"And yet I recognised you."
Matilda drew the sole of her high-heeled shoe over the ground in front of her, and began an entirely new design.
"What do you mean by 'respect,' Miss Maclean? It is such a chilly word. There is no warmth or colour in it."
"There is no warmth nor colour in the air, yet air is even more essential than sunshine."
There was silence for some minutes. Matilda obliterated the new design with a little stamp of her foot.
"Long ago, when I was a girl, I began to believe in self-denial, and high ideals, and all that sort of thing. But you can't work it in with your everyday life. It is all a dream."
"A dream!" said Mona softly,—
"'No, no, by all the martyrs and the dear dead Christ!'
Everything else is a dream. That is real. That was your chance in life. You should have clung to it with both hands. Your soul is drowning now for want of it, in a sea of nothingness."
The revival preacher himself could scarcely have spoken more strongly, and Matilda felt a slight pleasurable return of the old excitement. She did not show it, however.