e kindness of English people, no matter how deep, is
casual in expression. But on the whole she had felt more girlishly happy
and ebullient than since her sister had gone her own way and left a
heavy burden for young shoulders behind her. In the freedom of a girl in
Europe, no matter how prized, there is much of loneliness in idleness, a
constant attitude of defence, moments of bitter wonder and disgust, and,
to the analytical mind, an encroaching dread of a more normal future
with a chronic canker of discontent.

Isabel had by no means passed her European years in the procession that
winds from the Tiber to the Seine, prostrating itself at each successive
station of architecture or canvas; nor even devoted the major portion of
her time to the investigation of the native, deeply as the varying types
had interested her. Her intellectual ambition, as is often the case with
the American provincial girl, had been even stronger than her desire for
liberty and pleasure, and she had spent several months with the
archaeological society of Rome, read deeply in Italian history and art,
attended lectures at the Sorbonne, and spent nearly a year in Berlin,
Dresden, Munich, and Vienna, studying that modern stronghold of dramatic
literature, the German Theatre.

It had been the living dream of long winter evenings, when she had not
dared to join in the festivities of the other young folk lest her father
should stray beyond her control; he would, when the demon was quiescent,
sit at home if she read to him, and she had learned to read and dream at
the same time. It was only at the beginning of her third year of
liberty, when, in spite of shifting scenes, the entire absence of daily
cares and of heavy responsibilities involving another had given her
longer hours for thought and introspection, that the poisonous doubt of
the use of it all had begun to work in a mind that had lost something of
the ardor of novelty. The eternal interrogations had obtruded themselves
in her unfortunate girlhood, and she had questioned the voiceless
infinite, but angrily, with youth's blind rebellion against the
injustice of life. The anger and rebellion had been comatose in these
years of freedom, but the maturer brain was the more uneasy, at times
appalled. For what was she developing, perfecting herself? She had no
talent, with its constant promises, its occasional triumphs, its
stimulating rivalries, to give zest to life; and there were times when
she