her.  Whenever she chose, she could learn in five minutes what another girl could scarcely commit to memory in twenty; but it was obviously for the sake of display.  The teachers disliked her; among the pupils she had no friends.  So at length there came the farewell to school and the beginning of practical life, which took the shape of learning to stamp crests and addresses on note-paper.  There was hope that before long Clara might earn thirteen shillings a week.

The bitter injustice of it!  Clara was seventeen now, and understood the folly of which she had been guilty a few years ago, but at the same time she felt in her inmost heart the tyranny of a world which takes revenge for errors that are inevitable, which misleads a helpless child and then condemns it for being found astray.  She could judge herself, yes, better than Sidney Kirkwood could judge her.  She knew her defects, knew her vices, and a feud with fate caused her to accept them defiantly.  Many a time had she sobbed out to herself, ’I wish I could neither read nor write!  I wish I had never been told that there is anything better than to work with one’s hands and earn daily bread!’ But she could not renounce the claims that Nature had planted in her, that her guardians had fostered.  The better she understood how difficult was every way of advancement, the more fiercely resolute was she to conquer satisfactions which seemed beyond the sphere of her destiny.

Of late she had thought much of her childish successes in reciting poetry.  It was not often that she visited a theatre (her father had always refused to let her go with any one save himself or Sidney), but on the rare occasions when her wish was gratified, she had watched each actress with devouring interest, with burning envy, and had said to herself, ’Couldn’t I soon learn to do as well as that?  Can’t I see where it might be made more lifelike?  Why should it be impossible for me to go on the stage?’ In passing a shop-window where photographs were exposed, she looked for those of actresses, and gazed at them with terrible intensity.  ’I am as good-looking as she is.  Why shouldn’t my portrait be seen some day in the windows?’ And then her heart throbbed, smitten with passionate desire.  As she walked on there was a turbid gloom about her, and in her ears the echoing of a dread temptation.  Of all this she spoke to nobody.

For she had no friends.  A couple of years ago something like an intimacy had sprung up between her and Bessie Jones (since married and become Bessie Byass), seemingly on the principle of contrast in association.  Bessie, like most London workgirls, was fond of the theatre, and her talk helped to nourish the ambition which was secretly developing in Clara.  But the two could not long harmonise.  Bessie, just after her marriage, ventured to speak with friendly reproof of Clara’s behaviour to Sidney Kirkwood.  Clara was not disposed to admit freedoms of that kind; she half gave it to be understood that, though others might be easily satisfied, she had views of her own on such subjects.  Thereafter Mrs. Byass grew decidedly cool.  The other girls with whom Clara had formal intercourse showed no desire to win her confidence; they were kept aloof by her reticent civility.