their faces turned to the line of rich men’s houses which mounted out of the night like a tall, impregnable fortress.  Some were grey-haired.  Such traffic was perilous as it was ugly, for somehow there were babies who were born blind because of it!  That was the sum of her knowledge.  What followed the grave kisses shown in pictures, what secret Romeo shared with Juliet, she did not know, she would not know.

Twice she had refused to learn the truth.  Once a schoolfellow named Anna McLellan, a minister’s daughter, a pale girl with straight, yellow hair and full, whitish lips, had tried to tell her something queer about married people as they were walking along Princes Street, and Ellen had broken away from her and run into the Gardens.  The trees and grass and daffodils had seemed not only beautiful but pleasantly un-smirched by the human story.  And in the garret at home, in a pile of her father’s books, she had once found a medical volume which she knew from the words on its cover would tell her all the things about which she was wondering.  She had laid her fingers between its leaves, but a shivering had come upon her, and she ran downstairs very quickly and washed her hands.  These memories made her feel restless and unhappy, and she drove her attention back to the platform and beautiful Mrs. Mark Lyle.  But there came upon her a fantasy that she was standing again in the garret with that book in her hands, and that Mr. Philip was leaning against the wall in that dark place beyond the window laughing at her, partly because she was such a wee ninny not to know, and partly because when she did know the truth there would be something about it which would humiliate her.  She cast down her eyes and stared at the floor so that none might see how close she was to tears.  She was a silly weak thing that would always feel like a bairn on its first day at school; she was being tormented by Mr. Philip.  Even the very facts of life had been planned to hurt her.

Oh, to be like that man from Rio!  It was his splendid fate to be made tall and royal, to be the natural commander of all men from the moment that he ceased to be a child.  He could captain his ship through the steepest seas and fight the pirate frigate till there was nothing between him and the sunset but a few men clinging to planks and a shot-torn black flag floating on the waves like a rag of seaweed.  For rest he would steer to small islands, where singing birds would fly out of woods and perch on the rigging, and brown men would come and run aloft and wreathe the masts with flowers, and shy women with long, loose, black hair would steal out and offer palm-wine in conches, while he smiled aloofly and was gracious.  It would not matter where he sailed; at no port in the world would sorrow wait for him, and everywhere there would be pride and honour and stars pinned to his rough coat by grateful kings.  And if he fell in love with a beautiful woman he would go away from her at once and do splendid things for her sake.  And when he died there would be a lying-in-state in a great cathedral, where emperors and princes would file past and shiver as they looked on the white, stern face and the stiff hands clasped on the hilt of his sword, because now they had lost their chief defender.  Oh, he was too grand to be known, of course, but it was a joy to think of him.