JUST at first, it was a sheer impossibility to do anything but bask and bathe in the sunny present, to spend the days in wandering incredulously through vernal Paris, over whose bursting freshness and brilliancy the white clouds seemed to be driven, with the same joy of life. The city was crammed; the inhabitants poured forth in swarms to enjoy, in true French fashion, the genial warmth and the universal awakening after the long capricious winter. It was actually hot in the sun, and fresh light clothing became a luxury, like a bath after a journey. The year had raised its siege, and there was sudden amity between man and Nature. Shrivelled man could relax the tension of resistance to cold and damp and change, and go forth into the sun with cordial insouciance. In many of the faces might be read this kindly amnesty, although there were some so set and fixed with past cares that not even the soft hand of a Parisian spring could smooth away the lines, or even touch the spirit.

These Hadria passed with an aching pity. Circumstance had been to them a relentless taskmaster. Perhaps they had not rubbed the magic ring of will, and summoned the obedient genius. Perhaps circumstance had forbidden them even the rag wherewith to rub—or the impulse.

Sallying forth from the pension, Hadria would sometimes pause, for a moment, at the corner of the street, where it opened into the Place de la Concorde, irresolute, because of the endless variety of possible ways to turn, and places to visit. She seldom made definite plans the day before, unless it were for the pleasure of changing them. The letter of introduction to Madame Vauchelet had remained unpresented. The sense of solitude, combined for the first time with that of freedom, was too delightful to forego. One must have time to realize and appreciate the sudden calm and serenity; the sudden absence of claims and obstructions and harassing criticisms. Heavens, what a price people consented to pay for the privilege of human ties! what hard bargains were driven in the kingdom of the affections! Thieves, extortionists, usurers—and in the name of all the virtues!

“Yes, solitude has charms!” Hadria inwardly exclaimed, as she stood watching the coming and going of people, the spouting of fountains, the fluttering of big sycamore leaves in the Champs ElysÉes.

Unhappily, the solitude made difficulties. But meanwhile there was a large field to be explored, where these difficulties did not arise, or could be guarded against. Her sex was a troublesome obstruction. “One does not come of centuries of chattel-women for nothing!” she wrote to Algitha. Society bristled with insults, conscious and unconscious. Nor had one lived the brightest, sweetest years of one’s life tethered and impounded, without feeling the consequences when the tether was cut. There were dreads, shrinkings, bewilderments, confusions to encounter; the difficulties of pilotage in unknown seas, of self-knowledge, and guidance suddenly needed in new ranges of the soul; fresh temptations, fresh possibilities to deal with; everything untested, the alphabet of worldly experience yet to learn.

But all this was felt with infinitely greater force a little later, when the period of solitude was over, and Hadria found herself in the midst of a little society whose real codes and ideas she had gropingly to learn. Unfamiliar (in any practical sense) with life, even in her own country, she had no landmarks or finger-posts, of any kind, in this new land. Her sentiment had never been narrowly British, but now she realized her nationality over-keenly; she felt herself almost grotesquely English, and had a sense of insular clumsiness amidst a uprightly, dexterous people. Conscious of a thousand illusive, but very real differences in point of view, and in nature, between the two nations, she had a baffled impression of walking among mysteries and novelties that she could not grasp. She began to be painfully conscious of the effects of the narrow life that she had led, and of the limitations that had crippled her in a thousand ways hitherto scarcely realized.

“One begins to learn everything too late,” she wrote to Algitha. “This ought all to have been familiar long ago. I don’t know anything about the world in which I live. I have never before caught so much as a distant glimpse of it. And even now there are strange thick wrappings from the past that cling tight round and hold me aloof, strive as I may to strip off that past-made personality, and to understand, by touch, what things are made of. I feel as if I would risk anything in order to really know that. Why should a woman treat herself as if she were Dresden china? She is more or less insulted and degraded whatever happens, especially if she obeys what our generation is pleased to call the moral law. The more I see of life, the more hideous seems the position that women hold in relation to the social structure, and the more sickening the current nonsense that is talked about us and our ‘missions’ and ‘spheres.’ It is so feeble, so futile, to try to ornament an essentially degrading fact. It is such insolence to talk to us—good heavens, to us!—about holiness and sacredness, when men (to whom surely a sense of humour has been denied) divide their women into two great classes, both of whom they insult and enslave, insisting peremptorily on the existence of each division, but treating one class as private and the other as public property. One might as well talk to driven cattle in the shambles about their ‘sacred mission’ as to women. It is an added mockery, a gratuitous piece of insolence.”

