A large sum would soon be available; so the carrying out of the plans to extend, or, rather, to construct Tecumseh, must be begun.  The trustees commissioned young Hargrave to go abroad at once in search of educational and architectural ideas, and to get apparatus that would make the laboratories the best in America.  Chemistry and its most closely related sciences were to be the foundation of the new university, as they are at the foundation of life.  “We’ll model our school, not upon what the ignorant wise of the Middle Ages thought ought to be life, but upon life itself,” said Dr. Hargrave.  “We’ll build not from the clouds down, but from the ground up.”  He knew in the broad outline what was wanted for the Tecumseh of his dream; but he felt that he was too old, perhaps too rusted in old-fashioned ways and ideas, himself to realize the dream; so he put the whole practical task upon Dory, whom he had trained from infancy to just that end.

When it was settled that Dory was to go, would be away a year at the least, perhaps two years, he explained to Adelaide.  “They expect me to leave within a fortnight,” he ended.  And she knew what was in his mind—­what he was hoping she would say.

It so happened that, in the months since their engagement, an immense amount of work had been thrust upon Dory.  Part of it was a study of the great American universities, and that meant long absences from home.  All of it was of the kind that must be done at once or not at all—­and Work is the one mistress who, if she be enamored enough of a man to resolve to have him and no other, can compel him, whether he be enamored of her or not.  However, for the beginning of the artificial relation between this engaged couple, the chief cause was not his work but his attitude toward her, his not unnatural but highly unwise regard for the peculiar circumstances in which they had become engaged.  Respect for the real feelings of others is all very well, if not carried too far; but respect for the purely imaginary feelings of others simply encourages them to plunge deeper into the fogs and bogs of folly.  There was excuse for Dory’s withholding from his love affair the strong and firm hand he laid upon all his other affairs; but it cannot be denied that he deserved what he got, or, rather, that he failed to deserve what he did not get.  And the irony of it was that his unselfishness was chiefly to blame; for a selfish man would have gone straight at Del and, with Dory’s advantages, would have captured her forthwith.

As it was, she drifted aimlessly through day after day, keeping close at home, interested in nothing.  She answered briefly or not at all the letters from her old friends, and she noted with a certain blunted bitterness how their importunities fainted and died away, as the news of the change in her fortunes got round.  If she had been seeing them face to face every day, or if she had been persistent and tenacious, they would have extricated themselves less abruptly;