again at the mental review of his misfortunes, "you tell Reddick to keep out of my way. If I get my hands on him before I've had time to cool off, there'll be a murder."

He let himself out through the gate in the railing, but Pinckney called him back to give him the passenger agent's telegram. Macdonald read it with a snort of contempt. "I'll do nothing of the sort!" he said, crumpling the message into a ball and throwing it into the waste-basket on his way to the door.

When Macdonald was gone, the cupboard under the copying-press yawned, and a dusty, sweat-begrimed harlequin bounded into the circle of light to dance around Pinckney's table, shaking its fists and rolling its eyes.

"Oh, you double-dyed hypocrite! you smooth-faced, lantern-jawed for eigner! Chuckle-headed dwarf, am I? -with a pin - head brain? You just wait, will you? Maybe I won't make you wish you'd been born deaf, dumb, and blind, before I get through with you!"

Reddick vanished, breathing out threatenings, and when the door closed behind him, an opportune call for a train-order saved Pinckney from the collapse which might otherwise have followed his bad quarter of an hour.

When Macdonald awoke the following morning, his angry determination to ignore his aunt's request had lost some of its vehemence. He was obliged to confess that she was in nowise to blame for his misfortunes; and since kinship has its undeniable demands, he could scarcely do less than she had asked. Accordingly, he met the excursion train upon its arrival and sought out the passenger agent, who was too busy at the moment to answer his question. When the time served, Miss Spurlock was not to be found; but a brakeman enlightened the inquirers.

"The little old Englishwoman, you mean? Yes, she was in this car; Mr. Elbert's been looking out for her-reckon she must be one of the English stockholders, isn't she?"

"Did they go away together?" asked Macdonald.

"That's what they did; made a bee

line for a carriage, soon as the train pulled in."

It was the last drop of bitterness in Macdonald's brimming cup. His affair was the common ground upon which these two people had met; the assumption of his rascality was doubtless the theme upon which each had enlarged during their short acquaintance. And now they had gone to Mellicent!

When an optimistic young man of cheerful habit begins to give ground to the blue devils, his retreat is apt to become a rout. Looking back upon his performances of yesterday, Macdonald accused himself wrathfully of having given place to childish credulity and unreasoning impulse; and the affront to his self-respect was simply unbearable. Clearly, there remained but one thing for him to do-to obliterate himself at once and unobtrusively. A west-bound train, ready to depart, offered the means. He could telegraph his resignation from a way-station, and he could send for his belongings when he had settled upon his destination. The conductor's "All aboard!" and the ringing of the engine-bell decided him; and he swung up to the step of the last car as No. 5 steamed out of the station.

An hour later, when Reddick went to the superintendent's office to arrange for the future movement of the excursion train, Burwell handed him a telegram. It was Macdonald's resignation; and the chief clerk of the passenger department did not shirk his responsibil ity. Obtaining permission to deliver the message, he went straight to the superintendent's house, and was closeted with Mr. Elbert for a humiliating quarter of an hour. When he came out, he was the bearer of a telegram which reached Macdonald at noon.

cordially for the first time. And then she sank back suddenly and blushed like a school-girl and smiled again, but in a different way, as if at herself, or at some thought that tickled her fancy. It certainly did strike her as rather amusing and presuming for her to be smiling and bowing so cordially to Professor Arbuthnot. She remembered very distinctly, in what awe she had stood of that learned lady, and that in her undergraduate days she had systematically avoided her, since she could not avoid her examinations and their occasionally disastrous consequences. She recalled very forcibly the masterly lectures, the logical, profound, often original talks, which she had heard in her lecture-room, though she had to acknowledge to herself reproachfully, that the matter of them had entirely escaped her memory. She had been one of a big majority who had always considered Professor Arbuthnot as a very high type-perhaps the highest type the college afforded-of a woman whose brains and attainments would make. her remarkable in any assembly of savants. In her presence she had always realized very keenly her own superficiality, and she felt very much flattered that such a woman should have remembered her and not a little abashed as she thought of the entire renunciation of study she had made since leaving college. She wondered what Professor Arbuthnot might be thinking about her-she knew she was thinking about her, because the bright eyes opposite were still fixed upon her with their piercing, not unkindly gaze. It occurred to her at last, humorously, that perhaps the Professor was not considering her at all, but some question in-thermo-electric currents for instance.

But Miss Arbuthnot's mind was not on thermo-electric currents; she was saying to herself: "She is much more beautiful than when she was here, and there is a new element of beauty in her face, too. I wonder where she has been since, and why she is in mourning. She was unintelligent, I remember. It's a great pity-brains and that sort of beauty rarely ever go together. Her name was Ellis-yes-Grace Ellis.

