old torturing question, "Would the summons come
to-day?"

She was still brooding over it when she went downstairs to breakfast.
Stopping in her office, she hastily went over her mail. It was with a
sense of desperate relief that she separated an envelope, bearing the
letter head of Overton College from the little pile of letters on the
slide of her desk, and opened it. It was from President Morton, and
merely stated that he wished her to call at his office at eleven o'clock
that morning.

With the letter in her hand, Grace entered the dining-room. She intended
to show it to Emma, but the latter, who had risen early on account of
some special work she wished to do, had eaten a hasty breakfast and
departed. Grace slipped the letter into her blouse and made a pretense
of eating breakfast. But she had lost all appetite for food. After
sipping part of a cup of coffee she rose from the table and, returning
to her office, opened the rest of her mail.

Under any circumstances but those of the present her letters would have
delighted her. There was one from Eleanor Savelli, written from her
father's villa in Italy, a long lively one from Nora, containing a
breezy account of Oakdale doings, and a still longer letter from Anne.
There was one from Julia Crosby, and an extremely funny note from J.
Elfreda Briggs, describing a visit she had recently made to the night
court.

One by one she read them, then laid them aside with an indifference born
of suffering. If only there had been one for her in Tom's clear, bold
handwriting. But it was useless to linger, even for a moment, over what
might have been. Grace gathered up her letters and, locking them in her
desk, went upstairs, with slow, dragging steps, to dress for her call
upon President Morton.

It was three minutes to eleven when a slim, erect figure walked up the
steps of Overton Hall. Grace wore a smartly tailored suit of white
serge, white buckskin shoes, white kid gloves and a white hemp hat
trimmed with curved white quills. The lining of the hat bore the name of
a famous maker. She had taken a kind of melancholy pride in her toilet
that morning, and the result was all that she could have wished.
Unconsciously the immaculate purity of her costume bespoke the pure,
high, steadfast soul which looked out from her gray eyes. As she paused
at the door for a moment, her hand on the knob, she experienced
something of the thrill of a martyr, about to die for a sacred cause.
T