vitalized with hopes and fears. She was drawn to him from the first, as
spirit is sometimes drawn to spirit, by an attraction so imperious that
it frightened her, and she tried to hold herself away from him. But in
her heart she knew that she studied and read only to win his praise. His
talents revealed to her the futility of her ambition. Here was one who
stood upon the heights beyond her power of climbing, and yet, to her
astonishment, he was very doubtful of his ability to gain enduring
reputation. Not only was there a plane of knowledge and feeling above
the conventional--that she had found out by herself--but there were also
table-lands where teachers of repute in the valley were held to be blind
guides. Her quick receptivity absorbed the new ideas with eagerness; but
she no longer deluded herself. Her practical good sense came to her aid.
What seemed difficult or doubtful to the Professor must, she knew, be
for ever impossible to her. And already love was upon her, making her
humility as sweet as was her admiration. At last he spoke, and life
became altogether beautiful to her. As she learned to know him
intimately she began to understand his unworldliness, his scholar-like
idealism, and ignorance of men and motives, and thus she came to self-
possession again, and found her true mission. She realized with joy, and
a delightful sense of an assured purpose in life, that her faculty of
observation and practical insight, though insufficient as "bases for
Eternity," would be of value to her lover. And if she now and then fell
back into the part of a nineteenth-century Antigone, it was but a
momentary relapse into what had been for a year or so a dear familiar
habit. The heart of the girl grew and expanded in the belief that her
new _role_ of counsellor and worldly guide to her husband was the
highest to which any woman could attain.

A few days later Mr. Hutchings had another confidential talk with
Professor Roberts, and, as before, the subject was suggested by an