"Have you said good-bye to Miss Knowlton and Miss MacVane?"
"Yes. Each of them gave me a present."
"Are you sorry to go?"
"I'm coming back," said Ellen, smiling. "This seems like a dream. Fetzer thinks I've made a mistake; she meant to train me into her position." Bright tears came into her eyes. "I think of my Father."
Stephen rose and crossed to his desk. He did not at that moment wish to think of Ellen's father. Ellen rose also.
"These are your tickets and here is your money. Your tuition is in the form of a check to the University. I thought it would be simplest that way."
"It's all to be paid back," Ellen reminded him.
Stephen smiled. He had begun to expect her to pay it back, but not exactly as she understood. She took the checks and the tickets, struggling meanwhile against tears. Then she lifted her head and stood like a young Victory, breasting the winds. She pictured no specific happiness, but only a general brightness. Every experience in the world which was worth while awaited her.
When her eyes met his, her heart began to beat heavily. She did not realize that life with its strange chances had dealt with her hardly; that she should have been bound not to middle age, but to free youth. She wished above everything in the world that he would again lay his hand under her chin and that she might turn her cheek against it.