Miss Cutter rose to her indignant feet. “Roberta Sanders, as you are the corridor warden for this neighborhood, I appeal to you. I make formal complaint——”
“They’ve gone.” Robbie Belle smiled in relief and sat down rather quickly. The lock-step had receded into the muffled distance and the ear-splitting wail wafted back in tones that grew steadily fainter.
Miss Cutter took off her glasses, rubbed them bright, put them on again, and contemplated Robbie Belle.
“I do believe that you would rather I suffered than that they became offended with you. You are afraid to rebuke them.”
Robbie’s eyes fell and the guilty color rose slowly through the delicate skin of throat and brow. But Miss Cutter did not see it. She had pulled down the green shade and propping her elbows in their former position had returned to her scansion. She had wasted too much time already.
Conscience-smitten Robbie Belle slid silently through the door and stood at loss for a minute in the deserted corridor. It was Friday night. Nobody studied on Friday night except girls who were queer or who roomed with superior special students like Miss Cutter. On her first day at college Miss Cutter had remarked that there might be a vacant seat of congenial minds for Robbie at her table. Somehow the grave young freshman who was hoping for fun failed to find them satisfying. She had not won a real friend yet, and here it was the end of October.
Robbie Belle was not conceited enough to feel sorry for herself, or else she might have perceived a certain pathos in that listless journey of a lonely child from her worse than solitary room to the deadly quiet of the library. One of the hilarious ghosts who were weaving spells under the evergreens happened to glance in through a great softly shining window and recognized the drooping head above a long deserted table between the shelves of books.
“There’s our noble warden,” whispered Bea, “studying on Friday night! Looks like a dig as well as a prig, n’est-ce-pas?”
Berta’s eager dark face grew sober under the swathing folds of her pillow-case. “Maybe it isn’t her fault,” she said.
But Robbie Belle unaware of this precious drop of sympathy plodded through an essay on Intellect, wrote out a laborious analysis, and at the stroke of the nine-thirty gong crept reluctantly back to her room. The next morning she translated her Latin, committed a geometrical demonstration to a faithful memory, consumed a silent luncheon amid a dizzying cross-fire of psychological arguments, walked around the garden, through the pines and over the orchard hill for a scrupulously full hour of exercise, read her physiology notes, and composed one page of her weekly theme before dinner time. After dinner she stood in a corner of Parlor J and watched the dancing. Then she went to chapel with Miss Cutter, returned alone in haste to dress in the concealing sheet and pillow case. It was rather difficult to manage the drapery without aid, especially in the back and at the sides. The strange junior who had chosen Robbie’s name from the class list and undertaken to escort her to the party found awaiting her a rumpled young ghost with raiment that sagged and bagged quite distressingly in unexpected places. But the eyes that shone from between the crooked bands of white were joyous with excitement. In this disguise she was sure that no one would recognize her; and so of course they would not know that she was queer, and perhaps she would have fun at last.