s, meanwhile, of
the conclusions she suggested to Miss Chancellor. Tarrant was a moralist
without moral sense--that was very clear to Olive as she listened to the
history of his daughter's childhood and youth, which Verena related with
an extraordinary artless vividness. This narrative, tremendously
fascinating to Miss Chancellor, made her feel in all sorts of
ways--prompted her to ask herself whether the girl was also destitute of
the perception of right and wrong. No, she was only supremely innocent;
she didn't understand, she didn't interpret nor see the _portee_ of what
she described; she had no idea whatever of judging her parents. Olive
had wished to "realise" the conditions in which her wonderful young
friend (she thought her more wonderful every day) had developed, and to
this end, as I have related, she prompted her to infinite discourse. But
now she was satisfied, the realisation was complete, and what she would
have liked to impose on the girl was an effectual rupture with her past.
That past she by no means absolutely deplored, for it had the merit of
having initiated Verena (and her patroness, through her agency) into the
miseries and mysteries of the People. It was her theory that Verena (in
spite of the blood of the Greenstreets, and, after all, who were they?)
was a flower of the great Democracy, and that it was impossible to have
had an origin less distinguished than Tarrant himself. His birth, in
some unheard-of place in Pennsylvania, was quite inexpressibly low, and
Olive would have been much disappointed if it had been wanting in this
defect. She liked to think that Verena, in her childhood, had known
almost the extremity of poverty, and there was a kind of ferocity in the
joy with which she reflected that there had been moments when this
delicate creature came near (if the pinch had only lasted a little
longer) to literally going without food. These things added to her value
for Olive; they made that young lady feel that their common undertaking
would, in consequence, be so much more serious. It is always supposed
that revolutionists have been goaded, and the goading would have been
rather deficient here were it not for such happy accidents in Verena's
past. When she conveyed from her mother a summons to Cambridge for a
particular occasion, Olive perceived that the great effort must now be
made. Great efforts were nothing new to her--it was a great effort to
live at all--but this one appeared to her e