spite of her assumption of a
young lady's dress and airs, and she loved him devouringly. She stood
so close to him that she could put her hand on his, as it lay on the
table. Her clear, sweet eyes gazed at him with the confidence and
purity of a child.

It was a relief to Bradley to hear the last bell ring. She withdrew her
hand and threw down the broom which she had been holding in her left
hand. "Oh, that's the last bell. Help me on with my cloak, quick!" He
put her cloak on for her. She stamped her foot impatiently. "Pull my
hair outside!"

He took her luxuriant hair in both his hands, and pulled it outside the
cloak, and fitted the collar about her neck. She caught both his hands
in hers, and looking up, laughed gleefully.

"You dassent kiss me now!"

He stooped and kissed her cheek, and blushed with shame. On the way up
the walk to the chapel, he suffered an agony of remorse. He felt dimly
that he had done his ideal an irreparable wrong. Nettie talked on, not
minding his silence, looking up into his face in innocent glee,
planning some new party or moonlit drive.

All that morning he was too deep in thought to give attention to his
classes, and at noon he avoided Nettie, and went home to think, but try
as he might, something prevented him from getting hold of the real
facts in the case.

He was fond of Nettie. She stood near him, an embodied passion. His
love for Miss Wilbur, which he had no idea of calling love, was a vague
and massive feeling of adoration, entirely disassociated from the
flesh. She stood for him as the embodiment of a world of longings and
aspirations undeveloped and undefined.

One thought was clear. He ought not to allow--that is the way it took
shape in his mind--he ought not to allow Nettie to be seen with him so
much, unless he intended to marry her, and he had never thought of her
as a possible wife.

He didn't know how to meet Russell, so put off going down to his house,
as he had promised. He excused himself by saying he was busy moving,
anyway. He had determined upon taking a boarding-place somewhere in
correspondence with his change of fortunes and when he had spoken of
it, the Judge had said:

"Why not come up to my house? Mrs. Brown and I get kind of lonesome
sometimes, and then I hate to milk, an' curry horses, an' split
kindlings, always did. Come up and try living with us."

Bradley had accepted the offer with the greatest delight. It meant a
great deal to him. It too