In the natural course of time, which, when one has numerous queer pains in most unexpected places, is short,—­the professor awoke and lay on his back watching a fly walking around the edge of a rosebud.  Pretty soon the fly flew away—­then the professor thought of something else—­something he had not thought of for some years.  Strange how inactivity of the body affects one.  The professor raised himself in bed with some effort and drew on his dressing gown and slippers.  Then he hobbled across the room, out of the door, and down the hallway towards his study.

At the turn of the narrow corridor the odor of long-hidden dust met him,—­and he hobbled faster.  His lips were set in a manner that was strange to him, and a fear was in his heart—­a fear of the cleanliness which may be akin to godliness, but to which a pressed flower is as the dust upon the walls.  At the door he hesitated, bewildered.  On his desk was heaped a pile of papers, in which letters, lecture notes, old pamphlets, were scattered in contemptuous disorder.  Jane had just dropped an armful into the fire which blazed with that comfortless instability common to paper fires in the daytime.  She had gathered another armful and was advancing toward the hearth, when she saw the apparition in the door-way and stopped.  The professor was paler than usual, and his hands shook a little.

“Do you know what you’re doing, Jane?” he asked, quietly enough.

“Yes,” she answered defiantly, “I do.  You’ve had ’em hanging around long enough.”

“You know whose letters they are?”

“Yes,” she said.  “Why, what—­”

The professor, forgetting his rheumatism, had advanced in two strides, and with one blow knocked the papers from her arms, so that they lay scattered on the floor.

There are wrongs committed against the sacredness of sentiment which cannot be put in words.  The professor checked the torrent which rose to his lips:  Jane would never understand.  The only thing which she did comprehend was a strength in her brother of which she had never dreamed—­not the strength of the worm which turns, but of the man who had endured because he wished to, and whose endurance was at an end.

“You never had a heart, did you, Jane?” he said finally.  “The past is not sacred to you, and the present—–­well, the present does not count for much when one has no dreams—­or visions....  I think, Jane, you had better go.”

“Where?” she questioned vaguely.  There was no asperity in her voice now, only puzzled helplessness.  It was the inevitable surrender of the commonplace in the light of a greater understanding—­in the realization of an unknown law to the significance of which some never attain.  She had come inadvertently to a marriage feast for which she had no wedding garment; and she was naked and ashamed.

“Anywhere—­anywhere; only go,” said the professor.  His thoughts were far away now.

“I shall not come back, professor—­perhaps it is better,” she said.