e whether she liked it or not.

The literature teacher counted for something in the affair, and I
imagine that it was never talked over between the parents and
daughter, who soon after left town for Europe, and for three years
were not seen in Boston.

When they _did_ return, it was to announce the marriage of the
Principal Girl to the son of the family lawyer, a clever man, and a
rising politician.

Relations between the literature teacher and the Principal Girl had
never wholly broken off, so ten years after the school adventure it
happened one beautiful day in early September that the teacher was a
guest at the North Shore summer home of the Principal Girl, now the
mother of two handsome boys.

That afternoon at tea, sitting on the verandah, watching the white
sails as the yachts made for Marblehead harbor, and the long line of
surf beating against the rugged rocks beyond the wide pebbly beach on
which the dragging stones made weird music, the literature teacher,
supposing the old story to be so much ancient history that it could,
as can so many of the incidents of one's teens, be referred to
lightly, had the misfortune to mention it. To her horror, the
Principal Girl gave her one startled look, and then rolled over among
the cushions of the hammock in which she was swinging, and burst into
a torrent of tears.

When the paroxysm had passed, she sat up, wiped her eyes in which,
however, there was no laughter, and said passionately:

"I suppose you think me the most ungrateful woman in the world. I know
only too well that to many women my position has always appeared
enviable. Poor things, if they only knew! Of course, my husband is a
good man. In all ways I do him perfect justice. He is everything that
is kind and generous--only, alas, he is not the lover of my dreams. My
children are nice handsome boys, but they are the every day children
of every day life. I dreamed another and a different life in which my
children were oh, so different, and beside which the life I try to
lead with all the strength I have is no more like the life I dreamed
than my boys are like my dream children. If you think it has not taken
courage to play the part I have played, I am sorry for your lack of
insight."

And she got up, and walked away.

It was as well, for, as the literature teacher told the doctor
afterward, it was one notch above her experience, and she absolutely
could have found no word to say. When the Wife came back