arning, while Henrietta after twenty years of
rest, had not merely lost all the qualities she had had as a child, but
had gained none from age and experience to take their place. The
realization of this fact startled and humiliated her. If her powers had
already declined at forty, what was to happen in the twenty years of
life that she might reasonably count upon as still before her?

She thought of Miss Arundel's words: "Etta Symons is a girl with
possibilities; I shall be interested to see how she will turn out." Miss
Arundel had long forgotten them, and now looked on Henrietta simply as a
co-member of the lectures, but she said to her niece after Henrietta had
been to tea, "What a very no-how person Miss Symons is; I should like to
shake her."

Henrietta tried her hardest to work at the lectures, to recover if
possible what she had lost, but it was no use. A person of more
character and determination might have succeeded, in spite of the long
years of mental self-indulgence, so might a person more ready to take
advice. But at forty, as I have said, she felt she was beyond advice, so
she would not notice Miss Gurney's hints. She chose to despise her
numberings and brackets, though she was half-envious of them. And,
however contemptible these aids may be to a real student, they were
evidently the one hope for Henrietta's foggy mind.

She began a paper on the sly, and with much sweat of brow the following
sentence emerged: "There are a number of celebrated writers in ancient
Greece, and among the number we may notice Aristotle, who wrote a number
of celebrated books, among which two called the 'Ethics' and 'Republic'
are very celebrated. He also wrote many other works, but none are so
celebrated as the two above mentioned." She had not written a paper for
twenty-three years, and she felt as helpless as if she were trying to
express herself in French. Her essays had been well thought of at
school.

As she was floundering along, up came Miss Gurney and looked over her
shoulder. "Oh Miss Symons, I should have a margin if I were you; I know
Professor Amery likes a margin for the corrections, he said so himself.
Oh, and you don't mind my saying so, but Aristotle did not write a
republic. Shall I just scratch that out? That was Plato. And I should
have a new paragraph there; and I always find, I don't know if you will,
that it makes it easier to underline some of the words."

"I am not at all certain that I am going to w