king down on North
Holmwood church, they sat side by side for a while on the close
short grass, brocaded with daisies, and gazed across at the cropped
sward of Denbies and the long line of the North Downs stretching
away towards Reigate. Tender grays and greens melted into one
another on the larches hard by; Betchworth chalk-pit gleamed dreamy
white in the middle distance. They had been talking earnestly all
the way, like two old friends together; for they were both of them
young, and they felt at once that nameless bond which often draws
one closer to a new acquaintance at first sight than years of
converse. "How seriously you look at life," Alan cried at last, in
answer to one of Herminias graver thoughts. "I wonder what makes
you take it so much more earnestly than all other women?"

"It came to me all at once when I was about sixteen," Herminia
answered with quiet composure, like one who remarks upon some
objective fact of external nature. "It came to me in listening to a
sermon of my father's,--which I always look upon as one more
instance of the force of heredity. He was preaching on the text,
'The Truth shall make you Free,' and all that he said about it
seemed to me strangely alive, to be heard from a pulpit. He said
we ought to seek the Truth before all things, and never to rest
till we felt sure we had found it. We should not suffer our souls
to be beguiled into believing a falsehood merely because we
wouldn't take the trouble to find out the Truth for ourselves by
searching. We must dig for it; we must grope after it. And as he
spoke, I made up my mind, in a flash of resolution, to find out the
Truth for myself about everything, and never to be deterred from
seeking it, and embracing it, and ensuing it when found, by any
convention or preconception. Then he went on to say how the Truth
would make us Free, and I felt he was right. It would open our
eyes, and emancipate us from social and moral slaveries. So I made
up my mind, at the same time, that whenever I found the Truth I
would not scruple to follow it to its logical conclusions, but
would practise it in my life, and let it make me Free with perfect
freedom. Then, in search of Truth, I got my father to send me to
Girton; and when I had lighted on it there half by accident, and it
had made me Free indeed, I went away from Girton again, because I
saw if I stopped there I could never achieve and guard my freedom.
From that day forth I have ai