y marching over them--utterly ignoring them. One could not argue with
her, for she was so sublimely sure of herself that she made one doubt
the divine right of good taste, and wonder if flat-footed stupidity were
not right after all.

And, above all, however questionable her mental attributes might be, her
moral worth was certainly awe-inspiring. The clear, metallic
flawlessness of her conscience seemed to glare in one's eyes, and poor
everyday manhood shrunk into itself, painfully aware of spots and
fissures.

"Yes," Miss Jones said, leaning back in her incongruous robes; "yes, the
longer I live the more I feel that, as Longfellow says:

"Life is real, life is _earnest_."

She emphasized the quotation with solemnity: "We can't trifle with our
lives; we can't play through them. We must _live_ them. We must make
something of them."

"Each man after his own nature," I suggested, feebly, for I felt sure
that "we can't _paint_ through them" was implied, and wished to turn
from that issue, with which I felt myself incapable of grappling.

But Miss Jones was not to be balked of her moral.

"We build our own characters," she said, and her look held kind warning.
"We must not act after our own nature if that nature is base or
trivial."

"I know," I murmured.

"It is only by holding firmly to an ideal that we rise, step by step,
beyond our lower selves."

Beyond "Manon Lescaut" to "Faith Conquers Fear" this might mean.

"And ideals we must have," she pursued. Then rising, her little air of
guide and counsellor touched with a smile: "But I must not preach too
much, must I?"

It was comforting to dwell on the ludicrous aspects of this mentorship,
for, when my thoughts led me to a contemplation of Miss Jones's ideals,
I felt my position to be meanly hypocritical, if not "base." Manon was
almost finished. Ah! it was superb!--but even my joy in Manon rankled
and had lost its savour. Manon was there under false pretences, her
presence a subtle insult to Miss Jones. Miss Jones in her flaming gown
took on symbolical meanings. An unconscious martyr wearing, did she but
know it, the veritable robe of Nessus! A sense of protectorship, tender
in its self-reproach, grew upon me--a longing for atonement. I had
sacrificed Miss Jones to my masterpiece, and its beauty was baleful,
vampire-like.

It was indeed a small thing to take Miss Jones's homilies humbly.
Indeed, for this humility I could claim no element of expiation,