a perennial interest in the separate personalities, and endure weariness for the sake of an uncertain influence; or she could mass them frankly as the student body, and confine the connection to marking their class-room efforts and serving their meat in the dining-room. The latter was at once more honest and more easy; all but the most ambitious or the most conscientious came ta it sooner or later.

The youngest among the assistants, themselves fresh from college, mingled naturally enough with the students; they danced and skated and enjoyed their girlish authority. The older women, seasoned to the life, settled there indefinitely, identified themselves more or less with the town, amused themselves with their little aristocracy of precedence, and wove and interwove the complicated, slender strands of college gossip. But a woman of barely thirty, too old for friendships with young girls, too young to find her placid recreation in the stereotyped round of social functions, that seemed so perfectly imitative of the normal and yet so curiously unsuccessful at bottom—what was there for her?

Her eyes were fixed on the hill-slope view that made her room so desirable. It occurred to her that its changelessness was not necessarily so attractive a characteristic as the local poets practised themselves in assuring her.

A light knock at the door recalled to her the utter lack of privacy that put her at the mercy of laundress, sophomore, and expressman. She regretted that she had not put up the little sign whose "Please do not disturb" was her only means of defence.

"Come!" she called shortly, and the tall girl in the green dress stood in the open door. A strange sense of long acquaintance, a vague feeling of familiarity, surprised the older woman. Her expression changed.

"Come in," she said cordially.

"I—am I disturbing you?" asked the girl doubtfully. She had a pile of books on her arm; her trim jacket and hat, and something in the way she held her armful, seemed curiously at variance with her tam-o'-shantered, golf-caped friends.

"I couldn't find out whether you had an office hour, and I didn't know whether I ought to have sent in my name—it seemed so formal, when it is only a moment I need to see you—"

"Sit down," said the German assistant pleasantly. "What can I do for you?"

"I have been talking with Fräulein Müller about my German, and she says if you are willing to give me an outline for advanced work and an examination later on, I can go into a higher division in a little while. Languages are always easy for me, and I could go on much quicker."

"Oh, certainly. I have thought more than once that you were wasting your time. The class is too large and too slow. I will make you out an outline and give it to you after class to-morrow," said the German assistant promptly. "Meanwhile, won't you stay and make me a little call? I will light the fire and make some tea, if that is an inducement."

"The invitation is inducement enough, I assure you," smiled the girl, "but I must not stay to-day, I think. If you will let me come again, when I have no work to bother you with, I should love to."

There was something easily decisive in her manner, something very different from the other students, who refused such invitations awkwardly, eager to be pressed, and when finally assured of a sincere welcome, prolonged their calls and talked about themselves into the uncounted hours. Evidently she would not stay this time; evidently she would like to come again.

As the door closed behind her the German assistant dropped her cordial smile, and sank back listlessly in her chair.

"After all, she's only a girl!" she murmured. For almost an hour she sat looking fixedly at the unlit logs, hardly conscious of the wasted time. Much might have gone into that hour. There was tea for her at one of the college houses—the hostess had a "day," and went so far as to aspire to the exclusive serving of a certain kind of tinned fancy biscuit every