I think I must see her later." And the Professor gave her another piercing smile and settled herself to listen to a distinguished political economist a great friend of hers-speak. The Political Economist got upon his feet slowly and with a certain diffidence. He was a man who had made his way, self-taught, from poverty and ignorance to a professorship in one of the finest technical schools of America.

There was a brusqueness in his manner, and the hard experiences of his life had made him old. He spoke in a quiet, authoritative way. He declared with a rather heavy attempt at jocoseness, that his hearers had had their sweets first, so to speak, and that they must now go back and take a little solid, unpalatable nourishment; that he had never made a witty or amusing remark in his life, and he did not propose to begin and try then, and finally he hinted that the President had made a very bad selection when she invited. him to respond to the toast-" The Modern Education of Woman." As he warmed to his subject he became more gracious and easy in manner. He spoke at length of the evolution of women's colleges, their methods, their advantages, their limitations; he touched upon the salient points of difference between a man's college life and that of a girl; differences of character, of interests, of methods of work. And then he went on :

"I believe in it-I believe firmly in the modern education of woman. It is one of the things of most vital interest to me; but my enthusiasm does not blind me. There are phases of it which I do not endorse. I object to many of its results. The most obvious bad result is the exaggerated importance which the very phrase has assumed." He smiled plaintively around upon the company. Are we to have nothing but woman's education-toujours l'éducation de la femme? There is such eagerness to get to college, such blind belief in what is to be learned there, such a demand for a college education for women, that we are overwhelmed by it. Every year these doors are closed upon hundreds of disappointed women who turn elsewhere, or relin

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quish the much-prized college education. The day is not far distant when it will be a distinct reproach to a woman that she is not college-bred." He looked down thoughtfully and intently and spoke more slowly.

"It is this phase of it which sometimes troubles me. Life is so rich in experiences for woman-so much richer and fuller for woman than for man -that I tremble at this violent reaction from nature to art. To-day woman seems to forget that she must learn to live, not live to learn. At the risk of being branded as 'behind the times,' of being considered narrow, bigoted, old-fashioned, I must say that until woman re-discovers that life is everything, that all she can learn here in a hundred times the four years of her college course, is but the least part of what life and nature can teach her, until then I shall not be wholly satisfied with the modern education of woman."

When he ceased there was an awkward and significant silence, and the editor looked over at him and smiled and shook his head reprovingly. And then the President got up quickly and with a few graceful, apropos remarks she restored good - humor, and taking the arm of the distinguished divine, led the way from the dining-hall to the reception-rooms, and people jostled each other good-naturedly, and edged themselves between chairs and tables to speak to acquaintances, and there was much laughter and questioning and exclamations of surprise and delight, until finally the long procession got itself outside the dining-hall into the big corridors.

At the door Professor Arbuthnot caught sight of Miss Ellis again. She beckoned to the girl, who came quickly toward her.

"I am tired and am going to my rooms for a while, will you come?" The girl blushed again with pleasure and some embarrassment.

"I should be delighted," she said simply, and together they walked down the broad hall-way.

"It's very good of you," she broke in nervously looking down at the small, quiet figure beside hers-she was head and shoulders taller than the Professor.

"It has been four years--I can hardly believe it," said the girl, softly. She wondered vaguely what on earth Miss Arbuthnot could wish to see her forshe had been anything but a favorite with the faculty as a student, but she felt very much flattered and very nervous at the attention bestowed upon her.

When she reached Professor Arbuthnot's rooms, the embarrassment she had felt at being noticed by so distinguished a member of the faculty, visibly increased.

The place was so typical-the absence of all ornament and feminine bric-a-brac

the long rows of book-shelves filled with the most advanced works on natural sciences, the tables piled up with brochures and scientific magazines, enveloped her in an atmosphere of profound learning quite oppressive. She had never been in the room but once before, and that was on a most inauspicious occasion - just after the midyear's. She wondered uneasily, and yet with some amusement, if Professor Arbuthnot remembered the circumstance. But that lady was not thinking of the young girl. She was busy with her mail, which had just been brought in, opening and folding up letter after letter in a quick, methodical way.

"More work for me," she said, smiling; "here is an invitation to deliver. six lectures on electro-optics." The girl looked at her admiringly.

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"Absolutely I've forgotten the very meaning of the words; and as for lecturing!" she broke off with a little laugh. "Are you going to give them?" Yes it makes a great deal of work for me, but I never refuse such invitations. Besides I shall be able to take these lectures almost bodily from a little book I am getting out." Professor Arbuthnot went over to the desk and lifted up a pile of manuscript, and smiled indulgently at the girl's exclamation of awe.