"You must go a little further than that, Florence, if you mean to win."
"What do you mean?"
"I will be quite plain with you," said Bertha. "If you are not prepared to sacrifice more than your time, more than your health, you will fail, for Kitty Sharston has what you have not. She has the imaginative mind and the noble heart."
"Oh," said Florence. She colored, and tried to wriggle once again away from her companion.
"I must speak plainly," said Bertha. "At a moment like this there is no good beating about the bush. Kitty will write an essay on Heroism which will win her the Scholarship; she will do so because she is animated by a very great and noble love. She will do so because she has got poetry in her composition. You must face that fact. As to Mary Bateman, she is out of the running. She is a good girl and might even go ahead of you were the theme not the supreme and final test; but that being the test, Kitty will win. You may as well put down your oars at once, Florence; you may as well lower your colors, if you cannot compete with Kitty on her own ground."
"I know it; it is shockingly unfair."
"But all the same, you can win if you will make the supreme sacrifice."
"What is that?"
"The sacrifice of your honor."
"Oh, no; oh, no; oh, what do you mean?"