ge
was never disagreeable to me, even when I was quite young. It is the
natural object of a woman's life."

"There are exceptions, surely! There are nuns, for instance."

"Oh, if you wish to go into a convent----"

"I have no religious vocation," Cecilia answered gravely. "Or if I have,
it is not of that sort."

"I am glad to hear it!" The Countess was beginning to lose her temper.
"If you thought you had, you would be quite capable of taking the veil."

"Yes," the young girl replied. "If I wished to be a nun, and if I were
sure that I should be a good nun, I would enter a convent at once. But I
am not naturally devout, I suppose."

"In my time," said the Countess, with emphasis, "when young girls did
not take the veil, they married."

As an argument, this was weak and lacked logic, and Cecilia felt rather
pitiless just then.

"There are only two possible ways of living," she said; "either by
religion, if you have any, and that is the easier, or by rule."

"And pray what sort of rule can there be to take the place of religion?"

"Act so that the reason for your actions may be considered a universal
law."

"That is nonsense!" cried the Countess.

"No," replied Cecilia, unmoved, "it is Kant's Categorical Imperative."

"It makes no difference," retorted her mother. "It is nonsense."

Cecilia said nothing, and her expression did not change, for she knew
that her mother could not understand her, and she was not at all sure
that she understood herself, as she had almost confessed. Seeing that
she did not answer, the excellent Countess took the opportunity of
telling her that her head had been turned by too much reading, though it
was all her poor, dear stepfather's fault, since he had filled her head
with ideas. What she meant by "ideas" was not clear, except that they
were of course dangerous in themselves and utterly subversive of social
order, and that the main purpose of all education should be to
discourage them in the young.

"They should be left to old people," she concluded; "they have nothing
else to think of."

Cecilia had heard very little, being absorbed in her own reflections,
but as her mother often spoke in the same way, the general drift of what
she had said was unmistakable. The two were very unlike, but they were
not unloving. In her heart the Countess took the most unbounded pride in
her only child's beauty and cleverness, except when the latter opposed
itself to her social inclinations