to cry
again.

CHAPTER XII

UGHTRED

Bettina stood alone in her bedroom a couple of hours later. Lady
Anstruthers had taken her to it, preparing her for its limitations by
explaining that she would find it quite different from her room in
New York. She had been pathetically nervous and flushed about it, and
Bettina had also been aware that the apartment itself had been hastily,
and with much moving of objects from one chamber to another, made ready
for her.

The room was large and square and low. It was panelled in small squares
of white wood. The panels were old enough to be cracked here and there,
and the paint was stained and yellow with time, where it was not knocked
or worn off. There was a small paned, leaded window which filled a
large part of one side of the room, and its deep seat was an agreeable
feature. Sitting in it, one looked out over several red-walled gardens,
and through breaks in the trees of the park to a fair beyond. Bettina
stood before this window for a few moments, and then took a seat in the
embrasure, that she might gaze out and reflect at leisure.

Her genius, as has before been mentioned, was the genius for living,
for being vital. Many people merely exist, are kept alive by others, or
continue to vegetate because the persistent action of normal functions
will allow of their doing no less. Bettina Vanderpoel had lived vividly,
and in the midst of a self-created atmosphere of action from her
first hour. It was not possible for her to be one of the horde of mere
spectators. Wheresoever she moved there was some occult stirring of the
mental, and even physical, air. Her pulses beat too strongly, her blood
ran too fast to allow of inaction of mind or body. When, in passing
through the village, she had seen the broken windows and the hanging
palings of the cottages, it had been inevitable that, at once, she
should, in thought, repair them, set them straight. Disorder filled her
with a sort of impatience which was akin to physical distress. If she
had been born a poor woman she would have worked hard for her living,
and found an interest, almost an exhilaration, in her labour. Such gifts
as she had would have been applied to the tasks she undertook. It had
frequently given her pleasure to imagine herself earning her livelihood
as a seamstress, a housemaid, a nurse. She knew what she could have put
into her service, and how she could have found it absorbing. Imagination
and initiative coul