She glanced at him sharply. Then she bit her lip a little, as she followed him through the crowd at the door, and out upon the campus.

"This is pretty, for a fact, Ted," he said, breaking the silence. "Yale can't show anything to beat this."

"That's very generous of you, Billy," she answered; but her tone lacked its usual vivacity, and her step dragged slightly, as they moved away together among the Chinese lanterns which edged the walks in double line.

The crowd was here, too; but Billy steered her through it, past the houses and the old gymnasium, and out to the far end of the campus. At the steps of the observatory, he halted.

"It's quiet here, and we can get some good of the moon," he said. "Let's sit down here, unless you are afraid of taking cold."

"The idea! I'm not an alum.; besides, it's a warm night."

"How will you stand two commencements, Ted?" he asked, settling himself at her feet and turning to look up at her.

"Better than my gowns will," she said, showing him a long rent in her skirt.

He laughed.

"You always were hard on your clothes, Teddy. I shall never forget the sound of rending garments which heralded your first approach."

"Out of the apple-tree? I remember. I also remember the lecture Hope gave me."

"Those were good old days," he said contentedly, as he opened and shut her fan.

"These are better," she answered, looking down at him, as he sat there in the moonlight. "I can't make it seem as if you ever lived in a chair."

He looked up, shaking back his hair with a quick motion of his head.

"It's over now, thank Heaven! Still, it brought us together, after all.

Teddy, I'm going to miss you. I wish I needn't go."

"But you must," she said hastily, startled at something in his tone. "It isn't everybody who has the double chance to study for his profession and to be treated by Dr. Brunald, at the same time."

"If it only finishes the cure! But two years is such a long time."

"Yes. But I'm going down with your mother to see you off, you know; and then you'll write often."

"Of course. But so much can happen in two years."

"I hope there can. Do you remember my three wishes?"

"No. Yes. Seems to me I do. What were they?"

"It was one day, under the trees in your grounds. I was in a confidential mood, I remember, and I was moved to tell them to you. They included a bicycle, a college course, and a successful career of authorship."

"I remember. You've two of them, Ted; and I believe you'll get the other."

"Wait till you come home. You may find me no nearer the end than I am now."

"I doubt it, Teddy. You've the stuff in you. Write and tell me, when you make your first hit."

"I will. I'm counting on your letters, Billy, for it's going to be very lonely without you." Her lip quivered again, and in the moonlight he saw an odd glitter in her eyes.

He took her hand in his.

"Ted," he said gently; "two years can't make any difference in such a friendship as ours. We've stuck together through thick and thin, and nothing can change us. Two years isn't a very long time to wait, and then, please G.o.d, I shall come home to you all, a strong man. After that, I shall never go away again--to leave you, dear."

The last words were almost inaudible. Then the silence and the moonlight closed in about them.

The chapel was filled to overflowing, the next day, as the procession filed up the middle aisle. Led by the white-gowned ushers, they came slowly onward, faculty and trustees, alumnae and seniors, while above and around them, soft and full by turns, rose the sound of the organ under the masterly touch they knew so well. It was an hour when even the most heedless freshman felt the pain, the almost solemn sadness of the coming parting, yet the full meaning of the commencement day can be realized only by those who are leaving their Alma Mater for the last time.

All too soon, the morning sped away and the president rose to confer the degrees, while a hush, slight, but expectant, crept over the place.

"_Quae primum gradum accedunt._"

At the well-known words, the seniors rose, with Theodora standing at their head. The girl was very pale, and her eyes looked dark and liquid, as she raised them to the president's face. From his seat in the south transept, Billy watched her while she stood there, tall and straight and n.o.ble in her young womanhood, a very daughter of to-day; and, as he looked, within him there strengthened the belief which had been slowly forming and guiding his life ever since the day, more than six years before, when Theodora had come down to him from the old apple-tree. In all those tedious, aching years, Theodora had been his best friend; and now with health and with her before him, he could afford to work, and wait, and hope.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Two years had pa.s.sed away, and The Savins lay basking in the heat of an August noon. Here and there, a broad calladium leaf swayed majestically to and fro in a pa.s.sing breeze, and the locusts sang shrilly in the trees overhead. Upstairs in her own room, Theodora rocked lazily, humming to herself while she darned her stockings.

"Prosaic work!" she said aloud, half whimsically. "The sure forerunner of a prosaic spinsterhood! My plans don't seem to materialize rapidly, and I foresee that I shall go on darning stockings till the end of my days. Bah! how I hate it!" She rolled up her stockings into a ball. "Two years ago, and I was saying good-by to Billy in New York, and we were making great plans for what we were to accomplish. Dear old Billy! I hope he's quite strong by this time. It's almost time for another letter from him, seems to me."

She tossed the ball to the table beside her, and, clasping her hands above her rumpled hair, fell to dreaming. Phebe interrupted her.

"A letter for you, Teddy!" she proclaimed, opening the door and casting the envelope across the room towards her sister.

"From Billy?"

"How should I know? I don't read your letters."

It was the same Phebe, older and taller, but otherwise unchanged. Now her tone was slightly toploftical.

"I didn't suppose you did," Theodora answered, while she rose to pick up the letter. "I can't say you are over-ceremonious with it, Babe."

"Don't care." And Phebe vanished as abruptly as she had come.

The letter was not from Billy. The handwriting was strange; and Theodora turned it over and over nervously, before she ventured to open it. Then of a sudden the color came into her cheeks, and her eyes flashed.

Seizing the letter, she opened the door and ran down the stairs.

"Hope! Hu! Somebody!" she called, with a glad, exultant note in her voice.

She called again. Then she heard Phebe's voice from the lawn.

"I am here. What do you want?"