child, and then went in and took her place beside him.
She went out, but came back presently, every grain of dust gone, in her
clear dress of pearl gray. The neutral tint suited her well. As she
stood by the window, listening gravely to them, the homely face and
waiting figure came into full relief. Nature had made this woman in a
freak of rare sincerity. There were no reflected lights about her: no
gloss on her skin, no glitter in her eyes, no varnish on her soul.
Simple and dark and pure, there she was, for God and her master alone to
conquer and understand. Her flesh was cold and colorless,--there were no
surface tints on it,--it warmed sometimes slowly from far within; her
voice was quiet,--out of her heart; her hair, the only beauty of the
woman, was lustreless brown, lay in unpolished folds of dark shadow. I
saw such hair once, only once. It had been cut from the head of a man,
who, quiet and simple as a child, lived out the law of his nature, and
set the world at defiance,--Bysshe Shelley.

The Doctor, talking to her father, watched the girl furtively, took in
every point, as one might critically survey a Damascus blade which he
was going to carry into battle. There was neither love nor scorn in
his look,--a mere fixedness of purpose to make use of her some day. He
talked, meanwhile, glancing at her now and then, as if the subject they
discussed were indirectly linked with his plan for her. If it were, she
was unconscious of it. She sat on the wooden step of the porch, looking
out on the melancholy sweep of meadow and hill range growing cool and
dimmer in the dun twilight, not hearing what they said, until the
sharpened, earnest tones roused her.

"You will fail, Knowles."

It was her father who spoke.

"Nothing can save such a scheme from failure. Neither the French nor
German Socialists attempted to base their systems on the lowest class,
as you design."

"I know," said Knowles. "That accounts for their partial success."

"Let me understand your plan practically," eagerly demanded her father.

She thought Knowles evaded the question,--wished to leave the subject.
Perhaps he did not regard the poor old schoolmaster as a practical judge
of practical matters. All his life he had called him thriftless and
unready.

"It never will do, Knowles," he went on in his slow way. "Any plan,
Phalanstery or Community, call it what you please, founded on
self-government, is based on a sham, the tawdriest of shams."