to live in the same town. We
went to the same school." And with a friendly smile she gave me her
hand.

What did I say? I do not know. But I am sure I gave no sign of the
clamor within. I had not cultivated surface-calm all those years in
vain. I talked, and she talked--but I saw only her face, splendid
fulfilment of the promise of girlhood; I hardly heard her words, so
greatly was her voice moving me. It was an unusually deep voice for a
woman, sweet and with a curious carrying quality that made it seem
stronger than it was. In figure she was delicate, but radiant of life
and health--aglow, not ablaze. She was neither tall nor short, and was
dressed simply, but in the fashion--I heard the other women discussing
her clothes after she left. And she still had the mannerism that was
most fascinating to me--she kept her eyes down while she was talking or
listening, and raised them now and then with a full, slow look at you.

When Mrs. Liscombe asked her to come to dinner the next evening with the
people she was visiting, she said: "Unfortunately, I must start for
Washington in the morning. I am overhauling my school and building an
addition."

It had not occurred to me to think where she had come from or how she
happened to be there, or of anything in the years since I was last with
her. The reminder that she had a school came as a shock--she was so
utterly unlike my notion of the head of a school. I think she saw or
felt what was in my mind, for she went on, to me: "I've had it six years
now--the next will be the seventh."

"Do you like it?" I asked.

"Don't I look like a happy woman?"

"You do," said I, after our eyes had met. "You are."

"There were sixty girls last year--sixty-three," she went on. "Next year
there will be more--about a hundred. It's like a garden, and I'm the
gardener, busy from morning till night, with no time to think of
anything but my plants and flowers."

She had conjured a picture that made my heart ache. I suddenly felt old
and sad and lonely--a forlorn failure. "I too am a gardener," said I.
"But it's a sorry lot of weeds and thistles that keeps me occupied. And
in the midst of the garden is a plum tree--that bears Dead Sea fruit."

She was silent.

"You don't care for politics?" said I.

"No," she replied, and lifted and lowered her eyes in a slow glance that
made me wish I had not asked. "It is, I think, gardening with weeds and
thistles, as you say." Then, after a pause: "Do _y