There were wild hours when she longed to cry out to them what one saw from the summit--and hours of tremulous abasement when she asked herself why _her_ happy feet had been guided there, while others, no doubt as worthy, stumbled and blundered in obscurity. She felt, in particular, a sudden urgent pity for the two or three other girls at Mme. Clopin’s--girls older, duller, less alive than she, and by that very token more appealingly flung upon her sympathy. Would they ever know? Had they ever known?--those were the questions that haunted her as she crossed her companions on the stairs, faced them at the dinner-table, and listened to their poor, pining talk in the dim-lit slippery-seated _salon_. One of the girls was Swiss, the other English; the third, Andora Macy, was a young lady from the Southern States who was studying French with the ultimate object of imparting it to the inmates of a girls’ school at Macon, Georgia. Andora Macy was pale, faded, immature. She had a drooping Southern accent, and a manner which fluctuated between arch audacity and fits of panicky hauteur. She yearned to be admired, and feared to be insulted; and yet seemed tragically conscious that she was destined to miss both these extremes of sensation, or to enjoy them only at second hand in the experiences of her more privileged friends. It was perhaps for this reason that she took a wistful interest in Lizzie, who had shrunk from her at first, as the depressing image of her own probable future, but to whom she had now suddenly become an object of sentimental pity. IV MISS MACY’s room was next to Miss West’s, and the Southerner’s knock often appealed to Lizzie’s hospitality when Mme. Clopin’s early curfew had driven her boarders from the _salon_. It sounded thus one evening just as Lizzie, tired from an unusually long day of tuition, was in the act of removing her dress. She was in too indulgent a mood to withhold her “Come in,” and as Miss Macy crossed the threshold, Lizzie felt that Vincent Deering’s first letter--the letter from the train--had slipped from her loosened bodice to the floor. Miss Macy, as promptly noting the fact, darted forward to recover the letter. Lizzie stooped also, fiercely jealous of her touch; but the other reached the precious paper first, and as she seized it, Lizzie knew that she had seen whence it fell, and was weaving round the incident a rapid web of romance. Lizzie blushed with annoyance. “It’s too stupid, having no pockets! If one gets a letter as she is going out in the morning, she has to carry it in her blouse all day.” Miss Macy looked at her with swimming eyes. “It’s warm from your heart!” she breathed, reluctantly yielding up the missive. Lizzie laughed, for she knew better: she knew it was the letter that had warmed her heart. Poor Andora Macy! _She_ would never know. Her bleak bosom would never take fire from such a contact. Lizzie looked at her with kind eyes, secretly chafing at the injustice of fate.