Evidently the girl felt a certain pride in what she had undergone.  Her failure to matriculate was forgotten in the sense that she offered a most interesting case of breakdown from undue mental exertion.  The doctor had declared his astonishment that she held up until the examination was over.

’He simply wouldn’t believe me when I told him the hours I worked.  He said I ought to be on my trial for attempted suicide!’

And she laughed with extravagant conceit.

‘You have quite made friends with the Barmbys,’ said Nancy, eyeing her curiously.

’They are very nice people.  Of course the girls quite understand what a difference there is between themselves and me.  I like them because they are so modest; they would never think of contradicting my opinion about anything.’

‘And what about the Prophet?’

‘I don’t think you ever quite understood him,’ Jessica replied, with an obvious confusion which perplexed her friend.  ’He isn’t at all the kind of man you thought.’

‘No doubt I was wrong,’ Nancy hastened to say.  ’It was prejudice.  And you remember that I never had any fault to find with his—­his character.’

‘You disliked him,’ said the other sharply.  ’And you still dislike him.  I’m sure you do.’

So plainly did Jessica desire a confirmation of this statement, that Nancy allowed herself to be drawn into half avowing a positive dislike for Samuel.  Whereupon Jessica looked pleased, and tossed her head in a singular way.

‘I needn’t remind you,’ fell from Nancy, after a moment of troubled reflection, ’how careful you must be in talking about me to the Barmbys.’

‘Oh, don’t have the slightest fear.’

‘Weren’t you delirious in your illness?’

‘I should think I was indeed!  For a long time.’

‘I hope you said nothing—­’

’About you?  Oh, not a word; I’m quite sure.  I talked all the time about my studies.  The doctor heard me one day repeating a long bit of Virgil.  And I kept calling for bits of paper to work out problems in Geometrical Progression.  Just fancy!  I don’t think most girls are delirious in that way.  If I had said anything about you that sounded queer, of course mother would have told me afterwards.  Oh, it was quite an intellectual delirium.’

Had Jessica, since her illness, become an insufferable simpleton? or —­Nancy wondered—­was it she herself who, through experience and sorrows, was grown wiser, and saw her friend in a new light?  It troubled her gravely that the preservation of a secret more than ever momentous should depend upon a person with so little sense.  The girl’s departure was a relief; but in the silence that followed upon silly talk, she had leisure to contemplate this risk, hitherto scarce taken into account.  She spoke of it with Mary, the one friend to whom her heart went out in absolute trust, from whom she concealed but few of her thoughts, and whose moral worth, only understood since circumstances compelled her reliance upon it, had set before her a new ideal of life.  Mary, she well knew, abhorred the deceit they were practising, and thought hard things of the man who made it a necessity; so it did not surprise her that the devoted woman showed no deep concern at a new danger.