SHE was gazing discontentedly at her own slender feet, but the fault was not with them; what caused the frown between her delicate eyebrows was the conviction that her new room-mate was not an interesting girl. The photographs and belongings set forth on her small dressing-table looked very uninteresting. Genevieve noticed among these a large picture of a boy, his eyes looking out with rustic, embarrassed alertness; his starched low collar revealing an unbecoming length of neck; his hair brushed straight up from his forehead in a manner that she particularly disliked.

Genevieve had a great impatience of the commonplace; her soul went forth eagerly to the uncommon, the beautiful, and, above and beyond all else, to the heroic. Now she turned suddenly and surveyed with a slowly kindling eye the three framed photographs on the wall above her bed. They all were there - her heroes: Nathan Hale, in his young, heroic beauty; Nelson, with its look of boyish wistfulness; and the dreaming, absent, sad, far-seeing eyes of General Gordon. Then, with a deep sigh of contentment, she viewed on her own dressing-table her beautiful sister, slim and fascinating in her furs, her brother, impressive in his cadet's uniform, and cast a pitying glance at the photographs of the other girl. If she had had to live with people as commonplace as that, how afflicting might life have been! But, after all, was n't it rather small-minded and prying to sit and stare in a critical spirit at another girl's dearest possessions? She threw herself back on the bed; the question revolved dreamily in her mind, and, tired with traveling and unpacking, she was presently asleep.

scanty hair, was outlined against the white square of the window, showing a long, plain, delicate profile, the pointed chin held deprecatingly forward. She was looking at something on the wall, a tablet on which Genevieve had copied Emerson's solemn lines beginning: Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days.

"Probably she 's thinking how queer I am to pin up writing," thought Genevieve; and having indulged in a momentary pity for herself at the prospect of rooming with that girl, she sat up with an impulse of kindness.

"How do you do?" she said. "I think you must be my new room-mate, Miss Stebbins. Excuse me for being asleep instead of doing the honors. I have the right to do the honors of this room, because I 've had it two years. suppose they told you my name Genevieve Clark ?" She advanced toward Miss Stebbins, holding out her hand and smiling.

I

Miss Stebbins turned with a confused murmur of response. She had dark gray eyes in a face of singular pallor, and the deprecating attitude of her head was repeated in her expression. Miss Stebbins was evidently very shy.

Genevieve lingered a moment, making conversation; then hilarious voices on the stairs warned her of the arrival of some more of the "old girls," Elsie Bruce was among them, she could hear her laughing,— and, abruptly excusing herself, she hastened to greet them.

Elsie Bruce or one of the old girls. If Miss Burton had n't arranged things so awkwardly! One Saturday afternoon Elsie came to her door with one of the new girls, and finding Genevieve alone,- Esther had gone out with one of the teachers, they entered and made merry. The two Cartwrights, hearing sounds of revelry, came in from across the hall, and the mirth increased till nearly all the rooms in the upper hall had sent guests to Number Seven. The new girl, Amy Folsom, was the only uncongenial spirit. Genevieve heartily disliked her, and could not see why Elsie had taken her up. "She is such a little snob," she had had occasion more than once to declare wrathfully to herself. But Amy's haughty little face, framed in its dense, full puff of black hair, had assumed an expression decidedly bored. She showed her pretty teeth at the jokes, and once in a while said one of her bright things; even Elsie thought she had "such a cute little way." She was sitting by Esther's dressing-table, and presently she said to Genevieve, turning her head with a sidelong glance:

"Is n't that boy the funniest thing?" Genevieve colored. "I don't understand. How-funny?" she said.

Amy gave her little smile. "He looks as if he were saying, 'Nothing else to-day?' Mary," she added, turning to one of the Cartwrights, "did you ever see anything so funny as that hair-cut?"

Mary Cartwright looked around and laughed. Genevieve flushed angrily.

"Just please remember that Miss Stebbins is my friend, girls," she said. And then she looked up and saw Esther standing in the door of the room. That she had heard Amy's last speech Genevieve instantly divined. Her face was white, and it quivered; her eyes, for an instant, over all their startled faces, flew to the pictured face on the table. In the next moment her self-consciousness returned. She stood there, awkward, plain, and a victim to shyness. "Do move, some of you girls, and let Miss Stebbins come in," said Genevieve. She had never brought her friendship to the point of calling her room-mate by her first name. "There's lots of room over here by me -if you can only make your way here."

"Oh, I won't come in now," said Esther. "I forgot to speak to Miss Maybough about something-there was something-" Her voice murmured in her throat; she turned away, and they heard her going downstairs. "Gracious!" said Mary Cartwright. "I'm awfully sorry."

"So am I," said Genevieve; "but it can't be helped now. Perhaps she did n't hear what we were saying. Anyway, worry won't help it. Have some candy."

