The Pulaskian., 1915-02-12
THROUGH A STORY
By WALTER A. FROST.

She knew that she had acted fo1 ! the best, though feeling none of the elation at hard duty done.
 She knew, too, that the renunciation flor it had been that-had left her lit tie strength of courage, not enough for a repetition, if he had come back again.
 But that did not matter now; he had gone away, and-it may have been as she remembered the pain in his eyes when she had said that she could not marry him.
 How strangely things happen, now and then! If his sister had not told her. in that letter, that he would ruin his career if he married now, for he was a young lawyer and needed all his strength and thought for his uphill fight; if that letter had not come just before he came
 But there was less than no use of thinking of it now She would have been drag on him; there would have come anxieties and responsibilities; :; she would h ye done her best to help him, spent herself so gladly, but-well, she was only seventeen, and he needed all his strength and thought for his career!
 To stay in the house meant to think, though she had said she would not, and, in order to find rest in physical weariness, she went out, to walk in the Installing snow
 The sidewalks were unbroken, for it was 6 little town, and she found the effort greater than she had counted on. Yet she kept on, out the deserted street under the heavily laden trees, then back on the other side, past her home, which seemed hateful, just now, and down toward the business section of the town.
 There were lights, here and there, for the storm had brought early dark ness on it's wings. The wind was keen, and she stopped for warmth and light at the little library, absent-mind, edly to look over the new books and magazines.
 No, she did not want anything. she told the librarian. She had come only to-
 And she went out slowly, wondering what made the older woman so mer- cilessly inquisitive.
 As she turned up the street down which she had come, she passed a news stand, buying a paper which the boy proprietor held out to her, then went on, walking with increasing diff culty in the deepening snow. The wind again pervaded her, and she stopped for a moment at an apothecary shop.
 She opened the paper and idly glanced down the column, then she sat quite still, staring vacantly at the sheet: there had been serious wreck on the railroad connecting the neigh boring city with the town, and first on the list of those who had passed into eternity was-"John Travis, Boston. "
 She read dully-" identified by a business letter in his overcoat."
 q beg your pardon, Miss Dimmis, . said the clerk, as he kept her nerve less body from slipping from the chair ''Is there anything-Can I-?" And almost impersonally, she allowed him to pour between her lips what seemed like liquid fire.
 Yet it restored her, and after mo- ment, age-long it seemed, her brain was again alive.
 ''No," she said in a voice not her own and coming as from a great way off, there is nothing else. Can you when," she asked suddenly, "does the next train leave for town?"
 For an instant the clerk looked at her blankly.
 When does it leave?" she cried again. Don't keep me waiting. It may be leaving nowl'
 "In ten minutes" was the answer
 If she said more, it was drowned in the rush of the storm, as she passed from the door.
 She was exhausted, when the con- ductor swung her on the last platform of the already moving train, and she hardly saw and certainly did not feel the looks which soon changed to frank scrutiny from mild surprise. There, in the corner of the seat into which she had thrown herself, she had but one thought, to go to him, dead though he was, and try to tell him of her love.
 Yes, tell him, for obligation to his career required no silence now. Now, she could do no harm.
 Only-if only she could have known in time. If she could have married him at once, as he had asked her to do that afternoon, gone with him to the death which, though her body lived, had, she knew, no less surely come to her!
 It was not until she stepped out at the station that there came the full realization that she was quite alone and then it came from the crowds whose self-absorption seemed deliber-