aculty, what any notes may
be, however confusedly jangled on an instrument. It was wonderful to me
how often his instantaneous judgments proved more sagacious than our
carefully formed conclusions.

This boy became extraordinarily attractive to an older woman who was one
of our number, who was solitary and abstracted, and of an intense
seriousness of devotion to her work. It was evident both that she felt
his charm intensely and that her disposition was wholly alien to the
disposition of the boy himself. In fact, she simply bored him. He took
all that he did lightly, and achieved by an intense momentary
concentration what she could only achieve by slow reflection. This
devotion had in it something that was strangely pathetic, because it
took the form in her of making her wish to conciliate the boy's
admiration, by treating thoughts and ideas with a lightness and a humour
to which she could by no means attain, and which made things worse
rather than better, because she could read so easily, in the thoughts of
others, the impression that she was attempting a handling of topics
which she could not in the least accomplish. But advice was useless.
There it was, the old, fierce, constraining attraction of love, as it
had been of old, making havoc of comfortable arrangements, attempting
the impossible; and yet one knew that she would gain by the process,
that she was opening a door in her heart that had hitherto been closed,
and learning a largeness of view and sympathy in the process. Her fault
had ever been, no doubt, to estimate slow and accurate methods too
highly, and to believe that all was insecure and untrustworthy that was
not painfully accumulated. Now she saw that genius could accomplish
without effort or trouble what no amount of homely energy could effect,
and a new horizon was unveiled to her. But on the boy it did not seem to
have the right result. He might have learned to extend his sympathy to a
nature so dumb and plodding; and this coldness of his called down a
rebuke of what seemed almost undue sternness from one of our teachers.
It was not given in my presence, but the boy, bewildered by the severity
which he did not anticipate, coupled indeed with a hint that he must be
prepared, if he could not exhibit a more elastic sympathy, to have his
course suspended in favour of some more simple discipline, told me the
whole matter. "What am I to do?" he said. "I cannot care for Barbara;
her whole nature upsets me a