t with a quiet
conscience and a strengthened determination never to become one among
such people. We would even see the gay flutter of skirts sometimes, as
the waiter entered one of the private rooms with an armful of dishes,
and hear the chatter and laughter of the wearers.

We did not wonder, therefore, at George's preference for his own office,
whose four walls had never looked down upon anything but innocent young
fellows smoking and talking whatever harmless nonsense came into their
heads, or playing chess or penny-ante, or upon his own generous thoughts
and solitary contemplations, or hard work on some intricate lawsuit. So
we aroused the sleeping waiter, and walked back to the Academy of Music
building in silence.

"It is rather a long story," said George, when we had at last made
ourselves comfortable, "and I have never told it before. I don't know
why I should tell it now, but somehow I want to. I felt this evening
after I left the Capitol that I would, and I asked leave of Mrs. Herbert
while we were walking to her home together. I knew she would let me: I
am the only friend, I suppose,--the only real friend, I mean, whom she
trusts and treats as an intimate friend,--that she has in the world. I
know I am the only person who knows the whole story of her sad life.

"When I was in the university," he slowly continued, holding his cigar
in the gas-jet and turning it over and over between his fingers, with an
evident air of collating his reminiscences, "Phil Kendall and I were
great friends. I don't know how we ever came to be so: it was natural, I
suppose, for us to like each other. I used to notice that he did not
associate much with the other fellows; and yet he was the best runner
and boxer in the class. He was the only fellow in the university who
could do the giant swing on the bar, and, though he had never taken
lessons, it was next to impossible for any one but Wayland, the
sub-professor in chemistry, to touch him with the foils. Somehow we were
drawn together, and before long were hardly ever apart. We used to get
out our Horace together, he with the pony and text and I with the
lexicon, for he was too impatient to hunt up the words. I believe you
study differently now."

"We still have the pony," said Perry.

"And we used to puzzle our heads together over Mechanics, for we didn't
have election as you do, and take long walks, and play chess, and get up
spreads in our room for nobody but us two. Not su