“Ah! but what to do? I am out of myself now with the spring; there are so many benign influences. I too have winged islands, and wild ranges where the dreams dwell; life is a fairy-tale; but there is always that terror of the departure of the sun.”
“Carpe diem.”
Hadria turned a startled and eager face towards the Professor, who was leaning back in his chair, thoughtfully smoking. The smoke curled away serenely through the calm air of the evening.
“You have a great gift,” he said.
“One is afraid of taking a thing too seriously because it is one’s own.”
The Professor turned almost angrily.
“Good heavens, what does it matter whose it is? There may be a sort of inverted vanity in refusing fair play to a power, on that ground. Alas! here is one of the first morbid signs of the evil at work upon you. If you had been wholesomely moving and striving in the right direction, do you think you would have been guilty of that piece of egotism?”
“Vanity pursues one into hidden corners of the mind. I am so used to that sort of spirit among women. Apparently I have caught the infection.”
“I would not let it go farther,” advised the Professor.
“To do myself justice, I think it is superficial,” said Hadria with a laugh. “I would dare anything, anything for a chance of freedom, for——,” she broke off, hesitating. “I remember once—years ago, when I was quite a girl—seeing a young ash-tree that had got jammed into a chink so that it couldn’t grow straight, or spread, as its inner soul, poor stripling, evidently inspired it to grow. Outside, there were hundreds of upright, vigorous, healthful young trees, fulfilling that innate idea in apparent gladness, and with obvious general advantage, since they were growing into sound, valuable trees, straight of trunk, nobly developed. I felt like the poor sapling in the cranny, that had just the same natural impetus of healthy growth as all the others, but was forced to become twisted, and crooked, and stunted and wretched. I think most women have to grow in a cranny. It is generally known as their Sphere.” Algitha gave an approving chuckle. “I noticed,” Hadria added, “that the desperate struggle to grow of that young tree had begun to loosen the masonry of the edifice that cramped it. There was a great dangerous-looking crack right across the building. The tree was not saved from deformity, but it had its revenge! Some day that noble institution would come down by the run.”