FIDELIA left Alice and Dave in the hallway of the big, tall, spired building known as "old University"; for she had business with the registrar before she could start classes. Alice and Dave went together into the lecture-room where Dave's attention was soon turned to practical affairs; for this first lecture was on economics and the mention of money in large sums set him to thinking about that ten thousand dollars which he had borrowed to start himself in the automobile agency business.
The lecture-room was large and pleasant, lighted by several tall windows; it had seats for about forty students and Dave had a chair in a position he usually chose, which was about half way back and near, but not on the edge of, the aisle separating the male and female members of the class.
They might sit mixed together; occasionally they did for there was no rule enforcing the ethics of a Quaker meeting; there was merely a custom of separation. So Alice was on the opposite side of the aisle from Dave and her place was a couple of rows behind him; for she liked a position from which she could see him and she had a way of keeping him in sight without even her seatmates suspecting how frequently she gazed at him.
A class with him always made a delightful hour for Alice—a quiet, unhurried hour during which she would consider him with deep, dreaming satisfaction. Here he was near her but making no demand upon her. She liked to have him make demands; how would she ever live without his needing her? But how she liked these hours of nearness to him during which he would completely forget her in his absorption in the work of the class.
She did not mind that he forgot her, though she seldom completely lost her awareness of him; loving him, she loved his way of wholly absorbing himself with an idea. She realized that he ought to take the idea of economics seriously. She had no interest in it for itself; she learned, almost verbatim, important paragraphs of the text-book and so she was sure to "pass" creditably; but this was a course which she had entered because David was in it.
This morning she watched him lose himself in speculation and she guessed that he was visualizing the progress of his ten thousand dollars through the hands of Mr. Snelgrove into the channels of manufacturing and selling effort to which the professor was referring. Ordinarily she would have sat back, half listening, meditative, thoroughly content; but the usual peace and sense of security was gone from her.
Gazing at David, she thought about Fidelia Netley and wondered if she was having any difficulty with the registrar. That was possible if, as Myra believed, Miss Netley had been in trouble elsewhere. How simple for her if Fidelia Netley would not be allowed in college! Then she felt how false and cowardly was such a hope. She would not be afraid of Fidelia Netley! Yet she was more afraid since her walk to college with Miss Netley this morning when everybody had compared them and when David, looking at her past Fidelia Netley, had been disappointed in her. He had not wanted to be but he was! Oh, she had felt that!
How strange that he could forget it and absorb himself in what a lecturer was saying about the law of joint cost. But there David was, listening, making notes, buried in economics as though nothing had happened, while she was waiting for the end of the hour to know whether her world was, after all, to go on as before or whether everything would be changed for her now.
The bell, and the ending of the lecture, brought David back from costs and factors of production. He slipped his note-book into his pocket and stood up, glancing toward the girls and waiting, as the men usually did, for the girls to go first from the class. The opened door let in the chatter and bustle of the hall.
Ten minutes were allowed for changing classes, and for going from building to building; so the students whose next lecture was under the same roof, had liberal time to visit in the hall. On the first floor of "old University," there was much passing to and fro and there the most popular girls—and sometimes the men after a football victory or a class election—held impromptu levee.
A girl was the center of the group now near the bulletin board and Alice knew that girl, without having to look over the heads of others. The college was meeting Fidelia Netley.
Some one, seizing David, was trying to work him into the crowd. "Oh, I know Miss Netley," he said; and he called to her, over the heads, "Fixed up your registration all right?"
"Oh, finely, thanks," Fidelia Netley's voice replied.
So that was settled.
Alice went off to another building for her nine o'clock lecture, which was in a course Dave did not take. Her ten o'clock class also was different from his, but eleven, the hour of the last class of the morning, was a time of their meeting again.
As she returned to old University for this class, she was sure that she would find Fidelia Netley in it, and there she was when Alice and Dave entered the class-room together.
The windows in this room were to the south and, as the clouds which had been rift all morning, now had cleared away, the sun was shining in, yellow and warm. The bright shafts of light gave a comfortable and cozy air to the room, which was not large; and only ten girls and a few more men entered for this class.
Fidelia was sitting by herself in a seat just on the edge of a shaft of the sun. It touched her shoulder when she leaned to her left and suddenly set her hair gloriously aglow under her small toque of mink. Alice almost gasped when she saw her.
Alice wanted to say to herself that Fidelia had placed herself there with forethought and purpose; but Alice honestly could not feel that. What she felt was something far more dismaying to her; it was the sense of natural instinct which this girl had for the sun and which drew her there to the edge of the light as a flower would have been turned or a young, wild animal enticed by the warmth and the light.
Alice looked up at David who was gazing at Fidelia Netley. Of course he was! Alice did not speak; she did not want him to look from Fidelia to her; she could not bear to see the change which would come in his face.
She slipped away and realized that, if she went to her usual seat, she would be beside that girl on the edge of the sun. Alice started elsewhere; then, flushing, she went to her own seat.
"This is fine," Fidelia welcomed her and gave a warm, firm hand. She had taken off her coat and the jacket of her suit was unbuttoned; for it was hot in the room.
Myra came in and sat down beside Alice, while Lan took a seat near Dave. At the start of the lecture, Fidelia opened a new note-book, pulled a silver pencil on a ribbon from her bosom and bent slightly, her hair sometimes in the shadow, sometimes in the sun. Myra began taking notes, also. Alice did not but watched Fidelia's and Myra's hands while they wrote. Myra had a small, practical-looking hand which wrote in clear, plain characters; Fidelia's hands were longer, slender and strong, with beautifully shaped nails. Alice could find no blemish on those hands. Physically, this girl was as nearly perfect as any one Alice had ever seen; and with her beauty went her exuberance of life, her instinct for the sun.
The lecture was not like any other. How could it be? The lecturer was human and had to glance again and again toward that glory on the edge of the sunlight which was a girl slightly bent over while she wrote his words. The boys on the other side of the room looked toward the sunlight often. Lan did and so did David. And to Alice, at least, there was a difference in their glance. When Lan looked at Fidelia Netley, Myra was not disturbed at all; he used often to look over at the girls. But when David looked, Alice went weak; usually in this class, as in the other, Dave never gazed toward the girls.