the Quartier Latin she was born to be rich. In thinking
this she had an Overpowering realization of the poverty
of Sparta, so convincing that she found it unnecessary
to tell herself that she would never go back there. That
was the unconscious pivotal supposition in everything
she thought or said or did. After the first bewildering
day or two when the exquisite thrill of Paris captured
her indefinitely, she felt the full tide of her life turn
and flow steadily in a new direction with a delight of
revelation and an ecstasy of promise that made nothing
in its sweep of every emotion that had not its birth and
growth in art, and forbade the mere consideration of
anything that might be an obstacle, as if it were a sin.
She entered her new world with proud recognition of its
unwritten laws, its unsanctified morale, its riotous
overflowing ideals; and she was instant in gathering that
to see, to comprehend these was to be thrice blessed, as
not to see, not to comprehend them was to dwell in outer
darkness with the bourgeois, and the "sandpaper" artists,
and others who are without hope. It gave her moments of
pure delight to reflect how little "the people" suspected
the reality of the existence of such a world notwithstanding
all they read and all they professed, and how absolutely
exclusive it was in the very nature of nature; how it
had its own language untranslatable, its own creed
unbelievable, its own customs unfathomable by outsiders,
and yet among the true-born how divinely simple recognition
was. Her allegiance had the loyalty of every fibre of
her being; her scorn of the world she had left was too
honest to permit any posing in that regard. The life at