he days of the vacation
all out, and went to school again towards the end of the month with a
heart very disappointed, and troubled besides by that feeling of
unknown and therefore unreachable hindrances, which is so tormenting.
Something the matter, and you do not know what and therefore you cannot
act to mend matters. Esther was sadly disappointed. Three years now,
and she had grown and he had changed,--must have changed,--and if the
old friendship were at all to be preserved, the friends ought to see
each other before the gap grew too wide, and before too many things
rushed in to fill it which might work separation and not union.
Esther's feelings were of the most innocent and childlike, but very
warm. Pitt had been very good to her; he had been like an elder
brother, and in that light she remembered him and wished for him. The
fact that she was a child no longer did not change all this. Esther had
lived alone with her father, and kept her simplicity.

Going to school might have damaged the simplicity, but somehow it did
not. Several reasons prevented. For one thing, she made no intimate
friends. She was kind to everybody, nobody was taken into her
confidence. Her nature was apart from theirs; one of those rare and few
whose fate it is for the most part to stand alone in the world; too
fine for the coarseness, too delicate for the rudeness, too noble for
the pettiness of those around them, even though they be not more coarse
or rude or small-minded than the generality of mankind. Sympathy is
broken, and full communion impossible. It is the penalty of eminence to
put its possessor apart. I have seen a lily stand so in a bed of other
flowers; a perfect specimen; in form and colouring and grace of
carriage distinguished by a faultless beauty; carrying its elegant head
a little bent, modest, but yet lofty above all the rest of the flower
bed. Not with the loftiness of inches, however, for it was of lower
stature than many around it; the elevation of which I speak was moral
and spiritual. And so it was alone. The rest of the flowers were more
or less fellows; this one in its apart elegance owned no social
communion with them. Esther was a little like that among her school
friends; and though invariably gracious and pleasant in her manners,
she was instinctively felt to be different from the rest. Only Esther
was a white lily; the one I tried to describe, or did not try to
describe, was a red one.

Besides this element o