“Regret marrying Julian? O! Professor Arbuthnot--and then there was little Julian, you know. He was the dearest, the sweetest--wait, I have his picture.” She pulled at a little silk cord about her neck and drew forth a small miniature case. In it, painted on porcelain, was the head of a child with the blond beauty of its mother. As the girl looked at it her eyes filled with tears and she bent over it sobbing and kissing it passionately. “That is all I have to regret,” she said. “He was two years old when he died--that was almost a year ago. I couldn’t tell you what he was like. I think he was the brightest, prettiest, sweetest boy in the world. You ought to have seen his hands and feet--all dimples and soft pinkiness and milky whiteness--and his eyes and long lashes----!” she stopped breathlessly. Professor Arbuthnot looked at her wonderingly. She went over to her and looked down at the crushed figure. “You have loved and loved again and lost. You have been a mother and your child is dead,” she said slowly. “I would sympathize with you if I knew how.” The girl caught her hand. “How kind you are! I never speak of this--I hardly know how I came to do so with you. I am sure I must have wearied you.” She put the locket back and began to draw on her gloves again slowly. Professor Arbuthnot said nothing. In the last hour she had had glimpses of a life and a love [Illustration: “HOW KIND YOU ARE”] she had never known, and the revelation silenced her. She had sometimes reproached herself that the studious calm, the entire absorption of her life in her work had been exaggerated, and as she looked at the slight figure in its black gown, at the pale face with its sombred, youthful beauty, the conviction was borne in upon her, by this little breath from the outside world, by the life of this girl as told by her, that the insularity of her existence had been a mistake. A sudden intense dissatisfaction and impatience with her life took hold upon her. The girl rose to go. She stood there hesitating, embarrassed, as if she wished to ask something, and rather dreaded doing so. “I--I shall have a great deal of time this winter,” she hazarded, twisting the ring of her fan slowly round and round her finger, “and I am going to study--indeed I am!” She glanced up quickly, as if afraid Professor Arbuthnot might be smiling. “I know you think it foolish for me to try, but you don’t know how you’ve inspired me this afternoon!” She went on enthusiastically. “You and everything here make me realize intensely how little I know, and I am going to begin and really learn something. You don’t know how much obliged I’d be if you would tell me a little how to begin--what to start on--something easy, adapted for weak intellects!” She looked up smiling and with heightened color at Professor Arbuthnot. She still stood in so much awe of her and was so afraid of being laughed at! But that lady was not laughing at all. She looked preternaturally grave.