but she suspected--nay, was certain--that there had been other and more
permanent reasons why her parents felt her presence with them a burden.
At any rate, when the moment came for her to leave Miss Pemberton, her
mother wrote from abroad that, as Marcella had of late shown decided
aptitude both for music and painting, it would be well that she should
cultivate both gifts for a while more seriously than would be possible
at home. Mrs. Boyce had made inquiries, and was quite willing that her
daughter should go, for a time, to a lady whose address she enclosed,
and to whom she herself had written--a lady who received girl-students
working at the South Kensington art classes.

So began an experience, as novel as it was strenuous. Marcella soon
developed all the airs of independence and all the jargon of two
professions. Working with consuming energy and ambition, she pushed her
gifts so far as to become at least a very intelligent, eager, and
confident critic of the art of other people--which is much. But though
art stirred and trained her, gave her new horizons and new standards, it
was not in art that she found ultimately the chief excitement and
motive-power of her new life--not in art, but in the birth of social and
philanthropic ardour, the sense of a hitherto unsuspected social power.

One of her girl-friends and fellow-students had two brothers in London,
both at work at South Kensington, and living not far from their sister.
The three were orphans. They sprang from a nervous, artistic stock, and
Marcella had never before come near any one capable of crowding so much
living into the twenty-four hours. The two brothers, both of them
skilful and artistic designers in different lines, and hard at work all
day, were members of a rising Socialist society, and spent their
evenings almost entirely on various forms of social effort and Socialist
propaganda. They seemed to Marcella's young eyes absolutely sincere and