er aunt, "before I came to understand how differently I had
been brought up from other children. Partly I began to see it at the
school where we first met; but it only grew quite clear to me when I
shared in the home life of my pupils in the country. I found I had an
entirely different view of the world from what was usual. That which
was my evil, I discovered to be often others' good; and my good, their
abhorrence. My aunt's system was held to be utterly unchristian. Little
things which I sometimes said, in perfect innocence, excited grave
disapproval. All this frightened me, and made me even more reserved
than I should have been naturally.

"In my letters to you I began to venture for the first time to speak of
things which were making my life restless. I did little more than hint
my opinions; I wonder, in looking back, that I had the courage to do
even that. But I already knew that your mind was broader and richer
than mine, and I suppose I caught with a certain desperation at the
chance of being understood. It was the first opportunity I had ever had
of discussing intellectual things. With my aunt I had never ventured to
discuss anything; I reverenced her too much for that; she spoke, and I
received all she said. I thought that from you I should obtain
confirmation where I needed it, but your influence was of the opposite
kind. Your letters so abounded with suggestion that was quite new to
me, referred so familiarly to beliefs and interests of which I was
quite ignorant, showed such a boldness in judging all things, that I
drifted further and further from certainty. The result of it all was
that I fell ill.

"You see now what it is that has burdened me from the day when I first
began to ask myself about my beliefs. I was taught to believe that the
world was sin, and that the soul only freed itself from sin in
proportion as it learned to live apart from and independently of the
world. Everything was dark because of sin; only in the still, secret
places of the soul was the light of purity and salvation.

"I thought I had passed out of this. When I returned to London, and
began this new life, the burden seemed all at once lifted from me. I
could look here and there with freedom; the sky was bright above me;
human existence was cheerful and noble and justified in itself. I began
to learn a thousand things. Above all, my mind fixed on Art; in that I
thought I had found a support that would never fail me.

"Oh, why co