saw the walls covered with books. Turning, he looked at the professor. A deep smile of pleasure spread over his face and a sudden brightness sprang into his eyes. "How very comfortable."

"Yes, it is. And I shall be sorry to leave it this summer." Then remembering what the student had come for, he said, "Well, let's have a look at that paper of yours." Going to his desk, he pulled up another chair beside his so that they could go over the paper together. "You sit here while I read through the paper. Then we can discuss it in greater detail." The student sat down next to the older man, who read hastily through the first page, stopped, glanced at him, and started over again, reading slowly. Squire had blushed deeply. There were no corrections to be made. He had captured the heart of the story and was breathlessly pouring it and himself out on the paper. One of those rare and treasured experiences that take place between student and professor-one catches on fire from the maturity and subtilty of the thought of the other.

"Well, Dan, this is a first rate paper," he said when he had finished. "There is little wrong with it. As a matter of fact you need not change a word of it."

The student seemed disappointed and even more shy for a moment. "There are one or two places which I would like to ask you about. He took the paper from the professor and turned to the second page. "I'm not sure about this point," he said, pointing to the first paragraph. "Does it seem clear, the way I have expressed the idea."

"Let me see. I'll read it again." He traced the sentence across the page with his finger. "The statement is clear enough to me."

"What about this sentence," the student said, pointing to a quotation he had used from "The Secret Sharer" which summed up the heart of the story. And before the professor could remove his hand from the paper, Dan's beautifully sculptured fingers were lying beside his own so that they touched slightly the entire length of the hand from finger to wrist. With a voice grown husky, taut with emotion rising in a flood through his veins, Professor Knight read: "But what I felt most was my being a stranger to the ship; and if all the truth must be told, I was somewhat of a stranger to myself. The youngest man on board (barring the second mate), and untried as yet by a position of the fullest responsibility. I was willing to take the adequacy of the others for granted. They had simply to be equal to their tasks; but I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's own personality every man sets up for himself secretly." And as he read aloud, the rain had begun to fall once more, a sudden, drenching, spring shower. The trees seemed to sigh of so much water. A few drops rapped at the windows briefly, sharply, then broke and ran down the panes. One of the rain drops, which clung to the student's hair, slipped silently and fell on to the paper smearing its rigidly ruled lines into the ink of the written passage. The professor did not move his hand from the page; Dan's lay beside it, trembling slightly where they touched. Within his rigid body the professor felt a slight breaking and cracking and filling up as the dry desert greedily drinks the first draughts of a suddently erupting spring. All had turned to a liquid like honey to flow with intolerable sweetness through every cell. He knew then what he must do.

"Come with me, Dan." he took the student's hand in his own and without releasing him drew him over to a seat by the blazing fire. At that moment neither one heard the rain go suddenly down the street, across the town and out through the broad land.

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