tance, to
make it a painful effort for her to run the risk of a mistake. She had
no particular feeling about herself; she only cared, as yet, for outside
things. Even the development of her "gift" had not made her think
herself too precious for mere experiments; she had neither a particle of
diffidence nor a particle of vanity. Though it would have seemed to you
eminently natural that a daughter of Selah Tarrant and his wife should
be an inspirational speaker, yet, as you knew Verena better, you would
have wondered immensely how she came to issue from such a pair. Her
ideas of enjoyment were very simple; she enjoyed putting on her new hat,
with its redundancy of feather, and twenty cents appeared to her a very
large sum.

XI

"I was certain you would come--I have felt it all day--something told
me!" It was with these words that Olive Chancellor greeted her young
visitor, coming to her quickly from the window, where she might have
been waiting for her arrival. Some weeks later she explained to Verena
how definite this prevision had been, how it had filled her all day with
a nervous agitation so violent as to be painful. She told her that such
forebodings were a peculiarity of her organisation, that she didn't know
what to make of them, that she had to accept them; and she mentioned, as
another example, the sudden dread that had come to her the evening
before in the carriage, after proposing to Mr. Ransom to go with her to
Miss Birdseye's. This had been as strange as it had been instinctive,
and the strangeness, of course, was what must have struck Mr. Ransom;
for the idea that he might come had been hers, and yet she suddenly
veered round. She couldn't help it; her heart had begun to throb with
the conviction that if he crossed that threshold some harm would come of
of it for her. She hadn't prevented him, and now she didn't care, for
now, as she intimated, she had the interest of Verena, and that made her
indifferent to every danger, to every ordinary pleasure. By this time
Verena had learned how peculiarly her friend was constituted, how
nervous and serious she was, how personal, how exclusive, what a force
of will she had, what a concentration of purpose. Olive had taken her
up, in the literal sense of the phrase, like a bird of the air, had
spread an extraordinary pair of wings, and carried her through the
dizzying void of space. Verena liked it, for the most part; liked to
shoot upward without an effort of