e a Siegfried, a John the Baptist!
I'm going to be a man!"

The doctor laughed loudly and told her to wait awhile, when she would
laugh at this Marcella who was so eager, so impatient now.

CHAPTER V

That conversation marked an epoch for Marcella. To use the doctor's
phrase, it made her shake hands with her body. His medicine cured the
neuralgia, though it would probably have cured itself now that the
strain of her father's illness was over. But the headaches persisted
right on until the springtime, bringing gusts of impatience and strange
demands and urgencies that made her begin to get tired of the farm and
Lashnagar and set her feet longing to be away on strange roads.

One sunny dawn she came down to the beach and, throwing off her clothes,
ran across the strip of shingle, and then, with rapture in the softness
of the air after the sharp bite of winter and spring mornings, she flew
as if on wings over the yellow sand and into the water that was sliding
in gently, almost motionlessly. She danced in the little lazy waves.
They seemed playmates to-day, though usually they fought and buffeted
her; she had her usual swim out to the islet where the fishermen kept
their nets and it seemed very splendid just to be alive. Then she swam
back to the shore where her clothes lay in a little heap, and it
occurred to her that she had brought no towel.

"I'll have to dry like washing does--in the sun," she laughed, wringing
her hair in her hand as she stood in a motionless little rock pool. The
drops sparkled round her and, looking down at their little splashes, she
caught sight of her reflection in the pool as she stooped forward to
shake her hair. For a moment she stared, as Narcissus once stared. But
unlike Narcissus she did not fall in love with herself. From the
reflection she let her eyes travel over her body, and noticed that
curves and roundnesses were taking the place of boyish slimness.

"Oh--how _horrible_!" she cried and dimly realized that the change in
her appearance had something to do with the doctor's prediction of
physical disability. She loathed and resented it immediately. Suddenly
conscious of her bare legs she ran home, horrified at the tightness of
her frock that showed the roundness of her figure. As she passed the
Mactavish cottage the mother sat in the doorway, suckling the newest
baby. Instead of staying to talk as usual Marcella flew by, her cheeks
crimson. As soon as she reached home she