n sadness of the coming
parting, yet the full meaning of the commencement day can be realized
only by those who are leaving their Alma Mater for the last time.

All too soon, the morning sped away and the president rose to confer the
degrees, while a hush, slight, but expectant, crept over the place.

"_Quae primum gradum accedunt._"

At the well-known words, the seniors rose, with Theodora standing at
their head. The girl was very pale, and her eyes looked dark and liquid,
as she raised them to the president's face. From his seat in the south
transept, Billy watched her while she stood there, tall and straight and
noble in her young womanhood, a very daughter of to-day; and, as he
looked, within him there strengthened the belief which had been slowly
forming and guiding his life ever since the day, more than six years
before, when Theodora had come down to him from the old apple-tree. In
all those tedious, aching years, Theodora had been his best friend; and
now with health and with her before him, he could afford to work, and
wait, and hope.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Two years had passed away, and The Savins lay basking in the heat of an
August noon. Here and there, a broad calladium leaf swayed majestically
to and fro in a passing breeze, and the locusts sang shrilly in the
trees overhead. Upstairs in her own room, Theodora rocked lazily,
humming to herself while she darned her stockings.

"Prosaic work!" she said aloud, half whimsically. "The sure forerunner
of a prosaic spinsterhood! My plans don't seem to materialize rapidly,
and I foresee that I shall go on darning stockings till the end of my
days. Bah! how I hate it!" She rolled up her stockings into a ball. "Two
years ago, and I was saying good-by to Billy in New York, and we were
making great plans for what we were to accomplish. Dear old Billy! I
hope he's quite strong by this time. It's almost time for another letter
from him, seems to me."

She tossed the ball to the table beside her, and, clasping her hands
above her rumpled hair, fell to dreaming. Phebe interrupted her.

"A letter for you, Teddy!" she proclaimed, opening the door and casting
the envelope across the room towards her sister.

"From Billy?"

"How should I know? I don't read your letters."

It was the same Phebe, older and taller, but otherwise unchanged. Now
her tone was slightly toploftical.

"I didn't suppose you did," Theodora answered, while she rose to pick up
the let