cked to bits, it only remained to inquire where to go; what
to do she could settle when there. She tried to collect her thoughts.
Alas! it was not so easy as collecting her luggage. For a long time she
crouched on the fender and looked into the fire, seeing in it only
fragmentary pictures of the last seven years--bits of scenery, great
Cathedral interiors arousing mysterious yearnings, petty incidents of
travel, moments with Sidney, drawing-room episodes, strange passionate
scenes with herself as single performer, long silent watches of study
and aspiration, like the souls of the burned manuscripts made visible.
Even that very afternoon's scene with Raphael was part of the "old
unhappy far-off things" that could only live henceforwards in fantastic
arcades of glowing coal, out of all relation to future realities. Her
new-born love for Raphael appeared as ancient and as arid as the girlish
ambitions that had seemed on the point of blossoming when she was
transplanted from the Ghetto. That, too, was in the flames, and should
remain there.

At last she started up with a confused sense of wasted time and began to
undress mechanically, trying to concentrate her thoughts the while on
the problem that faced her. But they wandered back to her first night in
the fine house, when a separate bedroom was a new experience and she was
afraid to sleep alone, though turned fifteen. But she was more afraid of
appearing a great baby, and so no one in the world ever knew what the
imaginative little creature had lived down.

In the middle of brushing her hair she ran to the door and locked it,
from a sudden dread that she might oversleep herself and some one would
come in and see the letter on the writing-desk. She had not solved the
problem even by the time she got into bed; the fire opposite the foot
was burning down, but there was a red glow penetrating the dimness. She
had forgotten to draw the blind, and she saw the clear stars shining
peacefully in the sky. She looked and looked at them and they led her
thoughts away from the problem once more. She seemed to be lying in
Victoria Park, looking up with innocent mystic rapture and restfulness
at the brooding blue sky. The blood-and-thunder boys' story she had
borrowed from Solomon had fallen from her hand and lay unheeded on the
grass. Solomon was tossing a ball to Rachel, which he had acquired by a
colossal accumulation of buttons, and Isaac and Sarah were rolling and
wrangling on the