our, "it needn't think that I am going to pay any attention
to what it says, for I am not."

Margaret could scarcely help smiling at the defiant note in Eleanor's
voice. The latter turned suddenly and laid her hand on Margaret's knee.

"Don't judge me too hardly, Margaret," she said. "I know you think me
selfish and callous, and utterly without any decent feelings at all to be
deliberately keeping you out of your own name, and to be taking
everything that ought by rights to belong to you. But you don't know what
this chance means to me. You can't even dimly conceive it. It is just the
turning-point of my life.

"'There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune,
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.'

"There, Margaret, doesn't that fit our case exactly? Shallows and
miseries are Hampstead and the school, and the full sea is the chance you
are giving me."

"You see, Margaret," she went on earnestly, "a voice is not quite like
any other gift. If you don't train it when you are young you might as
well not train it at all. It is too late when you are old, and then your
gift is thrown away--wasted. Even as it is Madame Martelli says that I
have no time to lose. She wants me to go to Milan next spring."

"To Milan!" Margaret exclaimed.

"Or to Paris," Eleanor went on half absently.

"To Paris!" Margaret echoed again.

"Don't remind me that I can't go!" Eleanor exclaimed fiercely, springing
to her feet and beginning to pace up and down the path in front of the
arbour, "for, of course, I know it without being told. I won't look
forward, I won't, I won't! I will go on living in the present which is
giving me all I want. The future is too gloomy and uncertain to be
thought of yet, and so, _hey presto_!" and her brow cleared as if by
magic, "I refuse to think of it."

The end of one of Eleanor's rapid speeches, in the course of which she
could pass with astounding swiftness from one mood to another, always
left Margaret with a slight feeling of bewilderment. In the present
instance she had been greatly moved by Eleanor's impulsive appeal to her
not to think badly of her, and had just been about to assure her that
indeed she had never judged her conduct hardly when Eleanor had gone on
to justify herself, to speak of her future plans,