thread. . . .  To help and to save for the sheer love of helping and saving is the noblest thing any of us can do—­I feel that.  This must be an old story to you; I’m ashamed that I never saw it all for myself.  It’s as though I had been looking at the world through a blurred window, from a comfortable warm room, when some one came along and brushed the pane clear, so that I could see the suffering and hardship outside, and feel my own duty to go out and help.”

Professor Kelton, spending a day in the city, showed this to Mrs. Owen when she asked for news of Sylvia.  Mrs. Owen kept the letter that John Ware might see it.  Ware said:  “Deep nature; I knew that night she told me about the stars that she would understand everything.  You will hear of her.  Wish she would come here to live.  We need women like that.”

Professor Kelton met Sylvia in New York on her way home for the holidays in her freshman year and they spent their Christmas together in the cottage.  She was bidden to several social gatherings in Buckeye Lane; and to a dance in town.  She was now Miss Garrison, a student at Wellesley, and the good men and women at Madison paid tribute to her new dignity.  Something Sylvia was knowing of that sweet daffodil time in the heart of a girl before the hovering swallows dare to fly.

In the midyear recess of her sophomore year she visited one of her new friends in Boston in a charming home of cultivated people.  The following Easter vacation her grandfather joined her for a flight to New York and Washington, and this was one of the happiest of experiences.  During the remainder of her college life she was often asked to the houses of her girl friends in and about Boston; her diffidence passed; she found that she had ideas and the means of expressing them.  The long summers were spent at the cottage in the Lane; she saw Mrs. Owen now and then with deepening attachment, and her friend never forgot to send her a Christmas gift—­once a silver purse and a twenty-dollar gold piece; again, a watch—­always something carefully chosen and practical.

Sylvia arranged to return to college with two St. Louis girls after her senior Christmas, to save her grandfather the long journey, for he had stipulated that she should never travel alone.  By a happy chance Dan Harwood, on his way to Boston to deliver an issue of telephone bonds in one of Bassett’s companies, was a passenger on the same train, and he promptly recalled himself to Sylvia, who proudly presented him as a Yale man to her companions.  A special car filled with young collegians from Cincinnati and the South was later attached to the train, and Dan, finding several Yalensians in the company, including the year’s football hero, made them all acquainted with Sylvia and her friends.  It was not till the next day that Dan found an opportunity for personal talk with Sylvia, but he had already been making comparisons.  Sylvia was as well “put up” as any of the girls, and he began to note her quick changes of expression, the tones of her voice, the grace of her slim, strong hands.  He wanted to impress himself upon her; he wanted her to like him.