e great horse-shoe below, bald, shaggy, sleek, close-thatched,
or thinly latticed, were equipped with an additional pair of eyes, set
at an angle which enabled them to rake her face as relentlessly as the
electric burners.

In the lull after a speech, the gallery was fluttering with the rustle
of programmes consulted, and Mrs. Sheff (the Brant girl's aunt) leaned
forward to say enthusiastically: "And now we're to hear Mr. Ransom!"

A louder buzz rose from the table, and the heads (without relaxing
their upward vigilance) seemed to merge, and flow together, like an
attentive flood, toward the upper end of the horse-shoe, where all the
threads of Margaret Ransom's consciousness were suddenly drawn into
what seemed a small speck, no more--a black speck that rose, hung in
air, dissolved into gyrating gestures, became distended, enormous,
preponderant--became her husband "speaking."

"It's the heat--" Margaret gasped, pressing her handkerchief to her
whitening lips, and finding just strength enough left to push back
farther into the shadow.

She felt a touch on her arm. "It _is_ horrible--shall we go?" a voice
suggested; and, "Yes, yes, let us go," she whispered, feeling, with a
great throb of relief, _that_ to be the only possible, the only
conceivable, solution. To sit and listen to her husband _now_--how
could she ever have thought she could survive it? Luckily, under the
lingering hubbub from below, his opening words were inaudible, and she
had only to run the gauntlet of sympathetic feminine glances, shot
after her between waving fans and programmes, as, guided by Guy
Dawnish, she managed to reach the door. It was really so hot that even
Mrs. Sheff was not much surprised--till long afterward....

The winding staircase was empty, half dark and blessedly silent. In a
committee room below Dawnish found the inevitable water jug, and filled
a glass for her, while she leaned back, confronted only by a frowning
college President in an emblazoned frame. The academic frown descended
on her like an anathema when she rose and followed her companion out of
the building.

Hamblin Hall stands at the end of the long green "Campus" with its
sextuple line of elms--the boast and the singularity of Wentworth. A
pale spring moon, rising above the dome of the University library at
the opposite end of the elm-walk, diffused a pearly mildness in the
sky, melted to thin haze the shadows of the trees, and turned to golden
yellow the ligh