of the lectures. It was a joy to hear the
theory of education, there was such freedom and pleasure in
ranging over the very stuff of knowledge, and seeing how it
moved and lived and had its being. How happy Racine made her!
She did not know why. But as the big lines of the drama unfolded
themselves, so steady, so measured, she felt a thrill as of
being in the realm of the reality. Of Latin, she was doing Livy
and Horace. The curious, intimate, gossiping tone of the Latin
class suited Horace. Yet she never cared for him, nor even Livy.
There was an entire lack of sternness in the gossipy class-room.
She tried hard to keep her old grasp of the Roman spirit. But
gradually the Latin became mere gossip-stuff and artificiality
to her, a question of manners and verbosities.

Her terror was the mathematics class. The lecturer went so
fast, her heart beat excitedly, she seemed to be straining every
nerve. And she struggled hard, during private study, to get the
stuff into control.

Then came the lovely, peaceful afternoons in the botany
laboratory. There were few students. How she loved to sit on her
high stool before the bench, with her pith and her razor and her
material, carefully mounting her slides, carefully bringing her
microscope into focus, then turning with joy to record her
observation, drawing joyfully in her book, if the slide were
good.

She soon made a college friend, a girl who had lived in
Florence, a girl who wore a wonderful purple or figured scarf
draped over a plain, dark dress. She was Dorothy Russell,
daughter of a south-country advocate. Dorothy lived with a
maiden aunt in Nottingham, and spent her spare moments slaving
for the Women's Social and Political Union. She was quiet and
intense, with an ivory face and dark hair looped plain over her
ears. Ursula was very fond of her, but afraid of her. She seemed
so old and so relentless towards herself. Yet she was only
twenty-two. Ursula always felt her to be a creature of fate,
like Cassandra.

The two girls had a close, stern friendship. Dorothy worked
at all things with the same passion, never sparing herself. She
came closest to Ursula during the botany hours. For she could
not draw. Ursula made beautiful and wonderful drawings of the
sections under the microscope, and Dorothy always came to learn
the manner of the drawing.

So the first year went by, in magnificent seclusion and
activity of learning. It was strenuous as a battle, her college
l