message. As
he hurried toward Thatcher's headquarters he paused suddenly, and bent
over the balcony beneath the dome to observe two figures that were
slowly descending one of the broad stairways. Morton Bassett and Sylvia
were leaving the building together. A shout rang out, echoing hollowly
through the corridors, and was followed by scattering cheers from men
who were already hastening toward the senate chamber where the caucus
sessions were held.

Somehow Morton Bassett's sturdy shoulders, his step, quickened to adapt
it to the pace of his companion, did not suggest defeat. Dan still
watched as the two crossed the rotunda on their way to the street.
Bassett was talking; he paused for an instant and looked up at the dome,
as though calling his companion's attention to its height.

Sylvia glanced up, nodded, and smiled as though affirming something
Bassett had said; and then the two vanished from Dan's sight.

CHAPTER XXXIV

WE GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING

"Sylvia was reading in her grandfather's library when the bell tinkled."

With these words our chronicle began, and they again slip from the pen
as I begin these last pages. When Morton Bassett left her at the door of
Elizabeth House she had experienced a sudden call of the truant spirit.
Sylvia wanted to be alone, to stand apart for a little while from the
clanging world and take counsel of herself. Hastily packing a bag she
caught the last train for Montgomery, walked to the Kelton cottage, and
roused Mary, who had been its lone tenant since the Professor's death.
She sent Mary to bed, and after kindling a fire in the grate, roamed
about the small, comfortable rooms, touching wistfully the books, the
pictures, the scant bric-a-brac. She made ready her own bed under the
eaves where she had dreamed her girlhood dreams, shaking from the sheets
she found in the linen chest the leaves of lavender that Mary had strewn
among them. The wind rose in the night and slammed fitfully a blind
that, as long as she could remember, had uttered precisely that same
protest against the wind's presumption. It was all quite like old times,
and happy memories of the past stole back and laid healing hands upon
her.

She slept late, and woke to look out upon a white world. Across the
campus floated the harsh clamor of the chapel bell, and she saw the
students tramping through the swirling snow just as she had seen them in
the old times, the glad and happy times when it had seem