ve of the wonder which always marks the
transition from the imaginary world to the real world.

"What I want to know," she said aloud, "is this: What is the truth?
What's the truth of it all?" She was speaking partly as herself, and
partly as the heroine of the play she had just read. The landscape
outside, because she had seen nothing but print for the space of two
hours, now appeared amazingly solid and clear, but although there were
men on the hill washing the trunks of olive trees with a white liquid,
for the moment she herself was the most vivid thing in it--an heroic
statue in the middle of the foreground, dominating the view. Ibsen's
plays always left her in that condition. She acted them for days at a
time, greatly to Helen's amusement; and then it would be Meredith's turn
and she became Diana of the Crossways. But Helen was aware that it was
not all acting, and that some sort of change was taking place in the
human being. When Rachel became tired of the rigidity of her pose on the
back of the chair, she turned round, slid comfortably down into it, and
gazed out over the furniture through the window opposite which opened on
the garden. (Her mind wandered away from Nora, but she went on thinking
of things that the book suggested to her, of women and life.)

During the three months she had been here she had made up considerably,
as Helen meant she should, for time spent in interminable walks round
sheltered gardens, and the household gossip of her aunts. But Mrs.
Ambrose would have been the first to disclaim any influence, or indeed
any belief that to influence was within her power. She saw her less shy,
and less serious, which was all to the good, and the violent leaps and
the interminable mazes which had led to that result were usually not
even guessed at by her. Talk was the medicine she trusted to, talk about
everything, talk that was free, unguarded, and as candid as a habit of
talking with men made natural in her own case. Nor did she encourage
those habits of unselfishness and amiability founded upon insincerity
which are put at so high a value in mixed households of men and women.
She desired that Rachel should think, and for this reason offered books
and discouraged too entire a dependence upon Bach and Beethoven and
Wagner. But when Mrs. Ambrose would have suggested Defoe, Maupassant, or
some spacious chronicle of family life, Rachel chose modern books, books
in shiny yellow covers, books with a great de