ing that was clanging
behind them irrevocably, shutting them away for ever from the fair road
along which they had travelled so happily. Shutting out even the
slightest view of those far-off "Delectable Mountains," towards which
they had been journeying. In the face of Jack's misfortune and all that
he was giving up, her part of the sacrifice sank into comparative
insignificance. Her suffering for him was so great that it dulled the
sharpness of her own renunciations, and even dulled her disappointment
for Joyce. The year in Paris had meant as much to her as the course at
Warwick Hall had meant to Mary.

All through the trip she sat going round and round the same circle of
thoughts, ending always with the hopeless cry, "Oh, _why_ did it have to
be? It isn't right that _he_ should have to suffer so!" Once when the
train stopped for some time to take water and wait on a switch for the
passing of a fast express, she opened her suit-case and took out her
journal and fountain-pen. Going on with the record from the place where
she had dropped it the day before when Jack's letter interrupted it, she
chronicled the receipt of the check, the shopping expedition that
followed, and the gay outing afterward in the touring-car. Then down
below she wrote:

"But now I have come to the Good-bye Gate. Good-bye to all my good
times. So good-bye, even to you, little book, since you were to mark
only the hours that shine. Here at the bottom of the page I must write
the words, '_The End_.'"

When they reached Warwick Hall she was too tired to begin any
preparations that night for the longer journey, and still so dazed with
the thought of Jack's calamity to be keenly alive to the fact that this
was the last night she would ever spend in the beloved room. She was
thankful to have it to herself for these last few hours, and thankful
when Betty and Madam Chartley finally went out and left her alone. She
was worn out trying to keep up before people and to be brave as they
bade her. It was a relief to put out the light and, lying there alone in
the dark, cry and cry till at last she sobbed herself to sleep.

Not till the next morning did she begin to feel the wrench of leaving,
when the fresh fragrance of wet lilacs awakened her, blowing up from the
old garden where all the sweetness of early April was astir. Then she
remembered that she would be far, far away when the June roses bloomed
at Commencement, and that this was the last time she wo