In the order in which they were to sit upon the platform, the class fell into line. The sidewalk cleared of a waiting crowd of unfortunates who had not the clothing or the invitation to enter the coveted portals, who yet had come to press back into the darkness and watch the spectacle. As Mahala advanced up the broad walk that led to the front steps of the church, there came scuffling through the crowd, she could not have told from where, a figure in white, as white as the new-born thoughts of white that contributed to her own dress. She realized that there was a catching and a snatching, an effort to make some one pause, and then she saw, scurrying up the steps before her, standing in the broad light of the open doors of the church, her bonnet lost in the crowd, Rebecca, her white flag lifted above the path the graduating class must follow to enter the doors. The figures of two working men in their shirt sleeves, with rough jests on their lips and their hands outstretched, started forward. Mahala looked up. Her first thought was that never in all her life had she seen a figure so appealingly beautiful. Probably no one in all that crowd, since the day of her self-imposed appearance with sheltered face as the bearer of the flag advocating purity, had seen Rebecca Sampson as she really was. The years untouched by mental strain had left her the lovely rounded face of girlhood. The deeply shadowing headpiece, always stiffly starched and filled in with sustaining slats of pasteboard, had kept Rebecca’s complexion that of a little child. Her hands and arms were soft and white. Her throat, delicately rounded, was a miracle of whiteness. The plain white dress that she wore was as mistily white as the petals of a cherry bloom. The fringed flag that she held in Mahala’s pathway was as white as her dress. Suddenly Mahala threw out her hands. “Never mind!” she cried to the men. “Let her alone! I have been passing under her flag all my life.” She smiled on the crowds pressing forward on either side of her. “You know,” she said, “somehow this seems fitting. I rather like the idea of passing under Becky’s emblem of purity on Commencement night.” She half turned and called back to the other boys and girls: “Come on! Let’s all pass under the white flag with Becky’s blessing. Maybe it will help us to remember our speeches.” She raised her skirts and stepped into the full blaze of light falling from the church doors, and like a misty veil of purity, she shimmered and gleamed as she climbed the steps. Her head was as yellow as sunshine, her eyes were deep wells of blue-gray, and her long, dark lashes swept her pink cheeks, while the smile with which she went toward Rebecca seemed to Jason, crowded tightly against the wall of the church looking up at her, the loveliest thing that this world could possibly have to offer. To him the gold head and the billowing skirts of gauzy fineness made Mahala look like a gold-hearted white rose.