gone to bed but, being sleepless, had risen and sat dreaming before the fire.  The extraordinary whiteness of the moonlight had drawn her to the window when she rose again, and she stood there like a tall lily, looking silent sympathy to the sufferers in the bitter cold outside.  She put one bare arm on the sill of the closed window and looked down at the snow-crystals hardly less brilliant under the moon than they would be under the first sun-rays next morning, looked through the snow-laden branches of the trees, over the white house-tops, and out to the still white fields—­the white world within her answering the white world without as in a dream.  She was thinking of Jason, as she had been thinking for days, for she could not get the boy out of her mind.  All night at the dance she had been thinking of him, and when between the stone pillars of the gateway a figure appeared without overcoat, hands in pockets and a bundle of something under one arm, the hand on the window-sill dropped till it clutched her heart at the strangeness of it, for her watching eyes saw plain in the moonlight the drawn white face of Jason Hawn.  He tossed something on the porch and her tears came when she realized what it meant.  Then he drew a letter out of his pocket, hesitated, turned, turned again, tossed it too upon the porch, and wearily crunched out through the gate.  The girl whirled for her dressing-gown and slippers, and slipped downstairs to the door, for her instinct told her the letter was for her, and a few minutes later she was reading it by the light of the fire.

“I know where you are,” the boy had written.  “Don’t worry, but I want to tell you that I take back that promise I made in the road that day.”

John Burnham’s examination was first for Jason that morning, and when the boy came into the recitation-room the school-master was shocked by the tumult in his face.  He saw the lad bend listlessly over his papers and look helplessly up and around—­worn, brain-fagged, and half wild—­saw him rise suddenly and hurriedly, and nodded him an excuse before he could ask for it, thinking the boy had suddenly gone ill.  When he did not come back Burnham got uneasy, and after an hour he called another member of the faculty to take his place and hurried out.  As he went down the corridor a figure detached itself from a group of girls and flew after him.  He felt his arm caught tightly and he turned to find Marjorie, white, with trembling lips, but struggling to be calm: 

“Where is Jason?” Burnham recovered quickly.

“Why, I don’t believe he is very well,” he said with gentle carelessness.  “I’m going over now to see him.  I’ll be back in a minute.”  Wondering and more than ever uneasy, Burnham went on, while the girl unconsciously followed him to the door, looking after him and almost on the point of wringing her hands.  In the boy’s room Burnham found an old dress-suit case packed and placed on the study table.  On it was a pencil-scribbled note to one of his room-mates: