ncy filled her heart with sudden calm.
A love so deep and sure, so broad and sweet--could it not dignify any
woman's life? And she had been thought worthy and had refused this love!
O fool!

Suppose she went and found--her heart beat too quickly, and her face
flushed. She called on the bright girl in the front row.

"And what have _you_ learned?" she said.

The girl coughed importantly. "It is a poem of Goethe's," she announced
in her high, satisfied voice. "_Kennst du das Land_"

"That will do," said the German assistant. "I fear we shall not have
time for it to-day. The hour is up. You may go on with the translation
for to-morrow." And as the class rose with a growing clamor she realized
that though she had been thinking steadily in German, she had been
talking in English. So that was why they had comprehended so well and
answered so readily! And yet she was too glad to be annoyed at the slip.
There were other things: her life was not a German class!

As the girls crowded out, one stopped by the desk. She laid her hand
with the pearl band on the third finger on the teacher's arm. "You look
tired," she said. "I hope you're not ill?"

"Ill?" said the woman at the desk. "I never felt better. I've been
neglecting my classes, I fear, in the study of your green gown. It is so
very pretty."

The girl smiled and colored a little.

"I'm glad you like it," she said. "I like it, too." Then, with a sudden
feeling of friendship, an odd sense of intimacy, a quick impulse of
common femininity, she added:

"I've had some good times in this dress. Wearing it up here makes me
remember them very strangely. It's queer, what a difference it makes--"
She stopped and looked questioningly at the older woman.

But the German assistant smiled at her. "Yes," she said, "it is. And
when you have been teaching seven years the difference becomes very
apparent." She gathered up her books, still smiling in a reminiscent
way. And as she went out of the door, she looked back at the glaring,
sunny room as if already it were far behind her, as if already she felt
the house-mother's kiss, and heard the 'cello, and saw Klara's tiny
daughter standing by the door, throwing kisses, calling, "_Da ist sie,
ja!_"

Lost in the dream, her eyes fixed absently, she stumbled against her
fellow-assistant, who was making for the room she had just left.

"I beg your pardon--I wasn't looking. Oh, it's you!" she murmured
vaguely. Her fellow-assistant had a