You see I have never been to college. Although I hated boarding-school with all my heart and soul, I have always had a sneaking idea I might have done better at college. I always liked to study and when I became aware of the fact that Juliet--who, though the best and staunchest girl in the world, was never very brainy--was soaring above me in knowledge, I used to be a little envious. It may seem odd to you for a married woman to be trotting across a campus every other day to attend lectures in class-rooms, as if she were an undergraduate, but after my first plunge into that discourse on philosophy by Dr. Van Breeze I never missed a single lecture in the series. I went the next week and the next and the next; and also bolted bravely into a series of French lectures every Monday afternoon. I liked just to sit and breathe the air of those class-rooms. I liked the long line of blackboards covered with unintelligible words that belonged to a previous lecture, the row of felt erasers, the smell of dry chalk-dust. I liked sitting in those studious-looking chairs with a big arm on one side. It was as strange and foreign as a new country in those class-rooms, with the bare maple-tree branches grazing the window-pane, and in my ears the music of the French language which I hadn't heard since I left high school. I was a thousand, thousand miles away from the atmosphere of limousines and Edith, five hundred and two wedding presents, and a wedding-dress that cost two hundred dollars. It was like a distant echo from another world when I received an invitation for a bridge one day from a Mrs. Percival. It had completely escaped my mind that she was one of the individuals who had given me a dozen Dresden plates. Even if I had recollected I shouldn't have accepted the invitation. Why should I put handcuffs on myself again, now I was once free from a bondage that I loathed? I sent a very proper note of regret to Mrs. Percival, pleading a previous engagement. It was true. An old white-haired gentleman whom I often met at Dr. Van Breeze's lectures had asked me to sit beside him that particular afternoon at three o'clock in Tyler Hall. I didn't tell Will about the lectures. He was usually busy at the medical school daytimes, and I was always at home when he arrived at six. I was ashamed to confess to Will that I, who never studied a science in my life, was presuming to attend lectures on the Geology of Fuels and Fluxes (for I took in everything that was starred), the Influence of Science upon Religion, and something about the Law of Falling Spheres. I hated to have him laugh at me, so I kept absolutely quiet on the subject of my ridiculous search for knowledge. I didn't even tell him about my new acquaintances.