She and her mother had completed their world trip; had come back across America; and she had begun her college studies. She had counseled other girls’ love affairs. She had been bridesmaid at many weddings. She had beheld love in all its wealth of tenderness and idealism; and she had seen it defiled and degraded to brutish lust. She knew what love could do, that it was very beautiful and much to be desired. Yet she had a feeling that when she loved, it would be with a force and passion that would melt down the world—her world—and recast it. She must proceed carefully and tolerate no blunders. The name “Old Mother Hubbard” still clung to her. She could not always approach her medical studies in that cold, impersonal way she felt was necessary for professional success. Human beings were always human beings, never biological cases for the application of abstract logic or the working out of a theorem. At times she wondered if she were constituted to make a success of medicine, particularly obstetrics. She almost believed a course in nursing would have supplied that hunger in her heart to alleviate suffering. But there were so many nurses—the life was at times so proscribed and mechanical—— It was queer that Amos Ruggles had chosen that particular time to make his call. Because a month before, her roommate of the past year had suddenly abandoned her studies to become a wife, had written back from Japan how much her life had been changed and enriched, contending that the course which Madelaine had elected was unnatural and would never wholly bring her Woman Happiness. That hurt most of all. Because of late Madelaine had begun to doubt it herself. And yet, marrying Gordon! Anybody but Gordon! The fellow had a dread influence over her. She could not describe it. It was cruelly mesmeric. It seemed to have persisted, in spite of all the man’s behavior, since the first day she had beheld his hot young gaze upon her. He had challenged her foster-mother that in the end he would win her, by fair means or foul. Consistently through the past decade he had kept in touch with her. Something in his eyes declared, “Fight as much as you wish, my pretty lady; I’ll have my way in the end.” Now it was plain that Gordon wanted her, as a man; he must have conveyed that desire to his family or Amos never would have made his call. If Gordon persisted long enough, would he break through her defenses and bear her away in spite of herself? No, no, no! Romance! What was romance? The girl went back to her study table and tried to continue her thesis. It was banal and lifeless and drab. Romance! What was romance! She threw down her fountain pen and cupped her cheeks with her hands. Straight before her on the wall was a long, narrow, copper-hued frame. Inside it, a liberal expanse of brown mapping. In the center of the mapping was a faded strip of news-print. Why was she saving that poem? Who was Nathaniel Forge and why should he write such a poem?