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wonā€™t find it, and youā€™ll be disappointed.ā€

ā€œWell, I want to hunt around and see, anyhow.ā€

Alice patted his hand. ā€œYou must just be contented, papa. Everythingā€™s going to be all right, and you mustnā€™t get to worrying about doing anything. We own this house itā€™s all clearā ā€”and youā€™ve taken care of mama and me all our lives; now itā€™s our turn.ā€

ā€œNo, sir!ā€ he said, querulously. ā€œI donā€™t like the idea of being the landladyā€™s husband around a boardinghouse; it goes against my gizzard. I know: makes out the bills for his wife Sunday morningsā ā€”works with a screwdriver on somebodyā€™s bureau drawer sometimesā ā€”ā€™tends the furnace maybeā ā€”one the boarders gives him a cigar now and then. Thatā€™s a fine life to look forward to! No, sir; I donā€™t want to finish as a landladyā€™s husband!ā€

Alice looked grave; for she knew the sketch was but too accurately prophetic in every probability. ā€œBut, papa,ā€ she said, to console him, ā€œdonā€™t you think maybe there isnā€™t such a thing as a ā€˜finish,ā€™ after all! You say perhaps we donā€™t learn to live till we die but maybe thatā€™s how it is after we die, tooā ā€”just learning some more, the way we do here, and maybe through trouble again, even after that.ā€

ā€œOh, it might be,ā€ he sighed. ā€œI expect so.ā€

ā€œWell, then,ā€ she said, ā€œwhatā€™s the use of talking about a ā€˜finishā€™? We do keep looking ahead to things as if theyā€™d finish something, but when we get to them, they donā€™t finish anything. Theyā€™re just part of going on. Iā€™ll tell youā ā€”I looked ahead all summer to something I was afraid of, and I said to myself, ā€˜Well, if that happens, Iā€™m finished!ā€™ But it wasnā€™t so, papa. It did happen, and nothingā€™s finished; Iā€™m going on, just the same onlyā ā€”ā€ She stopped and blushed.

ā€œOnly what?ā€ he asked.

ā€œWellā ā€”ā€ She blushed more deeply, then jumped up, and, standing before him, caught both his hands in hers. ā€œWell, donā€™t you think, since we do have to go on, we ought at least to have learned some sense about how to do it?ā€

He looked up at her adoringly.

ā€œWhat I think,ā€ he said, and his voice trembled;ā ā€”ā€œI think youā€™re the smartest girl in the world! I wouldnā€™t trade you for the whole kit-and-boodle of ā€™em!ā€

But as this folly of his threatened to make her tearful, she kissed him hastily, and went forth upon her errand.

Since the night of the tragic-comic dinner she had not seen Russell, nor caught even the remotest chance glimpse of him; and it was curious that she should encounter him as she went upon such an errand as now engaged her. At a corner, not far from that tobacconistā€™s shop she had just left when he overtook her and walked with her for the first time, she met him today. He turned the corner, coming toward her, and they were face to face; whereupon that engaging face of Russellā€™s was instantly reddened, but Aliceā€™s remained serene.

She stopped short, though; and so did he; then she smiled brightly as she put out her hand.

ā€œWhy, Mr. Russell!ā€

ā€œIā€™m soā ā€”Iā€™m so glad to have thisā ā€”this chance,ā€ he stammered. ā€œIā€™ve wanted to tell youā ā€”itā€™s just that going into a new undertakingā ā€”this business lifeā ā€”one doesnā€™t get to do a great many things heā€™d like to. I hope youā€™ll let me call again some time, if I can.ā€

ā€œYes, do!ā€ she said, cordially, and then, with a quick nod, went briskly on.

She breathed more rapidly, but knew that he could not have detected it, and she took some pride in herself for the way she had met this little crisis. But to have met it with such easy courage meant to her something more reassuring than a momentary pride in the serenity she had shown. For she found that what she had resolved in her inmost heart was now really true: she was ā€œthrough with all that!ā€

She walked on, but more slowly, for the tobacconistā€™s shop was not far from her nowā ā€”and, beyond it, that portal of doom, Frinckeā€™s Business College. Already Alice could read the begrimed gilt letters of the sign; and although they had spelled destiny never with a more painful imminence than just then, an old habit of dramatizing herself still prevailed with her.

There came into her mind a whimsical comparison of her fate with that of the heroine in a French romance she had read long ago and remembered well, for she had cried over it. The story ended with the heroineā€™s taking the veil after a death blow to love; and the final scene again became vivid to Alice, for a moment. Again, as when she had read and wept, she seemed herself to stand among the great shadows in the cathedral nave; smelled the smoky incense on the enclosed air, and heard the solemn pulses of the organ. She remembered how the noviceā€™s father knelt, trembling, beside a pillar of gray stone; how the faithless lover watched and shivered behind the statue of a saint; how stifled sobs and outcries were heard when the novice came to the altar; and how a shaft of light struck through the rose-window, enveloping her in an amber glow.

It was the vision of a moment only, and for no longer than a moment did Alice tell herself that the romance provided a prettier way of taking the veil than she had chosen, and that a faithless lover, shaking with remorse behind a saintā€™s statue, was a greater solace than one left on a street corner protesting that heā€™d like to call some timeā ā€”if he could! Her pity for herself vanished more reluctantly; but she shook it off and tried to smile at it, and at her romantic recollectionsā ā€”at all of them. She had something important to think of.

She passed the tobacconistā€™s, and before her was that dark entrance to the wooden stairway leading up to Frinckeā€™s Business Collegeā ā€”the very doorway she had always looked upon as the end of youth and the end of hope.

How often she had gone by here, hating the dreary

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