She laughed happily. "Oh no, I'm not wonderful at all. It's funny you should think so. Perhaps none of the girls you know have had a big work to do."
"I'm sure they never have," said Stephen, "and if they had, they wouldn't have done it."
"Yes, they would. Anybody would—that is, if they wanted to, enough. You can always do what you want to enough. I wanted to do this with all my heart and soul, so I knew I should find the way. I just followed my instinct, when people told me I was unreasonable, and of course it led me right. Reason is only to depend on in scientific sorts of things, isn't it? The other is higher, because instinct is your You."
"Isn't that what people say who preach New Thought, or whatever they call it?" asked Stephen. "A lot of women I know had rather a craze about that two or three years ago. They went to lectures given by an American man they raved over—said he was 'too fascinating.' And they used their 'science' to win at bridge. I don't know whether it worked or not."
"I never heard any one talk of New Thought," said Victoria. "I've just had my own thoughts about everything. The attic at school was a lovely place to think thoughts in. Wonderful ones always came to me, if I called to them—thoughts all glittering—like angels. They seemed to bring me new ideas about things I'd been born knowing—beautiful things, which I feel somehow have been handed down to me—in my blood."
"Why, that's the way my friends used to talk about 'waking their race-consciousness.' But it only led to bridge, with them."
"Well, it's led me from Potterston here," said Victoria, "and it will lead me on to the end, wherever that may be, I'm sure. Perhaps it will lead me far, far off, into that mysterious golden silence, where in dreams I often see Saidee watching for me: the strangest dream-place, and I've no idea where it is! But I shall find out, if she is really there."
"What supreme confidence you have in your star!" Stephen exclaimed, admiringly, and half enviously.
"Of course. Haven't you, in yours?"
"I have no star."