“Then, let me help you. Let us talk over our mutual studies. Here, sit close to me, draw up your chair near mine. It is sometimes permitted for those whose souls are akin to clasp their earthly hands together. Now then, let us speak. Ah! when you are almost intoxicated with those great and stimulating thoughts, does not your soul burn, does not you brain seem to expand until it almost bursts?”
“Never,” said Leslie: “if it did I should feel very much alarmed about myself.”
Belle uttered a sigh.
“We are differently affected by these things, I see,” she remarked. “I cannot explain to you the intense, the passionate pleasure I feel when I am engaged over hard mental work. There is no stimulant like it. You are not laughing at me?”
“Indeed I am not,” said Leslie. “I said before that I respected you as I respect anyone else who is wholly in earnest.”
“In earnest,” said Belle; “yes, indeed, I am that. I am ever thinking of Kingsley’s passionate words, ‘Be earnest, earnest, earnest; mad if thou wilt.’ Oh, Miss Gilroy, do think of the frivolity of the greater number of our sex. Even in this house of learning frivolity creeps in.”
Leslie smiled and endeavored to draw her companion into more reasonable conversation.
“Do you know what my aim in life is?” said Belle at last. “I will whisper it to you; but not even to Marjorie or Eileen have I yet confided it.”
“I will respect your secret, and I am very glad you are going to tell me,” replied Leslie, for she thought to herself that nothing would do this queer girl more good than to have a confidante.
“Well,” continued Belle, “my mother is fairly well off—of course not nearly so rich as the Chetwynds; but as I am her only child, she gives me plenty of money for my own personal use. Quite apart from the fees and general expenses of the college, I receive twenty-five pounds a term. Now, I have managed since I came here to spend something under five pounds a term, therefore I have already a nice little sum put by. In that humble little desk there lies in notes and gold over eighty pounds. I will show you my little bank.”