Having been, from childhood, more or less at issue with her surroundings, Hadria had never fully realized their power upon her personality. But now daily a fresh recognition of her continued imprisonment, baffled her attempt to look at things with clear eyes. She struggled to get round and beyond that past-fashioned self, not merely in order to see truly, but in order to see at all. And in doing so, she ran the risk of letting go what she might have done better to hold. She felt painfully different from these people among whom she found herself. Her very trick of pondering over things sent her spinning to hopeless distances. They seemed to ponder so wholesomely little. Their intelligence was devoted to matters of the moment; they were keen and well-finished and accomplished. Hadria used to look at them in astonishment. How did these quick-witted people manage to escape the importunate inquisitive demon, the familiar spirit, who pursued her incessantly with his queries and suggestions? He would stare up from river and street and merry gardens; his haunting eyes looked mockingly out of green realms of stirring foliage, and his voice was like a sardonic echo to the happy voices of the children, laughing at their play under the flickering shadows, of mothers discussing their cares and interests, of men in blouses, at work by the water-side, or solemn, in frock-coats, with pre-occupations of business and bread-winning. The demon had his own reflections on all these seemingly ordinary matters, and so bizarre were they at times, so startling and often so terrible, that one found oneself shivering in full noontide, or smiling, or thrilled with passionate pity at “the sad, strange ways of men.”

It was sweet to stretch one’s cramped wings to the sun, to ruffle and spread them, as a released bird will, but it was startling to find already little stiff habits arisen, little creaks and hindrances never suspected, that made flight in the high air not quite effortless and serene.

The Past is never past; immortal as the Gods, it lives enthroned in the Present, and sets its limits and lays its commands.

Cases have been known of a man blind from birth being restored to sight, at mature age. For a time, the appearance of objects was strange and incomprehensible. Their full meaning was not conveyed to him; they remained riddles. He could not judge the difference between near and far, between solid and liquid; he had no experience, dating from childhood, of the apparent smallness of distant things, of the connexion between the impression given to the touch by solids and their effect on the eye. He had all these things to learn. A thousand trifling associations, of which those with normal senses are scarcely conscious, had to be stumblingly acquired, as a child learns to connect sound and sight, in learning to read.

Such were the changes of consciousness that Hadria found herself going through; only realising each phase of the process after it was over, and the previous confusion of vision had been itself revealed, by the newly and often painfully acquired co-ordinating skill.

But, as generally happens, in the course of passing from ignorance to knowledge, the intermediate stage was chaotic. Objects loomed up large and indistinct, as through a mist; vague forms drifted by, half revealed, to melt away again; here and there were clear outlines and solid impressions, to be deemed trustworthy and given a place of honour; thence a disproportion in the general conception; it being almost beyond human power to allow sufficiently for that which is unknown.

For some time, however, the dominant impression on Hadria’s mind was of her own gigantic ignorance. This ignorance was far more confusing and even misleading than it had been when its proportions were less defined. The faint twinkle of light revealed the dusky outline, bewildering and discouraging the imagination. Intuitive knowledge was disturbed by the incursion of scraps of disconnected experience. This condition of mind made her an almost insoluble psychological problem. Since she was evidently a woman of pronounced character, her bewilderment and tentative attitude were not allowed for. Her actions were regarded as deliberate and cool-headed, when often they would be the outcome of sheer confusion, or chance, or perhaps of a groping experimental effort.

