of Ruskin, South Place Sermons, Socialistic publications in torn paper covers, and above, science text-books and note-books in an oppressive abundance.  The autotypes that hung about the room were eloquent of aesthetic ambitions and of a certain impermeability to implicit meanings.  There were the Mirror of Venus by Burne Jones, Rossetti’s Annunciation, Lippi’s Annunciation, and the Love of Life and Love and Death of Watts.  And among other photographs was one of last year’s Debating Society Committee, Lewisham smiling a little weakly near the centre, and Miss Heydinger out of focus in the right wing.  And Miss Heydinger sat with her back to all these things, in her black horse-hair arm-chair, staring into the fire, her eyes hot, and her chin on her hand.

“I might have guessed—­before,” she said.  “Ever since that seance.  It has been different ...”

She smiled bitterly.  “Some shop girl ...”

She mused.  “They are all alike, I suppose.  They come back—­a little damaged, as the woman says in ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan.’  Perhaps he will.  I wonder ...”

“Why should he be so deceitful?  Why should he act to me ...?”

“Pretty, pretty, pretty—­that is our business.  What man hesitates in the choice?  He goes his own way, thinks his own thoughts, does his own work ...

“His dissection is getting behind—­one can see he takes scarcely any notes....”

For a long time she was silent.  Her face became more intent.  She began to bite her thumb, at first slowly, then faster.  She broke out at last into words again.

“The things he might do, the great things he might do.  He is able, he is dogged, he is strong.  And then comes a pretty face!  Oh God! Why was I made with heart and brain?” She sprang to her feet, with her hands clenched and her face contorted.  But she shed no tears.

Her attitude fell limp in a moment.  One hand dropped by her side, the other rested on a fossil on the mantel-shelf, and she stared down into the red fire.

“To think of all we might have done!  It maddens me!

“To work, and think, and learn.  To hope and wait.  To despise the petty arts of womanliness, to trust to the sanity of man....

“To awake like the foolish virgins,” she said, “and find the hour of life is past!”

Her face, her pose, softened into self-pity.

“Futility ...

“It’s no good....”  Her voice broke.

“I shall never be happy....”

She saw the grandiose vision of the future she had cherished suddenly rolled aside and vanishing, more and more splendid as it grew more and more remote—­like a dream at the waking moment.  The vision of her inevitable loneliness came to replace it, clear and acute.  She saw herself alone and small in a huge desolation—­infinitely pitiful, Lewisham callously receding with “some shop girl.”  The tears came, came faster, until they were streaming down her face.  She turned as if looking for something.  She flung herself upon her knees before the little arm-chair, and began an incoherent sobbing prayer for the pity and comfort of God.