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FIDELIA

she came up the walk alone and they did not encounter each other until they were entering the class-room.

Everybody was watching them; for already everybody knew that it was "over" between Alice and Dave; and everybody knew why as certainly as though her cry to him in the cab, when she struck him with her little fist, had resounded through Willard: "I'll never say it! Never! Never!" They knew Alice would never have said it; they had been waiting for him to jilt her for Fidelia Netley. Now they knew that he had done it and here, coming to class again, was Alice.

She looked up at him and she was white but she was calm; quietly she said: "Good morning, David."

He quivered as he replied to her, in almost the same words. With himself, he realized: "She's not quitting. I didn't know her when I supposed she might."

Tremendously this sight of him stirred her that morning. It was far more than she had expected; she had thought that, when she saw him, some change in him, in his physical appearance, would lessen her longing for him. But he was not changed; nothing seemed changed in this class-room after the lecture began. There he was seated before her in his accustomed place; here she was in hers, watching him, dreaming about him. No! No more of that; she dare not let herself relax and dream; for, if she did, she must go through the agony of realization again. She could not bear that.

But what, what was different? There he was; here she was, where she had been happy through so many hours like this because of her nearness to him. It became more incredible, not less, now that she saw