nothing but a school-girl, who with
much labour was getting a smattering of common knowledge; for, though
Cecily had no profound acquirements, the use she made of what she did
know was always suggestive, intellectual, individual.

What wonder that Mallard brought out his drawings to show them to
Cecily? There would be nothing commonplace in _her_ remarks and
admiration.

She felt herself a paltry pretender to those possibilities of modern
womanhood which were open to Cecily from her birth. In the course of
natural development, Cecily, whilst still a girl, threw for ever behind
her all superstitions and harassing doubts; she was in the true sense
"emancipated"--a word Edward Spence was accustomed to use jestingly.
And this was Mallard's conception of the admirable in woman.

CHAPTER IX

SILENCES

Cecily was seeing Rome for the first time, but she could not enjoy it
in the way natural to her. It was only at rare moments that she _felt_
Rome. One of the most precious of her life's anticipations was fading
into memory, displaced by a dull experience, numbered among
disillusionings. Not that what she beheld disappointed her, but that
she was not herself in beholding. Had she stayed here on her first
visit to Italy, on what a strong current of enthusiasm would the hours
and the days have borne her! What a light would have glowed upon the
Seven Hills, and how would every vulgarity of the modern streets have
been transformed by her imagination! But now she was in no haste to
visit the most sacred spots; she was content to take each in its turn,
and her powers of attention soon flagged. It had been the same in
Florence. She felt herself reduced to a lower level of existence than
was native to her. Had she lived her life--all that was worth calling
life?

Her chief solace was in the society of Mrs. Spence. Formerly she had
not been prepared for appreciating Eleanor, but now she felt the
beauties of that calm, self-reliant character, rich in a mode of
happiness which it seemed impossible for herself ever to attain.
Fortune had been Eleanor's friend. Disillusion had come to her only in
the form of beneficent wisdom; no dolorous dead leaves rustled about
her feet and clogged her walk. Happy even in the fact that she had
never been a mother. She was a free woman; free in the love of her
husband, free in the pursuit of knowledge and the cultivation of all
her tastes. She had outlived passion without mourning it; what g