"I should hope not!" Blanche commented energetically.
There was a girl lying on the couch who had been reading Diana of the Crossways, all this time. She occasionally made notes on the margins. Now she looked up. "For my part, I prefer goodness to cleverness," was all she said. Then she went on reading again. The girls all laughed a good deal. Then there was silence, and some of them laughed again—a little. Some of them were very much of Lilian Coles' opinion in regard to this girl, who was the junior Lilian had noticed in the gymnasium.
"She has greatly relieved my mind, at any rate," said Katherine. "She can never hope for the fellowship now."
"You have no right to say that." Edith was a little sharp. She was somewhat troubled within herself. She liked the serene state of mind that her usual conduct of life granted her, and hated a mean feeling with an intensification of the disgust that any contact with uncleanness gave to her physical fastidiousness. In the dissatisfaction that she had occasionally felt of late, it had occurred to her that she might settle issues with herself by some plan involving sacrifice on her part. But injustice was no dearer to her than selfishness. She fell asleep that night with the healthy resolve not to be troubled by what she could not help.
Meanwhile Lilian Coles was lying on her bed, in the dark, with wide-open eyes. She was restless with a shamed sense that she had violated her finest instincts. She continually wondered how she could have done such a thing. Then all the questionings that had been forming in her deeper consciousness for nearly two years, came forward, insisting on a hearing. Helen Arnold's talk that evening passed through her mind with a new meaning and force, but she was too much exhausted then to come to any conclusions. She finally fell asleep, hoping that every one would be too busy to remember her speech very long.
One Saturday morning in the spring Lilian started downstairs. It was late, she was tired and vexed at her slothfulness. She had gone to bed the night before so tired that one night's rest was wholly insufficient. As she reached the foot of the stairs a girl came out of the bathroom with a kettle of water. She nodded to Lilian, went on, then turned.
"Miss Coles, you are sure not to find anything hot for breakfast. Won't you come into my room? We are going to have breakfast there."
Lilian hesitated. Something, perhaps an animating suggestiveness in the spring air that was sweeping through the windows, perhaps the mere yielding of tired flesh to kindly human influences, moved her to accept.