CHAPTER XXXIV.
WE GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING "Sylvia was reading in her grandfather's library when the bell tinkled." With these words our chronicle began, and they again slip from the pen as I begin these last pages.

When Morton Bassett left her at the door of Elizabeth House she had experienced a sudden call of the truant spirit.
Sylvia wanted to be alone, to stand apart for a little while from the clanging world and take counsel of herself.

Hastily packing a bag she caught the last train for Montgomery, walked to the Kelton cottage, and roused Mary, who had been its lone tenant since the Professor's death.
She sent Mary to bed, and after kindling a fire in the grate, roamed about the small, comfortable rooms, touching wistfully the books, the pictures, the scant bric-a-brac.

She made ready her own bed under the eaves where she had dreamed her girlhood dreams, shaking from the sheets she found in the linen chest the leaves of lavender that Mary had strewn among them.

The wind rose in the night and slammed fitfully a blind that, as long as she could remember, had uttered precisely that same protest against the wind's presumption.