wonderful gift of Liddon kept the old fires
burning in pious hearts.

And now into this old, old place, with its thick soil of dead lives and
deeds, there had come a new seed, as to which no one could tell how it
would flower. Women students were increasing every term in Oxford.
Groups of girl graduates in growing numbers went shyly through the
streets, knowing that they had still to justify their presence in this
hitherto closed world--made by men for men. There were many hostile eyes
upon them, watching for mistakes. But all the generous forces in Oxford
were behind them. The ablest men in the University were teaching women
how to administer--how to organise. Some lecture-rooms were opening to
them; some still entirely declined to admit them. And here and there
were persons who had a clear vision of the future to which was trending
this new eagerness of women to explore regions hitherto forbidden them
in the House of Life.

Connie had no such vision, but she had a boundless curiosity and a
thrilling sense of great things stirring in the world. Under Nora's lead
she had begun to make friends among the women students, and to find her
way into their little bed-sitting-rooms at tea time. They all seemed to
her superhumanly clever; and superhumanly modest. She had been brought
up indeed by two scholars; but examinations dazzled and appalled her.
How they were ever passed, she could not imagine. She looked at the
girls who had passed them with awe, quite unconscious the while of the
glamour she herself possessed for these untravelled students, as one
familiar from her childhood with the sacred places of history--Rome,
Athens, Florence, Venice, Sicily. She had seen, she had trodden; and
quiet eyes--sometimes spectacled--would flame, while her easy talk
ran on.

But all the time there were very critical notions in her, hidden deep
down.

"Do they never think about a _man_?" some voice in her seemed to be
asking. "As for me, I am always thinking about a man!" And the colour
would flush into her cheeks, as she meekly asked for another cup of tea.

Sometimes she would go with Nora to the Bodleian, and sit patiently
beside her while Nora copied Middle-English poetry from an early
manuscript, worth a king's ransom. Nora got sevenpence a "folio," of
seventy-two words, for her work. Connie thought the pay scandalous for
so much learning; but Nora laughed at her, and took far more pleasure in
the small cheque she received at th