to them.  Her naivete they mistook for insolence, her dreaminess for disrespect.  They confused her memory with her understanding.  They gave her books to read, brought her to lectures, sat her at the theatre, took her to hear sermons, prayed with her and drank with her the holy wine.  And some would say, “Isn’t she coming on?” or “Isn’t she developing?” and others, more perceiving, would say, “Well, even if she isn’t getting anything from it, at least she’s seeing life”; while others, more perceiving still, gave her up as past hope.  “She has no brains,” they said.  Others, still more perceiving, said she had no soul, no love; she cared for no one, understood nothing.  She, for her part, went on almost as ever, and remained next to inarticulate.  Only now and again the hubbub of battle in the schoolroom would awaken her to some sort of conscious exasperation.  She would appeal to her class, staring at them with eyes from which all gentleness and affection had merged into astonishment and indignation.  For the rest, lack of life, lack of sun, lack of life influence told upon her beauty.  She did not understand the influence of the ill-constituted around her, and did not understand the pain which now and again thrilled through her being, provoking sighs and word-sighs.  Then those friend-acquaintances, ever on the alert for an expression of real meaning, interpreted her sighs and longings for week-ends in the country.

Verily it is true, one cannot serve God and mammon.  There was no health forthcoming through this compromise with life.  She merely felt more pain.  She continued her work in the town, and was enrolled and fixed in many little circles where little wheels moved greater wheels in the great state-machine.  Ostensibly, always now, whatever new she did was a step toward saving her soul.  I met her one January night; she was going to a tea-meeting in connection with a literary society.  Very grey her face looked.  Many of the old beautiful curves were gone, and mysteries about her dimples and black hair-clusters seemed departed irrevocably.  Still much in her slept safe, untouched as ever, and, as ever, she was without thoughts.  Her memory suggested what she should say to me.  “It will be interesting,” she remembered.  I helped her off with coat and furs.  She was dressed wonderfully.  The gown she wore—­of deep cinnamon and gold—­was still the dress of Zenobia, and at her bosom the strange flower exhaled its mystery.  I went in with her to the hot room.  She was evidently a queen here, as in the forest glades.  And her pale face lit up as she moved about among the “little-worldlings” and exchanged small-talk and cakes and tea.  She was evidently in some way responsible for the entertainment, for the chairman said “they all owed her so much.”  I watched her face, it showed no sign of unusual gratification; had he slighted her, I am sure she would have listened as equably.  What a mask her face was!  The look of graciousness was permanent, and probably only