manner that was
strange to him, and a fear was in his heart--a fear of the cleanliness
which may be akin to godliness, but to which a pressed flower is as
the dust upon the walls. At the door he hesitated, bewildered. On his
desk was heaped a pile of papers, in which letters, lecture notes, old
pamphlets, were scattered in contemptuous disorder. Jane had just
dropped an armful into the fire which blazed with that comfortless
instability common to paper fires in the daytime. She had gathered
another armful and was advancing toward the hearth, when she saw the
apparition in the door-way and stopped. The professor was paler than
usual, and his hands shook a little.

"Do you know what you're doing, Jane?" he asked, quietly enough.

"Yes," she answered defiantly, "I do. You've had 'em hanging around
long enough."

"You know whose letters they are?"

"Yes," she said. "Why, what--"

The professor, forgetting his rheumatism, had advanced in two strides,
and with one blow knocked the papers from her arms, so that they lay
scattered on the floor.

There are wrongs committed against the sacredness of sentiment which
cannot be put in words. The professor checked the torrent which rose
to his lips: Jane would never understand. The only thing which she did
comprehend was a strength in her brother of which she had never
dreamed--not the strength of the worm which turns, but of the man who
had endured because he wished to, and whose endurance was at an end.

"You never had a heart, did you, Jane?" he said finally. "The past is
not sacred to you, and the present---well, the present does not count
for much when one has no dreams--or visions.... I think, Jane, you had
better go."

"Where?" she questioned vaguely. There was no asperity in her voice
now, only puzzled helplessness. It was the inevitable surrender of the
commonplace in the light of a greater understanding--in the
realization of an unknown law to the significance of which some never
attain. She had come inadvertently to a marriage feast for which she
had no wedding garment; and she was naked and ashamed.

"Anywhere--anywhere; only go," said the professor. His thoughts were
far away now.

"I shall not come back, professor--perhaps it is better," she said.

There was a new tone in her voice, and the professor turned sharply.
Jane hesitated. Then he caught sight of a photograph lying among the
letters on the floor.

"That, too," he murmured. He stood and looked at