"Only six weeks," confessed she. "I couldn't afford to stay longer."

"I mean the other sort of school--not the typewriting."

"Oh! Yes," said she. And once more he saw that extraordinary
transformation. She became all in an instant delicately, deliciously
lovely, with the moving, in a way pathetic loveliness of sweet children
and sweet flowers. Her look was mystery; but not a mystery of guile. She
evidently did not wish to have her past brought to view; but it was
equally apparent that behind it lay hid nothing shameful, only the sad,
perhaps the painful. Of all the periods of life youth is the best fitted
to bear deep sorrows, for then the spirit has its full measure of
elasticity. Yet a shadow upon youth is always more moving than the
shadows of maturer years--those shadows that do not lie upon the surface
but are heavy and corroding stains. When Norman saw this shadow upon her
youth, so immature-looking, so helpless-looking, he felt the first
impulse of genuine interest in her. Perhaps, had that shadow happened to
fall when he was seeing her as the commonplace and colorless little
struggler for bread, and seeming doomed speedily to be worsted in the
struggle--perhaps, he would have felt no interest, but only the brief
qualm of pity that we dare not encourage in ourselves, on a journey so
beset with hopeless pitiful things as is the journey through life.

But he had no impulse to question her. And with some surprise he noted
that his reason for refraining was not the usual reason--unwillingness
uselessly to add to one's own burdens by inviting the mournful
confidences of another. No, he checked himself because in the manner of
this frail and mouselike creature, dim though she once more was, there
appeared a dignity, a reserve, that made intrusion curiously impossible.
With an apologetic note in his voice--a kind and friendly voice--he