responsive. Some books, some pictures, some music brought
her a curious exalted sense of double life. She could
not talk about it at all, but she could slip out into
the wet streets on a gusty October evening, and walk
miles exulting in it, and in the light on the puddles
and in the rain on her face, coming back, it must be
admitted, with red cheeks and an excellent appetite. It
led her into strange absent silences and ways of liking
to be alone, which gratified her mother and worried her
father. When Elfrida burned the gas of Sparta late in
her own room, it was always her father who saw the light
under the door, and who came and knocked and told her
that it was after eleven, and high time she was in bed.
Mrs. Bell usually protested. "How can the child reach
any true development," she asked, "if you interfere with
her like this?" to which Mr. Bell usually replied that
whatever she developed, he didn't want it to be headaches
and hysteria. Elfrida invariably answered, "Yes, papa,"
with complete docility; but it must be said that Mr. Bell
generally knocked in vain, and the more perfect the
submission of the daughterly reply the later the gas
would be apt to burn. Elfrida was always agreeable to
her father. So far as she thought of it she was
appreciatively fond of him, but the relation pleased her,
it was one that could be so charmingly sustained. For
already out of the other world she walked in--the world
of strange kinships and insights and recognitions, where
she saw truth afar off and worshipped, and as often met
falsehood in the way and turned raptly to follow--the
girl had drawn a vague and many-shaped idea of artistic