Yet I might have returned to Nancy if something had not occurred which I would have thought unbelievable:  she began to show a marked preference for Ralph Hambleton.  At first I regarded this affair as the most obvious of retaliations.  She, likewise, had pride.  Gradually, however, a feeling of uneasiness crept over me:  as pretence, her performance was altogether too realistic; she threw her whole soul into it, danced with Ralph as often as she had ever danced with me, took walks with him, deferred to his opinions until, in spite of myself, I became convinced that the preference was genuine.  I was a curious mixture of self-confidence and self-depreciation, and never had his superiority seemed more patent than now.  His air of satisfaction was maddening.

How well I remember his triumph on that hot, June morning of our graduation from Densmore, a triumph he had apparently achieved without labour, and which he seemed to despise.  A fitful breeze blew through the chapel at the top of the building; we, the graduates, sat in two rows next to the platform, and behind us the wooden benches nicked by many knives—­were filled with sisters and mothers and fathers, some anxious, some proud and some sad.  So brief a span, like that summer’s day, and youth was gone!  Would the time come when we, too, should sit by the waters of Babylon and sigh for it?  The world was upside down.

We read the one hundred and third psalm.  Then Principal Haime, in his long “Prince Albert” and a ridiculously inadequate collar that emphasized his scrawny neck, reminded us of the sacred associations we had formed, of the peculiar responsibilities that rested on us, who were the privileged of the city.  “We had crossed to-day,” he said, “an invisible threshold.  Some were to go on to higher institutions of learning.  Others...”  I gulped.  Quoting the Scriptures, he complimented those who had made the most of their opportunities.  And it was then that he called out, impressively, the name of Ralph Forrester Hambleton.  Summa cum laude!  Suddenly I was seized with passionate, vehement regrets at the sound of the applause.  I might have been the prize scholar, instead of Ralph, if I had only worked, if I had only realized what this focussing day of graduation meant!  I might have been a marked individual, with people murmuring words of admiration, of speculation concerning the brilliancy of my future!...  When at last my name was called and I rose to receive my diploma it seemed as though my incompetency had been proclaimed to the world...

That evening I stood in the narrow gallery of the flag-decked gymnasium and watched Nancy dancing with Ralph.

I let her go without protest or reproach.  A mysterious lesion seemed to have taken place, I felt astonished and relieved, yet I was heavy with sadness.  My emancipation had been bought at a price.  Something hitherto spontaneous, warm and living was withering within me.

V.