"You have come to a new world," he said, "the world of suffering. You are in a fury because your career has been checked, and because you have been put on the shelf; you, of all people. Now you will learn how many quite as able as yourself, and abler, have been put on the shelf too, and have to stay there. You are only a pupil in suffering. What about the professors? If your wonderful wisdom has left you with any sense at all, look about you and learn."
So she was looking, and thinking, and learning. And as the days went by, perhaps a softer light came into her eyes.
All her life long, her standard of judging people had been an intellectual standard, or an artistic standard: what people had done with outward and visible signs; how far they had contributed to thought; how far they had influenced any great movement, or originated it; how much of a benefit they had been to their century or their country; how much social or political activity, how much educational energy they had devoted to the pressing need of the times.
She was undoubtedly a clever, cultured young woman; the great work of her life had been self-culture. To know and understand, she had spared neither herself nor any one else. To know, and to use her acquired knowledge intellectually as teacher and, perhaps, too, as writer, had been the great aim of her life. Everything that furthered this aim won her instant attention. It never struck her that she was selfish. One does not think of that until the great check comes. One goes on, and would go on. But a barrier rises up. Then, finding one can advance no further, one turns round; and what does one see?
Bernardine saw that she had come a long journey. She saw what the Traveller saw. That was all she saw at first. Then she remembered that she had done the journey entirely for her own sake. Perhaps it might not have looked so dreary if it had been undertaken for some one else.
She had claimed nothing of any one; she had given nothing to any one. She had simply taken her life in her own hands and made what she could of it. What had she made of it?
Many women asked for riches, for position, for influence and authority and admiration. She had only asked to be able to work. It seemed little enough to ask. That she asked so little placed her, so she thought, apart from the common herd of eager askers. To be cut off from active life and earnest work was a possibility which never occurred to her.
It never crossed her mind that in asking for the one thing for which she longed, she was really asking for the greatest thing. Now, in the hour of her enfeeblement, and in the hour of the bitterness of her heart, she still prided herself upon wanting so little.
"It seems so little to ask," she cried to herself time after time. "I only want to be able to do a few strokes of work. I would be content now to do so little, if only I might do some. The laziest day-labourer on the road would laugh at the small amount of work which would content me now."
She told the Disagreeable Man that one day.