Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/240

230 understand the atmosphere of an idealized life, I felt that I needed it, and knew that I longed for it. Hour by hour, in these long three years, while Jim had suspected me of forgetting the dear ones at the parsonage, I had yearned for them with a yearning born of such need and loss as Jim could never have felt, and never have borne. I hesitated long whether I should go to the Commencement. The promise had been of such long standing it seemed an obligation; and well I knew that Jim's loving heart would be wounded to the quick, if I failed. My inmost instinct warned me against going, told me that after a week in such companionship it would be only the harder to return to the associations and the burdens of my inevitable life: on the other hand, it seemed a selfish thing to deprive my friends of a pleasure solely to save myself a pain. "Supposing life is made a little harder," I said to myself, bitterly, "what then! I can bear it." Oh, how worthless a faculty is imagination when we use it to gauge an untried burden! As well ask the eagle's vision to measure the load that a beast of burden may draw!

I went to the Commencement. An accident to a train delayed me many hours, and I did not arrive until nearly noon of the Commencement day. The exercises had begun some two hours before. The church was filled to overflowing. To enter by the doors was simply impossible. A step-ladder had been set at an open window on the left hand of the