The likeness she had seen in the glass was gone now.  She was not like Arthur at all; it was madness in her to have thought so.  And she was not like Gretchen either.  Her mother was lying under the little pine tree which she and Harold had planted above the lonely grave.  Her mother had been dark, and coarse, and bony, and a peasant woman—­so Ann Eliza Peterkin, who had heard it from her father, had told her once, when angry with her, and Harold, when sorely pressed, had admitted as much to her.

‘Dark, with large, hard hands,’ he had said; and Jerrie with the great tears shining in her eyes, had answered, indignantly: 

’But hard and black as they were, they always touched me gently and tenderly, and sometimes I believe I can remember just how lovingly and carefully they wrapped the old cloak around me to keep me warm.  Dear mother, what do I care how black she was, and coarse.  She was mine, and gave her life for me.’

This was when Jerrie was a child, and now that she was older she was seeking to put away this woman with the dark face and the coarse hands, and substitute in her place a fairer, sweeter face, with hands like wax and features like a Madonna.  But only for a few moments, and then the wild dream vanished, and the sad, pale face, the low voice, the music, the trees, the flowers, the sick-room, the death-bed, the woman who died, and the woman who served, all went out together into the darkness, and she was Jerrie Crawford again, wearing her commencement dress to please the man still pacing the floor abstractedly, and paying no heed to her when she went out to change her dress for the blue muslin she bud worn through the day.

When she returned to the parlor she found him seated at the tea-table, which had been laid during her absence.  Taking her seat opposite to him, she made his tea, and buttered his toast, and chatted, and laughed until she succeeded in bringing back a quiet expression to the face which bore no likeness now to her own, but looked pale and haggard as it always did after any excitement.  He was talking of the commencement exercises, and regretting that he could not be present.

‘I may not be home,’ he said.  ’And if I am.  I shall not come.  Crowds kill me, and smells kill me, and we are sure to have both.  I wish I had a different nose, but it is as it was made, and I think I detect some bad odor in here, don’t you?’

Jerrie, who knew from experience that the better way was to humor his fancy, said she did smell something; perhaps it was the carpet, or the curtains, both of which were new.

‘Very likely, and in that case the smell is a clean one,’ he replied, and began again to speak of commencement.

‘Harold is sure to be here,’ he said, ’and he is better than forty old coves like me.  It is astonishing what a fancy I have taken to that young man.  I don’t see a fault in him, except that he is too infernally proud.  Think of his refusing to take any more money from me unless I would accept his note promising to pay it all back in time—­just as if he ever can, or will.’