She began with a short quotation and took, as a point of departure, the lines:
"That thread of the all-sustaining beauty
Which runs through all and doth all unite."
With well-chosen words she modestly brought out her thought of the duty of each one to seek for this thread of beauty in all things. Then she spoke, with a little more insistence, of the beautiful in art and in nature, which, she believed, demanded for its true appreciation the highest cultivation not only of mind and age, but of soul as well.
After a short silence, Elizabeth Carrington, Helen's roommate, spoke, weaving Helen's thought into the larger one of that endeavor toward perfection sacredly enjoined upon us. With an impatience born of the incomprehension of her mood, Lilian had listened to Helen. She did not hear Elizabeth, who had scarcely finished speaking, when Lilian rose. The girls looked surprised; but after the consecrated formula—"It seems to me"—various expressions replaced the surprise. Some of the listeners looked coldly bored or contemptuous, a few were amused, but the majority sat ill at ease with pained faces. Lilian was arraigning them for so much time spent in idle conversation, and in "feasting"—she fiercely put it. She denounced them for their plays, their dancing. In her excitement she assumed the tone and phraseology of the denunciations she had been accustomed to hear from childhood and she went farther than she intended. She said their pursuit of knowledge was only for its vain shows. The nature of the silence into which her words fell should have warned her, but some confused association of ideas carried her on to a bitter allusion to Catholicism. She was recalled to herself by the indignant protest on Helen's face. Clothilde and one or two others present were Catholics. Lilian choked and stopped.
"Shall we not sing?" suggested Helen. Clothilde started the hymn. There was no more speaking. Lilian was the first to leave the meeting. She went out with unseeing eyes and hot cheeks, alone. There are times when even the kindest hearts are cold, and for the moment there could be nothing but alienation from one who had found tongue against the college spirit—for they felt that the attack was really against this vague, shadowy, stern, beloved thing of many hues and many forms—the spirit of the college.
Outside, the moon had risen in a clear star-powdered sky, and was silvering the crusted snow and the ice sheaths that rain and frost had left on every twig and branch of the trees. The sparkle and splendour of the night only smote Lilian as a part of that whole body of beauty which, it seemed to her excited thinking, had been presented that evening as of equal importance with goodness and morality.
There is little tea drinking on Sunday evening. Many girls are away. It is the time for writing home letters, or doing a little quiet reading. The rooms never seem so warm or the lights so bright as on other nights. The halls are still and everybody goes to bed early. But this night there was a little more excitement as girls stopped to talk with indignation, amusement or indifference of Lilian's outburst. Katherine Leonard found several girls in Edith's room when she stopped, after an errand in Radnor. She sought each face questioningly, then dropped on the couch. "How awfully funny—how dreadful it was!"
"I can't understand the state of mind that would lead to that," said Alice Warburton. "Where has such narrow-minded egotism been fostered? Such injustice! What an arid life she must have known."
"I admire her!" said Elizabeth Carrington decisively. "I was near enough to her to-night to see how tightly she clung to the chair in front of her. Her knuckles were all white and shiny. It was real heroism. I doubt if any one of us will ever show as much."