Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/114

 little older, a little more quiet and peaceful? The very fancy filled her heart with sudden calm. A love so deep and sure, so broad and sweet—could it not dignify any woman’s life? And she had been thought worthy and had refused this love! O fool!

Suppose she went and found— her heart beat too quickly, and her face flushed. She called on the bright girl in the front row.

“And what have you learned?” she said.

The girl coughed importantly. “It is a poem of Goethe’s,” she announced in her high, satisfied voice. “Kennst du das Land—”

“That will do,” said the German assistant. “I fear we shall not have time for it to-day. The hour is up. You may go on with the translation for to-morrow.” And as the class rose with a growing clamor she realized that though she had been thinking steadily in German, she had been talking in English. So that