in a chair. 'My dear!' protested
Aunt Constance. 'Ah,' I thought, 'if you knew, Aunt Constance, if you had
the least suspicion, of the ideas that are surging and shining in my
head, you would go mad--go simply mad!' I did not care much for
deception, but I positively hated clumsy concealment, and the red book
was in the house; at any moment it might be seized. On a shelf of books
in my bedroom was a novel called _The Old Helmet_, probably the silliest
novel in the world. I tore the pages from the binding and burnt them; I
tore the binding from Spencer and burnt it; and I put my treasure in the
covers of _The Old Helmet_. Once Rebecca, a person privileged, took the
thing away to read; but she soon brought it back. She told me she had
always understood that _The Old Helmet_ was more, interesting than that.

Later, I discovered _The Origin of Species_ in the Free Library. It
finished the work of corruption. Spencer had shown me how to think;
Darwin told me what to think. The whole of my upbringing went for naught
thenceforward. I lived a double life. I said nothing to my aunt of the
miracle wrought within me, and she suspected nothing. Strange and
uncanny, is it not, that such miracles can escape the observation of a
loving heart? I loved her as much as ever, perhaps more than ever. Thank
Heaven that love can laugh at reason!

So much for my intellectual inner life. My emotional inner life is less
easy to indicate. I became a woman at fifteen--years, interminable years,
before I left school. I guessed even then, vaguely, that my nature was
extremely emotional and passionate. And I had nothing literary on which
to feed my dreams, save a few novels which I despised, and the Bible and
the plays and poems of Shakespeare. It is wonderful, though, what good I
managed to find in those two use-worn volumes. I knew most of the Song of
Solomon by heart, and many of the sonnets; and I will not mince the fact
that my favourite play was _Measure for Measure_. I was an innocent
virgin, in the restricted sense in which most girls of my class and age
are innocent, but I obtained from these works many a lofty pang of
thrilling pleasure. They illustrated Chopin for me, giving precision and
particularity to his messages. And I was ashamed of myself. Yes; at the
bottom of my heart I was ashamed of myself because my sensuous being
responded to the call of these masterpieces. In my ignorance I thought I
was lapsing from a sane and proper ideal.