Professor Arbuthnot looked at her wonderingly. She went over to her and looked down at the crushed figure.
“You have loved and loved again and lost. You have been a mother and your child is dead,” she said slowly. “I would sympathize with you if I knew how.”
The girl caught her hand.
“How kind you are! I never speak of this—I hardly know how I came to do so with you. I am sure I must have wearied you.” She put the locket back and began to draw on her gloves again slowly.
Professor Arbuthnot said nothing. In the last hour she had had glimpses of a life and a love
she had never known, and the revelation silenced her. She had sometimes reproached herself that the studious calm, the entire absorption of her life in her work had been exaggerated, and as she looked at the slight figure in its black gown, at the pale face with its sombred, youthful beauty, the conviction was borne in upon her, by this little breath from the outside world, by the life of this girl as told by her, that the insularity of her existence had been a mistake. A sudden intense dissatisfaction and impatience with her life took hold upon her.
The girl rose to go. She stood there hesitating, embarrassed, as if she wished to ask something, and rather dreaded doing so.
“I—I shall have a great deal of time this winter,” she hazarded, twisting the ring of her fan slowly round and round her finger, “and I am going to study—indeed I am!” She glanced up quickly, as if afraid Professor Arbuthnot might be smiling. “I know you think it foolish for me to try, but you don’t know how you’ve inspired me this afternoon!” She went on enthusiastically. “You and everything here make me realize intensely how little I know, and I am going to begin and really learn something. You don’t know how much obliged I’d be if you would tell me a little how to begin—what to start on—something easy, adapted for weak intellects!”
She looked up smiling and with heightened color at Professor Arbuthnot. She still stood in so much awe of her and was so afraid of being laughed at!