Home? Young Jeremy Robson felt a loathly distaste for his quiet room up off the campus. But so he felt a loathly distaste for the whole of that hollow and lifeless shell about him, which had so lately been the world of his crowded, vigorous interests. Man delighted him not; no, nor woman, either; not even the pride of his work and his satisfaction in having become something of a figure, though in a minor degree, locally. He hungered, with the intensity of a self-willed and rather lonely nature, for the sight and sound and essence of Marcia Ames who was some weeks and Heaven only knew how many miles away from him. Young Jeremy Robson had suffered as severe a hurt as youth can suffer and still continue to be youth. He wandered idly up the Nicklin Avenue hill and turned into the shaded sweetness of Montgomery Street. Miss Letitia Pritchard was at her hedge-row, cutting roses. She was a placid and vigorous mite of a woman, unfaded at fifty, sweet and hardy and fresh-hued and rugged like a late, frost-resisting apple. “How hot and tired you look!” was her greeting across the barrier of bloom and fragrance. “Come in and I’ll give you some iced ginger-and-lemon.” She led the way to a dwarfish table in a fairy grotto of rocks and climbing flowers. “Are you never coming to see me any more?” “I didn’t know you’d care to have me,” he replied, exactly like a forlorn small boy. “Your rival, Buddy Higman, comes every day. Though that’s partly business. But he always starts in by asking, ‘Heard from Her, again, Miss Letty?’” Her visitor gave her a grateful look. “What do you hear, Miss Pritchard?” “My young and dangerous cousin is dashing about New York at a great rate,” she informed him, “enjoying life to the utmost.” “Then she has n’t sailed yet.” “She sails in a fortnight.” “Does she say anything about coming back?” The rosy spinster shook her head. “Not a word. But then, Marcia does n’t say things. She does ’em.” “Do you think she will come back--some time?” “Probably not. I think she will--well, do what is best for her. Without being at all a selfish person, Marcia has a singular instinct for doing what is best for herself. In the real sense, I mean.” Undoubtedly! reflected young Mr. Jeremy Robson. She had done the best thing for herself in judging him and finding him lacking. Acceptance of which fact gave to his face an expression which caused Miss Pritchard to look the other way. Presently she went to a shelf in the nook and brought out an envelope which she placed in her caller’s hand. “Are n’t they good!” said she. He smoothed out the curving paper, and Marcia’s own face smiled forth its quaint and inscrutable witchery at him. “I took it the day before she went away. There’s one to spare,” she suggested. “Do you think she’d want me to have it?” he asked, his hungry gaze set upon the little print.