se and delicious freedom, the intimacy with Miss Maxwell,
almost intoxicated Rebecca. In three days she was not only herself
again, she was another self, thrilling with delight, anticipation, and
realization. She had always had such eager hunger for knowledge, such
thirst for love, such passionate longing for the music, the beauty, the
poetry of existence! She had always been straining to make the outward
world conform to her inward dreams, and now life had grown all at once
rich and sweet, wide and full. She was using all her natural, God-given
outlets; and Emily Maxwell marveled daily at the inexhaustible way in
which the girl poured out and gathered in the treasures of thought and
experience that belonged to her. She was a lifegiver, altering the
whole scheme of any picture she made a part of, by contributing new
values. Have you never seen the dull blues and greens of a room
changed, transfigured by a burst of sunshine? That seemed to Miss
Maxwell the effect of Rebecca on the groups of people with whom they
now and then mingled; but they were commonly alone, reading to each
other and having quiet talks. The prize essay was very much on
Rebecca's mind. Secretly she thought she could never be happy unless
she won it. She cared nothing for the value of it, and in this case
almost nothing for the honor; she wanted to please Mr. Aladdin and
justify his belief in her.

"If I ever succeed in choosing a subject, I must ask if you think I can
write well on it; and then I suppose I must work in silence and secret,
never even reading the essay to you, nor talking about it."

Miss Maxwell and Rebecca were sitting by a little brook on a sunny
spring day. They had been in a stretch of wood by the sea since
breakfast, going every now and then for a bask on the warm white sand,
and returning to their shady solitude when tired of the sun's glare.

"The subject is very important," said Miss Maxwell, "but I do not dare
choose for you. Have you decided on anything yet?"

"No," Rebecca answered; "I plan a new essay every night. I've begun one
on What is Failure? and another on He and She. That would be a dialogue
between a boy and girl just as they were leaving school, and would tell
their ideals of life. Then do you remember you said to me one day,
'Follow your Saint'? I'd love to write about that. I didn't have a
single thought in Wareham, and now I have a new one every minute, so I
must try and write the essay here; think it out,