I wonder why it is that when the stronger sex wishes to appear particularly dignified and impressive, as on the bench or in the pulpit, it likes to don female attire!  No matter whether suffragists or antis—­they all do it.  Now some of these paraders seemed as embarrassed by their skirts as the weaker sex would be without them; but the way Carl wore his new honors and his new doctor’s hood attracted my attention and held it.  He seemed quite aware of the ridiculous aspect of an awkward squad of pedagogues paraded like chorus girls before an audience invited to watch the display; but, also, he actually enjoyed the comedy of it—­and that is a distinction when you are an actor in the comedy!  His quietly derisive strut altogether fascinated me.  “Hurrah!  Aren’t we fine!” he seemed to say.

As the long, self-conscious procession passed where I sat, smiling and unnoticed, he suddenly looked up.  His veiled twinkle happened to meet my gaze.  It passed over me, instantly returned and rested on ray eyes for almost a second.  Such a wonderful second for little me!...  Not a gleam of recollection.  He had quite forgotten that our names had once been pronounced to each other; but in that flashing instant he recognized, as I did, that we two knew each other better than anyone else in the whole assemblage.

The nicest smile in the world said as plainly as words, and all for me alone:  “Hurrah!  You see it too!” Then, with that deliciously derisive strut, he passed on, while something within me said:  “There he is!—­at last!  He is the one for you!” And I glowed and was glad.

Carl informed me afterward that he had a similar sensation, and that all through the long platitudinous exercises my face was a great solace to him.

“Whenever they became particularly tiresome,” he said, “I looked at you—­and bore up.”

I was not unaware that he was observing me; nor was I surprised when, at the end of the exhausting ordeal, he broke through the crowd—­with oh, such dear impetuosity!—­and asked my uncle to present him, while I, trembling at his approach, looked in the other direction, for I felt the crimson in my cheeks—­I who had been out three seasons!  Then I turned and raised my eyes to his, and he, too, colored deeply as he took my hand.

We saw no comedy in what followed.

There was plenty of comedy, only we were too romantic to see it.  At the time it seemed entirely tragic to me that my people, though of the sort classified as cultured and refined, deploring the materialistic tendency of the age, violently objected to my caring for this wonderful being, who brilliantly embodied all they admired in baccalaureate sermons and extolled in Sunday-school.