in the doorway, but this was the only impression of him I could
recall. While he was bending over Freddie in professional solicitude,
I effected a stealthy retreat by the door that led into the garden and
saw no more of him.

In less than a month afterwards I was bending over my Algebra in the
study hall of the dear old Abbey, striving most perseveringly to
master an obstinate, unknown quantity that baffled me considerably. I
did not suspect that I was then setting myself a double task of this
nature, or that many another girl, besides myself, had first begun to
chase some "unknown" phantom through the intricate stages of life at
the same time that she was puzzling over the hidden meaning of an
algebraic equation.

I had worked at my task with a steady perseverance for nearly an hour,
but other things distracted me and I could not succeed with it. I laid
one cheek pensively in the palm of my idle hand and with the other,
which held my busy pencil, I played a random tattoo on my desk. Before
me on my paper was a confused multitude of a's and y's and z's which I
had failed to master with any satisfaction, although I had repeated
many a patient effort with placid, hopeful, good-humor.

Other thoughts quite alien to the subject I was then studying, began
to suggest themselves as a sort of refreshment to my mind. My vacation
at home among worldly people and pursuits seemed to have thrown open
before my eyes the hitherto undreamt of arena of active experience,
and whether I willed it or not my memory dwelt persistently at
intervals upon all I had seen, and heard, and done during the fleeting
summer months.