back and finds her waiting.

But to-day, what is this she is saying? Who is the beautiful youth she
is telling about? Adonis? Beloved, did she say, and wounded? Wounded
unto death, but loved and never forgotten, and from whose blood sprang
the windswept petals of anemone----

Miss Beaton's gaze comes back to her school-room and she takes up the
book. The story is told.

Emily had not known that her eyes had filled--tears come so
unlooked-for these days--until the ring on Miss Beaton's hand glistened
and the facets of its jewel broke into gleams.

She caught her breath, she sat up suddenly, for she knew--all at once
she knew--it was Miss Beaton who had been the bride, and the ring was
the sign.

She loved Miss Beaton with a sudden rapture, and henceforth gazed upon
her with secret adoration. She made excuses to consult books in Miss
Beaton's room, that she might be near her; she dreamed, and the
sweetness and the sadness of it centred about Miss Beaton.

She told Rosalie. "Why, of course, I guessed her right at first," said
Rosalie; but she said it jealously, for she, too, was secretly adoring
Miss Beaton.

Emily had been trying to ask Margaret something, but each time the
question stuck in her throat. Now she gathered courage.

It was spring, and the High School populace turned out at recess to
promenade the yard. On the third round about the gravel, in the
farthest corner where a lilac bush topping the fence from next door
lent a sort of screen and privacy, Emily caught Margaret by the arm and
held her back. After that there was no retreat; she had to speak.

"How--how do you do it?" she asked.

"What?" asked Margaret.

"Write?" said Emily, holding to Margaret tight--she had never before
thus laid bare the secrets of her soul.

"Oh," said Margaret, and her lips parted and her face lighted as she and
Emily gazed into each other's eyes, "you just feel it and then you
write."

There was a time when Emily would have asked, "Feel what?" "It" as used
by Margaret was indefinite, but Emily understood. You just feel it and
then you write.

In her study hour Emily took her pencil and, with Latin Grammar as
barrier and blind to an outside world, bent over her paper. She did not
speak them, those whispers hunting the rhyme: she only felt them, and
they spoke.

She did not know, she did not dream that she was finding the use, the
purpose for it all, these years of the climb toward knowledge. Some day
it would