of the subject dwelt upon which would have sent Miss Vantine
down to her grave with the shock, could she have heard their talk.

Now the Benjamins had handled the subject of sex hygiene in their school
as a vitally important subject. The girls had been led through the study
of botany and zoology, to procreation and the sex relation in human
society. Mrs. Benjamin had talked the matter out with her girls with
fearless frankness. She had encouraged their questions, she had touched
on the pathology of sex, and she had made for them a high ideal of
motherhood.

Isabelle realized that the talk of these girls was false and ugly. She
said so; and the result was that she was excluded from the intimacy of
the leading group. In her letters to Mrs. Benjamin she poured out her
whole heart. Protest, misery, loneliness; Mrs. Benjamin sensed them all
in the poignant letters the girl sent her. She replied with long,
intimate chapters of encouragement and understanding. It was her counsel
which kept Isabelle going the first six months of this experience.

She tried with all her might to carry into her daily life the ideals
taught and lived at Hill Top. But she seemed to be speaking a language
that nobody understood. Her teachers bored her. She found she could keep
ahead in her classes with only the most perfunctory study, so the ideal
of a high standard for work was the first to go. What was the use? There
was not enough to occupy her, so the old restlessness came upon her,
with mischievous uses for her excess vitality. She gained a reputation
as a law breaker, and she was watched and punished with increasing
frequency. Her old leadership in misbehaviour was once more established.
The precocious cynicism of her associates began to impress her as
clever. She outdid them at it. Mrs. Benjamin's friendship was her only
hope of salvation now. And then, in January, after a brief spell of
pneumonia, dear Mrs. Benjamin left the world she had so graced, leaving
an aching vacancy behind for her husband and her friends.

To Isabelle it came as her first real sorrow. For weeks after, the girl
retired into herself as into a locked room. She could not eat; she did
not sleep; she grew thin, and haggard, and pale. Worse than that; in her
rebellion at this loss, she grew bitter. She threw this suffering at the
feet of God with a threat. She felt herself the victim of eternal
injustice. Just as she achieved happiness, or friendship, it was always
snat