, which consisted of eloquent exhortations
to the higher life, none the less sincerely heartfelt for being
remarkably like similar speeches he had made during the last twenty
years, he had quoted his favorite saying from Emerson. Judith looked
apprehensively at Sylvia; but she was not l