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10
FIDELIA

versity; some of the houses on both sides of this street were, possibly, the homes of families without intimate connection with the college; but most were surely the dwellings of professors and instructors or were fraternity houses and rooming houses for students. There were many large residences alight below and, more characteristically, aglow from the lights in ten or a dozen windows on the second and third floors of each. Here was the place where the students lived, Fidelia recognized—ten or twenty girls together in one house and as many men rooming in the next.

They would prove to have come from everywhere and they would be no ordinary people; for each lighted window here must represent a separate and definite will and ambition of some one—at least of a parent or a brother or sister or friend for each some one up there on the other side of every window blind; each glow suggested a self-denial, a sacrifice and a determination of the various sorts with which Fidelia had become familiar. They would be selected and privileged people sent—or having come of their own will and by their own effort—from farms and little towns and cities in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska and Michigan; from Ohio, Texas and Nevada; from Washington and from New York state and New England; from South America a few, undoubtedly, and from Europe and even from China and Japan.

Her glimpse of their many second and third-floor windows alight stirred Fidelia to a warm and excited impatience; it was more like coming home than she had supposed it could be. Here she was once more