g in their way in later
life, when sorrow had stamped her, and the mark of her willing
martyrdom for humanity's sake was deeply printed upon them. But
their beauty then was the beauty of holiness, which not all can
appreciate. In her younger days, as Alan Merrick first saw her,
she was beautiful still with the first flush of health and strength
and womanhood in a free and vigorous English girl's body. A
certain lofty serenity, not untouched with pathos, seemed to strike
the keynote. But that was not all. Some hint of every element in
the highest loveliness met in that face and form,--physical,
intellectual, emotional, moral.

"You'll like him, Herminia," Mrs. Dewsbury said, nodding. "He's
one of your own kind, as dreadful as you are; very free and
advanced; a perfect firebrand. In fact, my dear child, I don't
know which of you makes my hair stand on end most." And with that
introductory hint, she left the pair forthwith to their own
devices.

Mrs. Dewsbury was right. It took those two but little time to feel
quite at home with one another. Built of similar mould, each
seemed instinctively to grasp what each was aiming at. Two or
three turns pacing up and down the lawn, two or three steps along
the box-covered path at the side, and they read one another
perfectly. For he was true man, and she was real woman.

"Then you were at Girton?" Alan asked, as he paused with one hand
on the rustic seat that looks up towards Leith Hill, and the
heather-clad moorland.

"Yes, at Girton," Herminia answered, sinking easily upon the bench,
and letting one arm rest on the back in a graceful attitude of
unstudied attention. "But I didn't take my degree," she went on
hurriedly, as one who is anxious to disclaim some too great honor
thrust upon her. "I didn't care for the life; I thought it
cramping. You see, if we women are ever to be free in the world,
we must have in the end a freeman's education. But the education
at Girton made only a pretence at freedom. At heart, our girls
were as enslaved to conventions as any girls elsewhere. The whole
object of the training was to see just how far you could manage to
push a woman's education without the faintest danger of her
emancipation."

"You are right," Alan answered briskly, for the point was a pet one
with him. "I was an Oxford man myself, and I know that servitude.
When I go up to Oxford now and see the girls who are being ground
in the mill at Somerville, I'm h