Having, like a dutiful hostess, set her startled guests more or less at ease, she indulged in a small tempest of inward indignation, and when they all had gone, she shed, in the twilight, a few vexed tears. Then the incident was forgotten.

That evening the photograph disappeared, and Genevieve saw it no more until the week before commencement, when Esther Stebbins was packing her things to go home. She was leaving early, and she was not coming back the next year. Genevieve, kind and a little remorseful, was helping her to pack her trunk. Esther was emptying one of her boxes, and dropped something to the floor with a little clatter. Genevieve sprang to pick it up; it was the boy's picture, unseen since that unlucky Saturday afternoon.

"Is this your brother?" she asked, not liking to hand it to Esther in silence. "Yes." Esther flushed darkly, and Genevieve felt herself coloring, too. "How nice," she said confusedly. "Nearly your age, is n't he? Is he going to college?" "He was going." The girl's eyes, fixed on the photograph, filled with slow tears, and her mouth twisted. "He died last summer."

"Oh," cried Genevieve, shocked and dismayed, "I beg your pardon! I'm so sorry. Why did n't you tell me?" Her words merged themselves in a kiss as she put her arms around Esther. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "It was because he was so unselfish," Esther went on, in a choked voice. "Our uncle, the one who brought us up, said if Henry graduated at the head of his class he could go to college, and if he did n't he would have to go right to work in the bank. He was never very fond of us,- Henry and me,- but Henry was very bright, and Uncle Bert was willing to be proud

of him. And all the last year Henry was at the high school, when he was working the hardest, he spent every evening with a schoolmate who had been hurt in an accident. I used to hear him come in, night after night, about eleven-it was a long walk from our house. One night it was just before examinations I went down and found him with a wet towel around his head, staring at his book in such a queer, troubled way. He said: 'I don't know what ails me, Esther. These things are all mixed up. Won't you just try hearing me through once?' But when he tried he could n't say three words. And when I exclaimed that he had been giving up too much time to Jim Bolton, he said " Esther's voice half broke "he said: "Well, it's almost over now, and poor old Jim, he had to be first anyway. It's hard enough for him with all that we fellows can do.' He said we fellows,' but he was the only one who had been faithful, who had n't grown forgetful and careless- though, of course, they all meant to be kind. Then examinations came on, and he failed in subject after subject. And then he was awfully ill. It was overwork, and the dreadful disappointment at the end. Poor Henry! it was so nearly over-that night."

"Oh," said Genevieve, reverently. She took the picture and gazed through tears at the alert, boyish face with the consecration of unselfish death upon it. She realized that in his way this also was a hero, who had put his love for his friend before his ambition, and had sealed the sacrifice with his life. "Thank you for telling me," she said. Then, impulsively, she added: "I wish you had told me before. wish I had known you better."

I

"It

"Then I will tell you something else," said Esther. She was going on with her packing, hurrying a little, for the expressman was impending, and she spoke with the sudden astonishing eloquence of a clever, shy girl who breaks for a moment the barriers of her prison. was the first day I was here - you know, I came in when you were lying on the bed, and it was dusky, and I did n't see you. But I saw your pictures, Nathan Hale and Nelson, and that poem, I have always liked it so much,and I felt so happy just for a moment. I thought I had found a girl who cared for just the things

that I did, and that I would have a real friend at last. Then suddenly I saw you lying there asleep, and I knew it would never be. You were too pretty and too graceful, and your hair was too curly, and your feet were too small, and your clothes were too lovely, and I knew you were n't for me. But you 've been something better than a real friend. You've been the perfect ideal of all that I ever imagined a girl could be. You 've never disappointed me."

"Oh, don't, don't!" Genevieve cried, covering her face. "I'm not nice at all. I'm a conceited, stupid little wretch

"There's the expressman coming upstairs," said Esther. "I must go. I have n't said good-by to Miss Burton and the others." She drew Genevieve's hands away from her face, and looked at her for a long moment with her clear, sad eyes. Then she kissed her and was gone.

Genevieve stood alone, looking around the little room. The expressman thumped noisily out with the trunk; she heard the rattle of the departing stage that bore away Esther Stebbins. She looked at the empty dressing-table, the neatly made bed,- Esther's bed always looked neater than hers, and a great aching regret came over her.

This was the girl who would have understood, the girl who loved her heroes, the sister of a hero. It was she herself who had been commonplace, looking on the outside, judging from the outside as Amy Folsom might have done. She found herself gazing absently at the verse on the wall:

To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars

The last lines broke upon her consciousness with a sudden sharp significance as if she read them for the first time:

I, in my pleachèd garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Yes, she had taken over-hastily what each day offered - the careless good times, the fun; she had let a great friendship pass her by.