do things. It helped me to dance: it
helped me to succeed."

"Tell me about your dancing," said Stephen, vaguely anxious to change
the subject, and escape from thoughts of Margot, the only star of his
future. "I should like to hear how you began, if you don't mind."

"That's kind of you," replied Victoria, gratefully.

He laughed. "Kind!"

"Why, it's nothing of a story. Luckily, I'd always danced. So when I was
fourteen, and began to think I should never have any money of my own
after all, I saw that dancing would be my best way of earning it, as
that was the one thing I could do very well. Afterwards I worked in real
earnest--always up in the attic, where I used to study the Arabic
language too; study it very hard. And no one knew what I was doing or
what was in my head, till last year when I told the oldest Miss Jennings
that I couldn't be a teacher--that I must leave school and go to New
York."

"What did she say?"

"She said I was crazy. So did they all. They got the minister to come
and argue with me, and he was dreadfully opposed to my wishes at first.
But after we'd talked a while, he came round to my way."

"How did you persuade him to that point of view?" Stephen catechized
her, wondering always.

"I hardly know. I just told him how I felt about everything. Oh, and I
danced."

"By Jove! What effect had that on him?"

"He clapped his hands and said it was a good dance, quite different from
what he expected. He didn't think it would do any one harm to see. And
he gave me a sort of lecture about how I ought to behave if I became a
dancer. It was easy to follow his advice, because none of the bad things
he feared might happen to me ever did."

"Your star protected you?"

"Of course. There was a little trouble about money at first, because I
hadn't any, but I had a few things--a watch that had been my mother's,
and her engagement ring (they were Saidee's, but she left them both for
me when she went away), and a queer kind of brooch Cassim ben Halim gave
me one day, out of a lovely mother-o'-pearl box he brought full of
jewels for Saidee, when they were engaged. See, I have the brooch on
now--for I wouldn't _sell_ the things. I went to a shop in Potterston
and asked the man to lend me fifty dollars on them all, so he did. It
was very good of him."

"You seem to consider everybody you meet kind and good," Stephen said.

"Yes, they almost always have been so to me. If you believe people are
going to