The first three weeks in Paris had been given up to enjoying the new conditions of existence. But now practical matters claimed consideration. The pension in the Rue Boissy d’Anglas was not suitable as a permanent abode. Rooms must be looked for, combining cheapness with a good situation, within easy distance of the scene of Hadria’s future musical studies, and also within reach of some park or gardens for Martha’s benefit.

This ideal place of abode was at last found. It cost rather more than Hadria had wished to spend on mere lodging, but otherwise it seemed perfect. It was in a quiet street between the Champs ElysÉes and the river. Two great thoroughfares ran, at a respectful distance, on either side, with omnibuses always passing. Hadria could be set down within a few minutes’ walk of the School of Music, or, if she liked to give the time, could walk the whole way to her morning’s work, through some of the most charming parts of Paris. As for Martha, she was richly provided with playgrounds. The Bois could be quickly reached, and there were always the Champs ElysÉes or the walk beneath the chestnuts by the river, along the Cours de la Reine and the length of the quays. Even Hannah thought the situation might do. Hadria had begun her studies at the School of Music, and found the steady work not only a profound, though somewhat stern enjoyment, but a solid backbone to her new existence, giving it cohesion and form. Recreation deserved its name, after work of this kind. Any lurking danger of too great speculative restlessness disappeared. There had been a moment when the luxurious joy of mere wandering observation and absorption, threatened to become overwhelming, and to loosen some of the rivets of the character.

But work was to the sum-total of impulse what the central weight was to one of Martha’s toys: a leaden ballast that always brought the balance right again, however wildly the little tyrant might swing the creature off the perpendicular. When Hadria used to come in, pleasantly tired with her morning’s occupation, and the wholesome heat of the sun, to take her simple dÉjeuner in the little apartment with Martha, a frivolous five minutes would often be spent by the two in endeavouring to overcome the rigid principles of that well-balanced plaything. But always the dead weight at its heart frustrated their attempts. Martha played the most inconsiderate pranks with its centre of gravity, but quite in vain. When a little French boy from the Étage above was allowed to come and play with Martha, she proceeded to experiment upon his centre of gravity in the same way, and seemed much surprised when Jean Paul Auguste not only howled indignantly, but didn’t swing up again after he was overturned. He remained supine, and had to be reinstated by Hadria and Hannah, and comforted with sweetmeats. Martha’s logic received one of its first checks. She evidently made up her mind that logic was a fallacious mode of inference, and determined to abandon it for the future. These rebuffs in infancy, Hadria conjectured, might account for much!

About three weeks passed in almost pure enjoyment and peace; and then it was discovered that the cost of living, in spite of an extremely simple diet, was such as might have provided epicurean luxuries for a family of ten. Hadria’s enquiries among her acquaintances elicited cries of consternation. Obviously the landlady, who did the marketing, must be cheating on a royal scale, and there was nothing for it but to move. Hadria suggested to Madame Vauchelet, whose advice she always sought in practical matters, that perhaps the landlady might be induced to pursue her lucrative art in moderation; could she not put it honestly down in the bill “Peculation—so much per week?”

Madame Vauchelet was horrified. “Impossible!” she cried; one must seek another apartment. If only Hannah understood French and could do the marketing herself. But Hannah scorned the outlandish lingo, and had a poor opinion of the nation as a whole.

It was fatiguing and somewhat discouraging work to begin, all over again, the quest of rooms, especially with the difficulty about the landlady always in view, and no means of ascertaining her scale of absorption. It really seemed a pity that it could not be mentioned as an extra, like coal and lights. Then one would know what one was about. This uncertain liability, with an extremely limited income, which was likely to prove insufficient unless some addition could be made to it, was trying to the nerves.

