All at work but Gracie. She still bent over her Latin grammar. She had not asked permission to join the dictation class, and Marion had not volunteered it. Truth to tell, she hardly dared venture to address her at all. The eyes had lost none of their keen flash, and the color seemed to be deepening, instead of subsiding on her pretty soft cheeks.
Marion, as her eyes roved over the exercise book in her hand, felt her heart arrested by these words among the selections for dictation:
"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."
They smote her like a blow from an unseen hand. What burdens of homesickness and ennui and weariness might not all these girls have had to bear to-day! Had she helped them? Had her manner been winning and hopeful and invigorating? Had her words been gentle and well chosen, as well as firm and decisive? Her answers to these questions stung her.
Moved by a sudden impulse, and not giving herself time to shrink from the determination, she bent forward a little and addressed Gracie:
"Read that, Gracie. I have not obeyed its direction to-day; have you? Do you think you have helped me to bear my burdens?"
Would Gracie answer her at all? Would her answer be cold and haughty; as nearly rude as she had dared to make it? Marion felt her heart throb while she waited. And she had to wait, for Gracie was utterly silent.
At last her teacher stole a glance at her. The great beautiful eyes were lifted to her face. The flash was passing out of them. In its place there was a puzzled, wondering, questioning look. And, when at last she spoke, her voice was timid, as if she were half frightened at her own words, and yet eager as one who must know:
"Miss Wilbur, you don't mean—oh, do you mean that you want to fulfill the law of Christ; that you own him?"
"That I own him and love him," Marion said, her cheeks glowing now as Gracie's did, "and that I want above all things, to fulfill his law, and yet that I have miserably failed, even this first day."