“My dear boy,” Wayland said, “the amount of Greek which your sister knows or doesn’t know will always be a very unimportant matter; she has things that are so infinitely more valuable to give to the world.  And deserves so much better things for herself,” he added, drawing together his texts for the next recitation.

Lindsay returned to Mrs. Bancroft’s quiet, old-fashioned house in a sort of daze.  “Stella,” he said, “do you think you enter enough into the social side of our college life?”

“No,” she answered.  “But I think neither of us does.”

“Well, leave me out of the count.  If I get through my Junior year as I ought, I am obliged to grind; and when there is any time left, I feel that I must have it for reading in the library.  But it needn’t be so with you.  Didn’t an invitation come to you for the reception Friday evening?”

Her face grew wistful.  “I don’t care to go to things, Lindsay, unless you will go with me,” she said.

Nevertheless, he had his way, and when once she made it possible, opportunities for social pleasures poured in upon her.  As Wayland had said, she was formed for friendship, for joy; and that which was her own came to her unsought.  She was by nature too simple and sweet to be spoiled by the attention she received; the danger perhaps was the less because she missed in it all the comradeship of her brother, without which in her eyes the best things lost something of their charm.  It was not merely personal ambition which kept him at his books; the passion of the scholar was upon him and made him count all moments lost that were spent away from them.  Sometimes Stella sought him as he pored over them alone, and putting her arm shyly about him, would beg that he would go with her for a walk, or a ride on the river; but almost always his answer was the same:  “I am so busy, Stella dear; if you knew how much I have to do you would not even ask me.”

There was one interruption, indeed, which the young student never refused.  Sometimes their Greek professor dropped in at Mrs. Bancroft’s to bring or to ask for a book; sometimes, with the lovely coming of the spring, he would join them as they were leaving the college grounds, and lead them away into some of the woodland walks, rich in wild flowers, that environed the little town.  Such hours seemed to both brother and sister to have a flavor, a brightness, quite beyond what ordinary life could give.  Wayland, too, must have found in them his own share of pleasure, for he made them more frequent as the months went by.

* * * * *

It was in the early spring of her second year at Vaucluse that the accident occurred.  The poor lad who had taken her out in the boat was almost beside himself with grief and remorse.