work.

Was Alvina her own real self all this time? The mighty question
arises upon us, what is one's own real self? It certainly is not
what we think we are and ought to be. Alvina had been bred to think
of herself as a delicate, tender, chaste creature with unselfish
inclinations and a pure, "high" mind. Well, so she was, in the
more-or-less exhausted part of herself. But high-mindedness had
really come to an end with James Houghton, had really reached the
point, not only of pathetic, but of dry and anti-human, repulsive
quixotry. In Alvina high-mindedness was already stretched beyond the
breaking point. Being a woman of some flexibility of temper,
wrought through generations to a fine, pliant hardness, she flew
back. She went right back on high-mindedness. Did she thereby betray
it?

We think not. If we turn over the head of the penny and look at the
tail, we don't thereby deny or betray the head. We do but adjust it
to its own complement. And so with high-mindedness. It is but one
side of the medal--the crowned reverse. On the obverse the three
legs still go kicking the soft-footed spin of the universe, the
dolphin flirts and the crab leers.

So Alvina spun her medal, and her medal came down tails. Heads or
tails? Heads for generations. Then tails. See the poetic justice.

Now Alvina decided to accept the decision of her fate. Or rather,
being sufficiently a woman, she didn't decide anything. She _was_
her own fate. She went through her training experiences like another
being. She was not herself, said Everybody. When she came home to
Woodhouse at Easter, in her bonnet and cloak, everybody was simply
knocked out. Imagine that this frail, pallid, diffident girl, so
ladylike, was now a rather fat, warm-coloured young woman, strapping
and strong-looking, and with a certain bounce. Imagine her mother's
startled, almost expiring:

"Why, Vina dear!"

Vina laughed. She knew how they were all feeling.

"At least it agrees with your _health_," said her father,
sarcastically, to which Miss Pinnegar answered:

"Well, that's a good deal."

But Miss Frost said nothing the first day. Only the second day, at
breakfast, as Alvina ate rather rapidly and rather well, the
white-haired woman said quietly, with a tinge of cold contempt:

"How changed you are, dear!"

"Am I?" laughed Alvina. "Oh, not really." And she gave the arch look
with her eyes, which made Miss Frost shudder.

Inwardly, Miss Frost shuddered, and abs