She was an heiress; but she taught in one of the city schools, side by side with men and women who earned their living by teaching. I rather deprecated this fact in conversation with Clytia one day; I said that it was hardly fair for a rich woman to come in and usurp a place which rightfully belonged to some one who needed the work as a means of support,—alas! that I should have presumed to censure anything in that wonderful country. With knowledge came modesty.
Clytia’s cheeks crimsoned with indignation. “Our teachers are not beneficiaries,” she replied; “nor do we regard the positions in our schools—the teachers’ positions—as charities to be dispensed to the needy. The profession is the highest and most honorable in our land, and only those who are fitted by nature and preparation presume to aspire to the office. There is no bar against those who are so fitted,—the richest and the most distinguished stand no better, and no poorer, chance than the poorest and most insignificant. We must have the best material, wherever it can be found.”
We had but just entered the house, Clytia and I, when Ariadne glided down the stairs into the room where we sat, and approached me with the charming frankness and unaffectedness of manner which so agreeably characterizes the manners of all these people. She was rather tall, and slight; though her form did not suggest frailty. She resembled some elegant flower whose nature it is to be delicate and slender. She seemed even to sway a little, and undulate, like a lily on its stem.
I regarded her with attention, not unmixed with curiosity,—as a man is prone to regard a young lady into whose acquaintance he has not yet made inroads.
My chief impression about her was that she had remarkable eyes. They were of an indistinguishable, dark color, large horizontally but not too wide open,—eyes that drew yours continually, without your being able to tell whether it was to settle the question of color, or to find out the secret of their fascination, or whether it was simply that they appealed to your artistic sense—as being something finer than you had ever seen before. They were heavily fringed at top and bottom, and so were in shadow except when she raised them toward the light. Her complexion was pale, her hair light and fluffy; her brows and lashes were several shades darker than the hair. Her hands were lovely. Her dress was of course white, or cream, of some soft, clinging material; and she wore a bunch of blue flowers in her belt, slightly wilted.
There is this difference in women: some produce an effect simply, and others make a clear-cut, cameo-like impression upon the mind. Ariadne was of the latter sort. Whatever she appropriated, though but a tiny blossom, seemed immediately to proclaim its ownership and to swear its allegiance to her. From the moment I first saw her there, the blue flowers in her belt gave her, in my mind, the supreme title to all of their kind. I could never bear to see another woman wear the same variety,—and I liked them best when they were a little wilted! Her belongings suggested herself so vividly that if one came unexpectedly upon a fan, a book, a garment of hers, he was affected as by a presence.
I soon understood why it was that my eyes sought her face so persistently, drawn by a power infinitely greater than the mere power of beauty; it was due to the law of moral gravitation,—that by which men are attracted to a leader, through intuitive perception of a quality in him round which their own energies may nucleate. We all recognize the need of a centre, of a rallying-point,—save perhaps the few eccentrics, detached particles who have lost their place in the general order, makers of chaos and disturbers of peace.
It is this power which constitutes one of the chief qualifications of a teacher in Lunismar; because it rests upon a fact universally believed in,—spiritual royalty; an august force which cannot be ignored, and is never ridiculed—as Galileo was ridiculed, and punished, for his wisdom; because there ignorance and prejudice do not exist, and the superstition which planted the martyr’s stake has never been known.