In order to avoid too great anxiety, Hadria had to make up her mind to a less attractive suite of rooms, farther out of town, and she found it desirable to order many of the comestibles herself. Madame Vauchelet was untiring in her efforts to help and advise. She initiated Hadria into the picturesque mysteries of Parisian housekeeping. It was amusing to go to the shops and markets with this shrewd Frenchwoman, and very enlightening as to the method of living cheaply and well. Hadria began to think wistfully of a more permanent mÉnage in this entrancing capital, where there were still worlds within worlds to explore. She questioned Madame Vauchelet as to the probable cost of a femme de mÉnage. Madame quickly ran through some calculations and pronounced a sum alluringly small. Since the landlady difficulty was so serious, and made personal superintendence necessary, it seemed as if one might as well have the greater comfort and independence of this more home-like arrangement.

Madame Vauchelet recommended an excellent woman who would cook and market, and, with Hannah’s help, easily do all that was necessary. After many calculations and consultations with Madame Vauchelet, Hadria finally decided to rent, for three months, a cheerful little suite of rooms near the Arc de Triomphe.

Madame Vauchelet drank a cup of tea in the little salon with quiet heroism, not liking to refuse Hadria’s offer of the friendly beverage. But she wondered at the powerful physique of the nation that could submit to the trial daily.

Hadria was brimming over with pleasure in her new home, which breathed Paris from every pore. She had already surrounded herself with odds and ends of her own, with books and a few flowers. If only this venture turned out well, how delightful would be the next few months. Hadria did not clearly look beyond that time. To her, it seemed like a century. Her only idea as to the farther future was an abstract resolve to let nothing short of absolute compulsion persuade her to renounce her freedom, or subject herself to conditions that made the pursuit of her art impossible. How to carry out the resolve, in fact and detail, was a matter to consider when the time came. If one were to consider future difficulties as well as deal with immediate ones, into what crannies and interstices were the affairs of the moment to be crammed?

There has probably never been a human experience of even a few months of perfect happiness, of perfect satisfaction with conditions, even among the few men and women who know how to appreciate the bounty of Fate, when she is generous, and to take the sting out of minor annoyances by treating them lightly. Hadria was ready to shrug her shoulders at legions of these, so long as the main current of her purpose were not diverted. But she could not steel herself against the letters that she received from England.

Everyone was deeply injured but bravely bearing up. Her family was a stricken and sorrowing family. Being naturally heroic, it said little but thought the more. Relations whose names Hadria scarcely remembered, seemed to have waked up at the news of her departure and claimed their share of the woe. Obscure Temperleys raised astounded heads and mourned. Henriette wrote that she was really annoyed at the way in which everybody was talking about Hadria’s conduct. It was most uncomfortable. She hoped Hadria was able to be happy. Hubert was ready to forgive her and to receive her back, in spite of everything. Henriette entreated her to return; for her own sake, for Hubert’s sake, for the children’s. They were just going off to school, poor little boys. Henriette, although so happy at the Red House, was terribly grieved at this sad misunderstanding. It seemed so strange, so distressing. Henriette had thoroughly enjoyed looking after dear Hubert and the sweet children. They were in splendid health. She had been very particular about hygiene. Hubert and she had seen a good deal of the Engletons lately. How charming Lady Engleton was! So much tact. She was advanced in her ideas, only she never allowed them to be intrusive. She seemed just like everybody else. She hated to make herself conspicuous; the very ideal of a true lady, if one might use the much-abused word. Professor Fortescue was reported to be still far from well. Professor Theobald had not taken the Priory after all. It was too large. It looked so deserted and melancholy now.

Henriette always finished her letters with an entreaty to Hadria to return. People were talking so. They suspected the truth; although, of course, one had hoped that the separation would be supposed to be temporary—as indeed Henriette trusted it would prove.

Madame Bertaux, who had just returned from England to her beloved Paris, reported to Hadria, when she called on the latter in her new abode, that everyone was talking about the affair with as much eagerness as if the fate of the empire had depended on it. Madame Bertaux recommended indifference and silence. She observed, in her sharp, good-natured, impatient way, that reforming confirmed drunkards, converting the heathen, making saints out of sinners, or a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, would be mere child’s play compared with the task of teaching the average idiot to mind his own business.