in dark things."

The regret that she had not found time to put on the red waist was so
instant and keen that she laughed at herself when alone in her room. She
moved vaguely about, aimlessly changing the position of the furniture.
How absurd! To do one's hair differently, and take a long walk, and feel
as if an old life were somehow far behind one!

Later she found herself before her desk, hunting for her foreign
letter-paper, and once started, her pen flew. There were long meditative
lapses, followed by nervous haste, as if to make up the lost time;
and just before the ten-o'clock bell she slipped out to mail a fat
brown-stamped envelope. The night-watchman chuckled as he watched the
head shrouded in the golf-cape hood bend a moment over the little white
square.

"Maybe it's one o' the maids, maybe it's one o' the teachers, maybe it's
one o' the girls," he confided to his lantern; "they're all alike, come
to that! An' a good thing, too!"

In the morning the German assistant dismissed her last class early and
took train for Springfield. On the way to the station a deferential
clerk from the bookshop waylaid her.

"One moment, please. Those books you spoke of. Mr. Hartwell's library
is up at auction and we're sending a man to buy to-day. If you could get
the whole set for twenty-five dollars--"

She smiled and shook her head. "I've changed my mind, thank you--I can't
afford it. Yes, I suppose it is a bargain, but books are such a trouble
to carry about, you know. No, I don't think of anything else."

What freedom, what a strange baseless exhilaration! Suppose--suppose
it was all a mistake, and she should wake back to the old stubborn,
perfunctory reality! Perhaps it was better, saner--that quiet
taken-for-granted existence. Perhaps she regretted--but even with the
half-fear at her heart she laughed at that. If wake she must, she loved
the dream. How she trusted that man! "Always I will wait"--and he would.
But seven years! She threw the thought behind her.

The next days passed in a swift, confused flight. She knew they were
all discussing her, wondering at her changed face, her fresh, becoming
clothes; they decided that she had had money left her.

"Some of my girls saw you shopping in Springfield last Saturday--they
say you got some lovely waists," said her fellow-assistant tentatively.
"Was this one? It's very sweet. You ought to wear red a great deal, you
look so well in it. Did you know Professor Riggs sp